The Wheel of Death/Chapter 6

Ram Singh drew back the bolt and threw the door open. Out into the hall swirled the smoke from the room. For a moment all three stood perfectly still, breathing as little as possible.

From the doorway nobody could be seen in the hall. But there came a burst of excited voices from some little distance away, as the smoke swept out; and directions could be heard from firemen on the stairs.

Wentworth reached with his free hand and tapped Ram Singh on the shoulder. Instantly the Hindu slipped into the hall and darted toward the rear of the building, his business being to lose himself amid the smoke and shadows and among the excited people who always assemble at the alarm of fire. Later, when he was quite certain that he had not been followed, he would rejoin his master in his surroundings utterly different from those which he had just left behind him.

It was just possible, of course, that he might meet an enemy of his master. But it was not likely, since the attacking men were almost certainly unaware that a Hindu had been in the apartment they were trying to enter. In any case Ram Singh, with the long knife up his sleeve, was not a good man to attack.

Wentworth hesitated a few seconds longer, listening to the sounds of the firemen on the stairs and judging their nearness. Then he seized Molly's arm above the elbow and together they passed out into the hall, turning amid the smoke toward the head of the stairs upon which firemen were in the act of bringing up a line of hose.

So far as he could see through the pinholes in his black eye-patches there was no sign of his enemies. There were some open doors through which peered the frightened faces of inmates who were aroused by the dread alarm of fire, and at the head of the stairs a fireman with an ax was just stepping onto the landing.

"Hey, Bill!" shouted the fireman. "Here's a blind man. See that he doesn't trip over the hose."

Wentworth and Molly, old blind man and young street urchin, passed down the stairs slowly and listened to the talk of the ascending firemen. It was some kind of an unusual smoker, the firemen thought, and didn't have any real heat. They were professionally callous about the fire but gave kindly attention to the blind man. There were still no signs of the men who had been trying to force their way into the apartment. But it was in the street that Wentworth expected to find them, if he found them at all at the scene of the fire.

Outside the entrance to the building a couple of policemen were driving back a small crowd of onlookers and it was into this crowd that Wentworth and Molly found their way. Molly was apparently leading the tall man at her side. But in reality Wentworth was guiding her by means of the firm hold which he maintained upon her arm. Yet he stumbled a little and bumped into some people just as he might have done if she had really been leading him.

On the outside of the crowd, well back from the police, stood a man whom Wentworth recognized instantly. He was the man with the patent leather shoes who had worn the policeman's uniform. He was wearing another coat now, but the policeman's uniform probably reposed in a paper-covered bundle under his arm. Wentworth edged away from this man, directing Molly down the street toward a subway station. But the man noticed them and caught up to them.

"You come out of that building?" he asked. "What floor were you on?"

"Eh?" asked Wentworth, moving on, apparently under the influence of his small companion.

"He's deaf," said Molly.

The man, whose question had been rather listless, turned away. Few care to talk with a deaf person, especially when the questions have to be shouted so that others may hear them.

"That was clever of you to tell him that I was deaf," said Wentworth as they continued slowly toward the subway. "If you do it again, however, call if 'deef.' It will fit your character better."

But Wentworth regretted the meeting with the man who had posed as a policeman. Should he meet him again, while posing as the blind man, the fellow would probably become suspicious.

They took the subway to Grand Central Station, shuttled from there to Times Square and traveled north on the west side of Manhattan as far as 96th Street before taking a south-bound local which would carry them into the neighborhood of Grogan's Restaurant. Wentworth's purpose was to use up a little time and to make doubly certain that he was not being followed.

As they traveled Wentworth instructed the girl, even going to the extreme of making her pretend to guide him as he passed along the aisle of the subway train with his little tin cup held out in a trembling hand. Several passengers dropped pennies into the cup, and one old lady parted with a dime. By the time that they reached their destination Molly had become quite expert in obeying the slightest pressure that Wentworth placed upon her arm.

Half a block from Grogan's Restaurant they passed a blue car which was parked by the curb. It was empty, but Wentworth noticed that the back bumper was badly bent as if it had been in a severe collision. It seemed that Grogan had returned to his restaurant.

A police department car was parked in front of the place, and people were still stopping in the street to peer through the front window. But business was again going on as usual in Grogan's Restaurant. New York City does little more than hesitate for such a thing as sudden death. The police act swiftly in the business section, and the dead are soon carried away to be dealt with in legal routine beyond the public eye.

Wentworth, with Molly slightly in advance of him, turned boldly into the restaurant, stumbled slightly on the step and fumbled with a chair at an empty table, a chair which faced the door of the little back room. There were two waiters in Grogan's Restaurant at night, most of the business being done then. One of these came forward and bluntly said that panhandlers were not wanted. But he accepted an order for coffee and beans when Wentworth took some silver from his pocket and exposed it in his trembling hand. All kinds of unfashionable people came to Grogan's Restaurant and were welcomed if they had money to pay for what they wanted.

Wentworth leaned back in his chair and remained quite motionless, as if he were tired, while he waited for the coffee and beans. Through the pinholes in the black patches over his eyes, however, he could see the door of the back room. Several men, evidently detectives in plain clothes, passed in and out of the room, sometimes going into the kitchen, sometimes passing out to the street and sometimes using a telephone booth which was built against the wall which separated the restaurant from the back room.

Presently Dan Grogan himself came out of the back room and stood looking around his cheap little eating place. He seemed to be very angry, and he made no effort to conceal it. He was probably annoyed by the questions of the police, and he was certainly angry because of what had been done in his little back room after he had left it late that afternoon. Possibly he had already discovered that something had been taken from his iron safe.

Grogan came to the front of the restaurant and stood in his customary place beside the battered cash register. He gave but a cursory glance at the blind man and ragged boy before biting the end off a fresh cigar and commencing to chew it. As he stood there, only four or five feet from Wentworth, a man entered and stood quietly beside him. Wentworth did not dare turn his head to focus his pinholes upon the newcomer, but he was close enough to hear the conversation.

"Did the bulls blow yet?" asked the newcomer.

"Naw!" Grogan answered in disgust. They just found the gat that did the killing. It was in the waste basket, and a piece of paper fell on it. Can you beat it? Some bulls! The photographer is coming back to take the finger prints off it." Grogan spat some of his cigar on the floor. "Hell of a lot of good it's going to do them!"

"Why isn't it going to do them any good?" Grogan's only answer was to spit some more of his cigar upon the floor. His companion seemed to take it as a hint that there was to be no more talk and slipped quietly out of the restaurant. Grogan turned his back and stared morosely out into the street.

What Wentworth had heard gave him much uneasiness. It seemed certain that his pistol must have fallen out of its holster when he had stooped to pick up Molly. If it was one that was registered with the police, and he was almost certain that it was, it would certainly be traced to him. Even if, by chance, he had not left distinct finger prints upon it, there would be exceedingly awkward questions to answer.

But Wentworth did not remain uneasy very long. A tight corner only made life more interesting for him.

In all probability his pistol was merely waiting for him to come and get it. The problem of getting it was a hard one, but that was the only kind of a problem that really interested him. While Molly played with the toothpicks upon the table, he viewed the situation calmly, took stock of all his surroundings and commenced to make his plans.

A detective came out of the back room and entered the telephone booth. Wentworth wondered if there were other detectives in that little room. The detective had left the door open, but Wentworth could see only a part of the room beyond.

Then it was that Wentworth saw something that gave him a very great surprise. Through the open door he found himself looking at the iron safe, and he was pleased with himself for having so carefully wiped his finger prints from the dial after opening it to impress Grogan with his skill.

As he gazed, he saw the black handle which is used to swing open the door after working the combination. Black? He remembered that the handle on the safe door, which he had opened, had had a bright nickel covering. He was certain of that; yet he now saw a black handle. He looked more closely at the safe, and slowly he became convinced that he was not looking at the same safe that had been there late that afternoon!

The thing seemed to be an impossibility. Yet it was undoubtedly so. The safe had been taken away and another safe put in its place. Certainly the room had been unguarded by the police for only a few minutes, a very few minutes, after he had rushed out of it with Molly in his arms. It did not seem possible that so heavy a thing could have been spirited away in the twinkling of an eye. Yet in no other way could it have been done unless, of course, it had been done with the connivance of the police, which Wentworth could not believe. Here was a mystery which he would have to solve if it took him the rest of his life.

The waiter came with the coffee and beans, and Molly stopped playing with the toothpicks. She was really very hungry. As for Wentworth, he could not play his role of an old and rather sickly blind man if he ate too ravenously. Besides, he intended to enter the little back room before the beans were finished. He leaned forward and spoke in a very low voice so that only Molly could hear.

Molly played her part quite well. She rose slowly, reluctant to leave her supper, and guided the old blind man across the room to the telephone booth where she placed a nickel in the slot and dialed for him since, of course, it would be strange if a blind man could do such a thing for himself. No sooner had she finished dialing and handed him the receiver than she scurried back to her plate of beans as if they were much more important than her guardianship of the old man.

In the telephone booth Wentworth pulled down the hook to break the connection, but held the receiver to his ear for the benefit of any person who might look in through the glass door. He remained in this position for some two or three minutes, while Molly, following instruction, gobbled her beans and paid no attention to him.

The girl was still eating when Wentworth opened the door of the booth and groped his way out. He felt before him with his hands and touched the wall. Two or three steps brought him to the door of the little back room and his hand fell on the knob as if by accident. The door opened and he staggered into the room with hands outstretched as a blind man might be expected to do if he had lost his bearings.

Wentworth could see quite a bit although, of course, he could not see perfectly. He was able to see the detective sitting by the desk. He glimpsed the iron safe. He just had time to see a pistol lying upon the desk, when the detective rose from his chair.

"What the hell?" was the detective's remark, an expression of surprise rather than a question.

Wentworth swayed before the detective and his knees shook. "Water!" he gasped and seemed to have difficulty in breathing.

A New York policeman is supposed to be a very hardened individual. But in the case of a poor old blind man, struggling to breathe, he is apt to be quite soft-hearted. The detective helped Wentworth into the chair from which he himself had just risen and rushed out into the restaurant to pour a glass of water from a water bottle.

As the detective rushed away, Wentworth picked up the pistol from the desk and stowed it away in a pocket with the speed of lightning. He slid out of the chair to the floor, apparently in agony, and robed over to the safe, with two objects in view. In the first place he wanted to get as far away from the desk as possible so that the detective, upon returning, would not be so likely to look at the place which had been occupied by the pistol. In the second place he wanted to examine the floor underneath the mat upon which the safe rested.

In the few seconds which elapsed before the return of the detective Wentworth proved to his own satisfaction the only theory which he had been able to deduce to explain the mystery of the vanishing safe. He slipped his fingers underneath the edge of the mat and found, as he had suspected, that the floor, had been cut. The safe was really resting upon a platform which could be made to sink into the basement where, no doubt, it could be shifted by some mechanism, and another safe sent up in its place. The edges of the mat covered the cutting in the floor, but could be folded up and passed through the aperture when the safe was lowered. And this was the trick which Grogan used to deceive the police upon their occasional inspection.

But between the detective's legs, as he came back through the door, Wentworth saw an awkward, if not dangerous, situation arising in the restaurant. The man with the patent leather shoes, who had posed as a policeman, was just entering the restaurant.

"Here you are!" exclaimed the detective, closing the door and cutting off Wentworth's view of the restaurant as he came in. "Drink this!"

Wentworth raised his head and sipped the water which the detective gave him. Outside he heard Molly scream, one short, frightened cry. He struggled to his feet, spilled the water over the detective's knee and rushed gropingly toward the door, throwing it open and staggering into the restaurant.

Quick as he was, he was too late. Molly was not in the restaurant, and the bogus policeman also had disappeared. Through the restaurant he staggered, upsetting chairs, until he passed through the front door into the street, the astonished detective watching him from behind. His acting was perfect, but probably he would have met an obstruction in big Dan Grogan if it had not been for the immediate presence of the detective.

Nor was there any sign of Molly in the street. Wentworth was so troubled about her that he tore off the black patches which covered his eyes and cast discretion to the winds. There was nothing that he could do until he had got rid of the disguise he was wearing, a disguise which was now useless in that district.

He jumped upon the running board of a passing taxi and was out of sight of Grogan's Restaurant in a few seconds.

But there was more surprise for Wentworth that evening. In the light of the taxi he examined the pistol which he had snatched from beneath the detective's nose.

The pistol was not his!