The House of Intrigue/Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I'M afraid I was thinking more about my mortal body than about my immortal soul, during that ride through the midnight streets of the city. But I was bone-tired by this time, and already the stupefying fumes of my utter weariness were beginning to float like a mist before me and the happenings of the last few hours. I lost my interest in things. I didn't seem to care much how they came out. And somewhere at the back of my brain revolved a strangely mixed-up reel of weasel-faced old men and haunted houses and lavalieres and rubies and diamonds and four-posters and wills and wall-safes and boned capon and crêpe-de-chine nightgowns and automobiles that purred along wet pavements and thumped softly over car-tracks and swayed a little from side to side like the arm of a mumble-low mammy putting a tired baby to sleep. And I was the baby.
I didn't care much where my Hero-Man took me, or what happened to me, so long as I was left there in peace, against those well-padded cushion-backs. But through the soft fog of weariness that surrounded me I became conscious of several things. The first was that I was in a smaller car than before, a sort of single-seated covered roadster or coupé. The second was that the rain was now coming down in a steady pour, making the empty streets look like a city of the dead. The third was that the car in which I had been half-asleep had come to a stop. And the last one was that my Hero-Man was speaking to me.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," he was saying. "But it would be as well for you to wait here in the car until I come back."
"Back from where?" I asked, as he stepped out the car door with the club-bag in his hand.
"From there," he answered, pointing toward a wide-fronted house of Indiana limestone. Each barred window of that house was shrouded and curtained. Not a light shone from it. Even the street door stood ominously dark. But it was none of these things that left me suddenly wide awake.
It was the discovery that directly across the street from where we had stopped stood the very house from which I had fled two hours earlier. It was the discovery that Wendy Washburn had been able to thread his way back to that house of intrigue, without so much as a word of help from me. He had come back to it as quietly as a homing pigeon returns to its cote. He understood, without my telling him, the precise quarter from which I had carried off that club-bag of Copperhead Kate's. And I couldn't help wondering just how much more he knew about that house.
"And how long am I to wait here?" I asked, as casually as I could.
He looked at the house-front a moment, before turning back to me. There was no longer any trace of flippancy about him.
"If I'm not back here in a reasonable length of time, I want you to telephone my man at the Harraton. He will know what to do."
"But what do you call a reasonable length of time?" I insisted. "For you know I've got to sleep some time between now and next Christmas?"
He laughed a little at that, very quietly.
"There are a few things that are worth more than sleep," he announced.
"Not to me," I retorted, for I didn't want him to think that excursion of his was troubling me as much as it did. But I scarcely believed he heard what I said, for he had turned away and was stepping quickly up the wide limestone treads.
I sat in the darkened car watching him through the falling rain. I saw him stop before the double door of heavy plate glass guarded by its scroll-work of black iron. I waited for him to ring, wondering what his reception in that strange house would be. But instead of ringing, he quietly took out a pass-key, inserted it in the door-lock, and stepped inside.
I sat there, stunned. Here was a new twist, and a twist that was a little too much for me. Why should Wendy Gruger Washburn carry a key to that house of horrors? And how could such a key come into his possession ? And why was he holding back information which he could easily have given me, if he'd wanted to? And was the gift-ring which he had so calmly ignored, after all, in some way associated with him? And if so, just who and what was this Wendy Washburn? And why should he be so actively interested in my immortal soul, and snatch half-a-million dollars out of my hand, the same as a big brother snatches an especially juicy apple from baby sister on the plea that it might give her cholera-morbus? And was he actually taking that wealth back to its owners? And, if so, just who were its owners supposed to be? Or was there some ulterior motive in that charitable little move? Was my Hero-Man merely playing lion to my antelope, gathering in at one bound the prize which only months of browsing could have prepared for him?
I suddenly remembered what Wendy Washburn had said to me, that first day of our meeting. "I do a little in the hold-up line myself, you know!" he had announced with that half-satiric smile of his. And as we had eaten supper together that night he had tentatively though flippantly suggested that we go into partnership. Could he have been more sincere than I imagined when he put that question to me? And was he in some way associated with Copperhead Kate's visit to that house of plots and counter-plots? Could he, after all, be a sort of Bud Griswold in a Fifth Avenue setting, going back to complete a haul which must in some way have miscarried?
Then I stopped thinking altogether. For as I sat there in the darkness of the car I caught sight of a second man in a rain-coat as he stopped before the house, looked about, and then hurried up the steps.
This second man, I saw, took out a pass-key, unlocked the door and swung it open. But the moment he did so the muffled sound of a revolver-shot rang out from the house he was about to enter.
The effect of that shot on him was instantaneous.
He dove in through the door, without even waiting to swing it shut after him. And in two shakes I was up out of that seat and out of that automobile and skipping across the asphalt pools.
"Me for the firing-line!" I announced to the midnight air, as I made for that still open door.
I still had Copperhead Kate's automatic in the slack of her over-abundant waist. Never in all my life had I shot off a pistol and I doubt if I could have pulled a trigger without shutting my eyes, yet I felt decidedly better when I held that black-metaled fire-arm once more in my hand. For the house, as I stepped into it, was as dark as pitch, and I had no idea of what the opening of the first door might confront me with.
So I stood there for a minute or two, straining both my ears and my eyes. But I saw nothing, and heard nothing. I groped my way deeper into the house. Then I suddenly stopped, and listened again. A moment later I turned to the right, felt my way through an open door, and listened still again.
This time I distinctly caught the sound of a voice. It was a woman's voice. It was not a loud voice, for it came, apparently, from a closed room, even though that room lay somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. But it was an angry voice, tense, imperative, shrill with indignation.
I groped my way slowly onward, with fingers outstretched, like the whiskers of a house-cat, until I came to a wall. Then I felt along this wall until I reached a door. I found the knob, nursed it carefully in my hand, and slowly turned it.
The door opened without a sound. But across that door, I saw, hung a pair of heavy portières. So I parted these, cautiously, where a thin pencil of light showed along their edges. And as I did so I beheld a scene which left me all eyes, and a little flighty in the region where that heavy automatic had been hanging for so long.
For directly in front of the door, with her back to me, I saw Copperhead Kate. She was still dressed, with my flesh-colored crêpe-de-chine nightie, which made her look ridiculous, over her other clothes, but over the night-dress she now wore a man's rain-coat hanging loose at the front. Her fringe of russet bangs was disarranged, and as she leaned forward with her head thrust out, there was something vindictive and tigerish in her attitude, something that reminded me of a cat that had made ready to spring. She was no longer like a snake; she had lost too much of her torpor for that. But what gave point to her attitude was the fact that in a close-crooked right hand, poised on a level with her breast, she held a black-barreled automatic pistol, a twin-sister, apparently, to the one which I carried in my own somewhat astounded right hand.
Close beside her, at her feet, stood the black club-bag which I so recently had seen in the hand of Wendy Washburn. But along the opposite wall of the room, distinct in the light that flooded it from floor to ceiling, stood a motley and very melancholy appearing row of men and women.
They stood side by side in that strained and unnatural position which results from holding the hands high above the head. And in that row I saw my Hero-Man himself, and close beside him Miss Ledwidge, with anger more than apprehension on her indignant face, and next to her again Doctor Otto Klinger, with beads of perspiration on his forehead and a very unhealthy color about his somewhat puffy cheeks. Next came old Ezra Tweedie Bartlett, with his wizened little weasel face quivering with either apprehension or indignation, I couldn't tell which. Beside him stood his brother Enoch, his squinting and half-closed eyes plainly burning with a light of sullen revolt. Next to this hunched-up figure again stood the butler in the crimson-rambler knickerbockers, with his white stockings visibly knocking together at the knees, while on the floor sat another man servant in uniform, tying a handkerchief about the calf of his leg where a slow rivulet of the color of raspberry vinegar stained the white stocking and flowed on down into the broad-toed patent-leather service pump. As he worried over this improvised bandage he emitted, from time to time, a loud and groaning bleat. But this bleat was pretty well drowned, as a rule, in the quick and impassioned words of Copperhead Kate as she caused her pistol-end to waver from one end of that ludicrous line to the other.
"… And I'm going to find that out," I could hear her cry, in a white heat of anger, "or I'm going to blow the lid off the whole bunch of you! I want to know what's going on in this house, and who's at the bottom of all this mix-up! I want to know why that calm-eyed stiff walked back in here with this bunch of swag! And I want to know why that blond porker there pumped about three grains of morphine into me when I was up on that four-poster." She swung about on the clammy and cowering Doctor Klinger with hate in her eye. "It was some dose, my fat friend, and you'd 'a' had me still dreaming of home and mother if I hadn't learned to use the needle before bottle-washers got to dressing themselves in claret-colored pants and hash-slingers didn't know enough to stand still when there was a gun in front of them! And I want to know what that rat-faced old gink meant by trying to throw me over a stair-banister, and where that baby-eyed gun-moll went with my clothes, and why all you gasoonies think just because I'm a woman I haven't the nerve to put a half -ounce of lead through your ribs!"
I realized as I stood there that my rusty-haired friend hadn't been christened Copperhead Kate for nothing. For they had to take it standing, and none of them showed any great love for it. But not one of them said a word, I noticed, and not one of them moved. And in the meantime Copperhead Kate, who had the whip-hand, was having her little say-so out.
"You ain't all hollerin' at once, are you? Well, if that's the way you feel about it, just keep on holdin' your traps shut. And don't move—not a dam' one o' you, or you'll sure be trippin' over your own tombstone!" she went on with an increasing show of anger. "I'm goin' to back out o' this door, and if any wise guy here wants to take a chance on comin' after me, he'll get what Mister Pink-pants on the floor there got!"
Silence for one short moment reigned in the room.
"Just a moment," I heard my Hero-Man say, as the woman in the rain-coat started to back toward the portiere where I stood. "Would you mind telling me just why you happened to come to this house?"
"That's my business!" retorted Copperhead Kate.
"But I have a particular reason for asking," persisted the man at the end of that dolorous line. He was speaking with a forced politeness which, had I stood in Katie's shoes, I'd have accepted as a danger-signal.
"And I have a particular reason for keeping my mouth shut," announced Copperhead Kate, whose temper, that night, had already been tried beyond all endurance.
"You may think differently, the next time we meet," ventured my Hero-Man.
The gentle Katie snorted aloud. "And when are we going to meet?" she demanded.
"Much sooner, I imagine, than you seem to anticipate," was the other's reply.
The woman with the automatic stepped toward 
Every eye in the line followed her minutest movement
"For two pins I'd plug you where you stand!" she said. But she said it with an ominous quietness that gave me goose-flesh from the ground up.
"And what good would that do you?" asked the man so quietly confronting her. But he kept his troubled eyes on that barrel-end all the time.
"It might do me more good than you imagine!" she retorted with unreserved malignity.
"Then don't let me interfere with any of your personal pleasures," was the other's quiet-toned reply. It seemed to puzzle the threatening woman for a moment, for she gave a cat-like "sphttt" at him as she stood somewhat frowningly regarding his impassive face. Then she backed slowly away, and once more dominated the entire line with her black-metaled barrel.
"This is going to do the talking for me," she told them, with a wave of her automatic. "And it won't need to speak twice. So mind what I've told you, and stay where you are. And the longer you stay there the safer it'll be for you."
Still again she started to fall back, catching up the black club-bag as she did so. But never once did her eyes leave that silent line as she continued to back step by step toward the heavy portières. And every eye in that line, as she went, followed her minutest movement. She stopped only when she felt the weight of the heavy draperies against her shoulders.
I drew away, suddenly, as her left hand swung the bag back through the portières and dropped it to the floor. Once this hand was free, she began feeling for the door, padding about to find the key that stood in the lock. But all the while she was studying that closely watching line of her enemies.
It was her intention, I saw, to swing the door shut, lock it and make her get-away before they could break through. It was a well-thought-out maneuver, but it had just one defect. There was just one factor she was not figuring on. And that was me.