第102章

He smiled a little wanly.Once the crime was discovered, she would not have hesitated long before informing the police that she had seen him enter there! Mrs.Hagan was no friend of his! One could not live as he had lived, as Larry the Bat, and not see something in an intimate way of the pitiful little tragedies of the poor around him; for, bad, tough, and dissolute as the quarter was, all were not degraded there, some were simply--poor.Mrs.Hagan was poor.Her husband was a day labourer, often out of a job--and sometimes he drank.That was how he, Jimmie Dale, or rather, Larry the Bat, had come to earn Mrs.Hagan's enmity.He had found Mike Hagan drunk one night, and in the act of being arrested, and had wheedled the man away from the officer on the promise that he would take Hagan home.

And he was Larry the Bat, a dope fiend, a character known to all the neighbourhood, and Mrs.Hagan had laid her husband's condition to HIS influence and companionship! He had taken Mike Hagan home--and Mrs.Hagan had driven Larry the Bat from the door of her miserable one-room lodging in that tenement with the bitter words on her tongue that only a woman can use when shame and grief and anger are breaking her heart.

He shrugged his shoulders, as, back along the Bowery, he retraced his steps, but now, with the hurried shuffle of Larry the Bat where before had been the brisk, athletic stride of Jimmie Dale.

At Astor Place again, he took the subway, this time to the Grand Central Station--and, well within an hour from the time he had left the Sanctuary, including the train journey to Pelham, he was standing in a clump of trees that fringed a deserted roadway.He had passed but few houses, once he was away from Pelham, and, as well as he could judge, there was none now within a quarter of a mile of him--except this one of old Luther Doyle's that showed up black and shadowy just beyond the trees.

Jimmie Dale's eyes narrowed as he surveyed the place.It was little wonder that, known to have money, an attempt to rob old Doyle should have been made in a place like this! It was even more grimly significant than ever of some deeper meaning that, in its loneliness an ideal place for a murder, the man should have been lured from there for that purpose to a crowded tenement in the city instead!

What did it mean? Why had it been done? He shook his head.The answer would not come now any more than it had come before in the subway, or in the train on the way out, when he had set his brain so futilely to solve the problem.

From a survey of the house, Jimmie Dale gave attention to the details of his surroundings: the trees on either side; the open space in front, a distance of fifty yards to the road; the absence of any fence.And then, abruptly, he stole forward.There was no light to be seen anywhere about the house.Was it possible that Connie Myers was not yet there? He shook his head again impatiently.Connie Myers would not have wasted any time--as the Tocsin had said, there was always present the possibility that the crime in that tenement might be discovered at ANY moment.Connie Myers would have lost no time; for, let the discovery be made, let the police identify the body, as they most certainly would, and they would be out here hotfoot.Jimmie Dale stood suddenly still.What did it mean! He had not thought of that before! If old Doyle had been murdered HERE, there would not have been even the possibility of discovery until the morning at the earliest, and Connie Myers would have had all the time he wanted!

WHAT WAS THAT SOUND! A low, muffled tapping, like a succession of hammer blows, came from within the house.Jimmie Dale darted forward, reached the side of the house, and dropped on hands and knees.One question at least was answered--Connie Myers was inside.

The plan that she had given him showed an old-fashioned cellarway, closed by folding trapdoors, that was located a little toward the rear and, in a moment, creeping along, he came upon it.His hands felt over it.It was shut, fastened by a padlock on the outside.

Jimmie Dale's lips thinned a little, as he took a small steel instrument from his pocket.Either through inadvertence or by intention, Connie Myers had passed up an almost childishly simple means of entrance into the house! One side of the trapdoor was lifted up silently--and silently closed.Jimmie Dale was in the cellar.The hammering, much more distinct now, heavy, thudding blows, came from a room in the front--the connection between the cellar and the house, as shown on the Tocsin's plan, was through another trapdoor in the floor of the kitchen.

Jimmie Dale's flashlight played on a short, ladderlike stairway, and in an instant he was climbing upward.The sounds from the front of the house continued now without interruption; there was little fear that Connie Myers would hear anything else--even the protesting squeak of the hinges as Jimmie Dale cautiously pushed back the trapdoor in the flooring above his head.An inch, two inches he lifted it; and, his eyes on a level with the opening now, he peered into the room.The kitchen itself was intensely dark; but through an open doorway, well to one side so that he could not see into the room beyond, there struggled a curiously faint, dim glimmer of light.And then Jimmie Dale's form straightened rigidly on the stairs.The blows stopped, and a voice, in a low growl, presumably Connie Myers', reached him.

"Here, take a drive at it from the lower edge!"There was no answer--save that the blows were resumed again.Jimmie Dale's face had set hard.Connie Myers was not alone in this, then!

Well, the odds were a little heavier, DOUBLED--that was all! He pushed the trapdoor wide open, swung himself up through the opening to the floor; and the next instant, back a little from the connecting doorway, his body pressed closely against the kitchen wall, he was staring, bewildered and amazed, into the next room.