The Big-Town Round-Up

by William MacLeod Raine

  CHAPTER XXII

  TWO MEN IN A LOCKED ROOM

  "Jerry'll raise hell," a heavy voice was saying as they entered theroom. "And that ain't all. We'll land in stir if we don't look out.We just ducked a bad fall. The bulls pretty near had us that time wepoked our nose out from the Park at Seventy-Second Street."

  Some one pressed a button and the room leaped to light. Through theopen crack of the closed door Clay recognized Gorilla Dave. The secondof the gunmen was out of range of his vision.

  From the sound of creaking furniture Clay judged that the unseen manhad sat down heavily. "It was that blowout queered us. And say--howcame the bulls so hot on our trail? Who rapped to 'em?"

  "Must 'a' been that boob wit' the goil. He got busy quick. Well,Jerry won't have to salve the cops this time. We made our getaway allright," said Dave.

  "Say, where's Joey?"

  "Pulled a sneak likely. Wha's it matter? Listen! What's that?"

  Some one was coming up the stairs.

  The men in the room moved cautiously to the door. The hall light wasswitched on.

  "'Lo, Jerry," Gorilla Dave called softly.

  He closed the room door and the sound of the voices was shut offinstantly.

  The uninvited guest dared not step out of the closet to listen, for atany instant the men might reenter. He crouched in his hiding-place,the thirty-eight in his hand.

  The minutes dragged interminably. More than once Clay almost made uphis mind to steal out to learn what the men were doing. But hisjudgment told him he must avoid a brush with so many if possible.

  The door opened again.

  "Now beat it and do as I say if you know what's good for you," abullying voice was ordering.

  The owner of the voice came in and slammed the door behind him. He satdown at the desk, his back to the closet. Through the chink Clay sawthat the man was Jerry Durand.

  From his vest pocket he took a fat black cigar, struck a match and litit. He slumped down in the swivel chair. It took no seer to divinethat his mind was busy working out a problem.

  Clay stepped softly from his place of refuge, but not so noiselesslythat the gangman did not detect his presence. Jerry swung round in thechair and leaped up with cat-like activity. He stood without moving,poised on the balls of his feet, his deep-set eyes narrowed to shiningslits. It was in his thought to hurl himself headlong on the manholding steadily the menacing revolver.

  "Don't you! I've got the dead wood on you," said the Arizonan, atrenchant saltness in his speech. "I'll shoot you down sure as hell'shot."

  The eyes of the men clashed, measuring each the other's strength ofwill. They were warily conscious even of the batting of an eyelid.Durand's face wore an ugly look of impotent malice, but his throat wasdry as a lime kiln. He could not estimate the danger that confrontedhim nor what lay back of the man's presence.

  "What you doin' here?" he demanded.

  "Makin' my party call," retorted Clay easily.

  Jerry cursed him with a low, savage stream of profanity. The gangmanenraged was not a sight pleasing to see.

  "I reckon heaven, hell, and high water couldn't keep you from cussin'now. Relieve yore mind proper, Mr. Durand. Then we'll talk business,"murmured Clay in the low, easy drawl that never suggested weakness.

  The ex-prize-fighter's flow of language dried up. He fell silent andstood swallowing his furious rage. It had come home to him that thisnarrow-flanked young fellow with the close-gripped jaw and the cool,steady eyes was entirely unmoved by his threats.

  "Quite through effervescing?" asked Clay contemptuously.

  The gang leader made no answer. He chose to nurse his venom silently.

  "Where's Kitty Mason?"

  Still no answer.

  "I asked you what you've done with Kitty Mason?"

  "What's that to you?"

  "I'm close-herdin' that li'l' girl and I'll not have yore dirty handstouch her. Where is she?"

  "That's my business."

  "By God, you'll tell, or I'll tear it out of you!"

  Clay backed to the door, found the key, transferred it to the innerside of the lock, turned it, and put it in his pocket.

  The cornered gangman took a chance. He ducked for the shelter of thedesk, tore open a drawer, and snatched out an automatic.

  Simultaneously the cowpuncher pressed the button beside the door andplunged the room in darkness. He side-stepped swiftly and withoutnoise.

  A flash of lightning split the blackness.

  Clay dropped to his knees and crawled away. Another bolt, with itsaccompanying roar, flamed out.

  Still the Westerner did not fire in answer, though he knew just wherethe target for his bullet was. A plan had come to him. In theblackness of that room one might empty his revolver and not score ahit. To wait was to take a chance of being potted, but he did not wantthe death of even such a ruffian as Durand on his soul.

  The crash of the automatic and the rattle of glass filled the room.Jerry, blazing away at some fancied sound, had shattered the window.

  Followed a long silence. Durand had changed his tactics and wasresolved to wait until his enemy grew restless and betrayed himself.

  The delay became a test of moral stamina. Each man knew that death wasin that room lying in wait for him. The touch of a finger might sendit flying across the floor. Upon the mantel a clock tickedmaddeningly, the only sound to be heard.

  The contest was not one of grit, but of that unflawed nerve which is somuch the result of perfect physical fitness. Clay's years of cleanlife on the desert counted heavily now. He was master of himself,though his mouth was dry as a whisper and there were goose quills onhis flesh.

  But Durand, used to the fetid atmosphere of bar-rooms and to the softliving of the great city, found his nerve beginning to crack under thestrain. Cold drops stood out on his forehead and his hands shook fromexcitement and anxiety. What kind of a man was his enemy to lie therein the black silence and not once give a sign of where he was, in spiteof crashing bullets? There was something in it hardly human. For thefirst time in his life Jerry feared he was up against a better man.

  Was it possible that he could have killed the fellow at the first shot?The comfort of this thought whispered hope in the ear of theex-prize-fighter.

  A chair crashed wildly. Durand fired again and yet again, his nervesgiving way to a panic that carried him to swift action. He could nothave stood another moment without screaming.

  There came the faint sound of a hand groping on the wall andimmediately after a flood of light filled the room.

  Clay stood by the door. His revolver covered the crouching gangleader. His eyes were hard and pitiless.

  "Try another shot," he advised ironically.

  Jerry did. A harmless click was all the result he got. He knew nowthat the cowman had tempted him to waste his last shots at a bit offurniture flung across the room.

  "You'll tell me what you did with Kitty Mason," said Clay in his low,persuasive voice, just as though there had been no intermission offlying bullets since he had mentioned the girl before.

  "You can't kill me, when I haven't a loaded gun," Durand answeredbetween dry lips.

  The other man nodded an admission of the point. "That's an advantageyou've got of me. You could kill me if I didn't have a gun, becauseyou're a yellow wolf. But I can't kill you. That's right. But I canbeat hell out of you, and I'm sure goin' to do it."

  "Talk's cheap, when you've got a loaded six-gun in your fist," jeeredJerry.

  With a flirt of his hand Clay tossed the revolver to the top of abook-case, out of easy reach of a man standing on the floor. He rippedopen the buttons of his overcoat and slipped out of it, then movedforward with elastic step.

  "It's you or me now, Jerry Durand."

  The prize-fighter gave a snort of derisive triumph. "You damn fool!I'll eat you alive."

  "Mebbeso. I reckon my system can assimilate any whalin' you're liableto hand me. Go to it."
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br />   Durand had the heavy shoulders and swelling muscles that come fromyears of training for the ring. Like most pugilists out of activeservice he had taken on flesh. But the extra weight was not fat, forJerry kept always in good condition. He held his leadership partly atleast because of his physical prowess. No tough in New York wouldwillingly have met him in rough-and-tumble fight.

  The younger man was more slightly built. He was a Hermes rather than aHercules. His muscles flowed. They did not bulge. But when he movedit was with the litheness of a panther. The long lines of shoulder andloin had the flow of tigerish grace. The clear eyes in the brown facetold of a soul indomitable in a perfectly synchronized body.

  Durand lashed out with a swinging left, all the weight of his bodybehind the blow. Clay stepped back, shot a hard straight right to thecheek, and ducked the counter. Jerry rushed him, flailing at his foeblow on blow, intending to wear him out by sheer hard hammering. Hebutted with head and knee, used every foul trick he had learned in hisrotten trade of prize-fighting. Active as a wild cat, the Arizonanside-stepped, scored a left on the eye, ducked again, and fought backthe furious attack.

  The gangman came out of the rally winded, perplexed, and disturbed.His cheek was bleeding, one eye was in distress, and he had hardlytouched his agile opponent.

  He rushed again. Nothing but his temper, the lack of self-control thatmade him see red and had once put him at the mercy of a first-classring general with stamina and a punch, had kept Jerry out of a worldchampionship. He had everything else needed, but he was the victim ofhis own passion. It betrayed him now. His fighting was that of a wildcave man, blind, furious, damaging. He threw away his science and hisskill in order to destroy the man he hated. He rained blows onhim--fought him with head and knee and fist, was on top of him everymoment, controlled by one dominating purpose to make that dancingfigure take the dust.

  How Clay weathered the storm he did not know. Some blows he blocked,others he side-stepped, a few he took on face and body. He was cool,quite master of himself. Before the fight had gone three minutes heknew that, barring a chance blow, some foul play, or a bit of bad luck,he would win. He was covering up, letting the pugilist wear himselfout, and taking only the punishment he must. But he was getting homesome heavy body blows that were playing the mischief with Jerry's wind.

  The New Yorker, puffing like a sea lion, came out of a rally winded andspent. Instantly Clay took the offensive. He was a trained boxer aswell as a fighter, and he had been taught how to make every ounce ofhis weight count. Ripping in a body blow as a feint, he brought downDurand's guard. A straight left crashed home between the eyes and aheavy solar plexus shook the man to the heels.

  Durand tried to close with him. An uppercut jolted him back. Heplunged forward again. They grappled, knocking over chairs as theythreshed across the room. When they went down Clay was underneath, butas they struck the floor he whirled and landed on top.

  The man below fought furiously to regain his feet. Clay's arm workedlike a piston rod with short-arm jolts against the battered face.

  A wild heave unseated the Arizonan. They clinched, rolled over andbumped against the wall, Clay again on top. For a moment Durand got athumb in his foe's eye and tried to gouge it out. Clay's fingers foundthe throat of the gang leader and tightened. Jerry struggled to freehimself, catching at the sinewy wrist with both hands. He could notbreak the iron grip. Gasping for breath, he suddenly collapsed.

  Clay got to his feet and waited for Durand to rise. His enemy rolledover and groaned.

  "Had enough?" demanded the Westerner.

  No answer came, except the heavy, irregular breathing of the man on thefloor who was clawing for air in his lungs.

  "I'll ask you once more where Kitty Mason is. And you'll tell meunless you want me to begin on you all over again."

  The beaten pugilist sat up, leaning against the wall. He spoke with akind of heavy despair, as though the words were forced out of him. Hefelt ashamed and disgraced by his defeat. Life for him had lost itssavor, for he had met his master.

  "She--got away."

  "How?"

  "They turned her loose, to duck the bulls," came the slow, sullenanswer.

  "Where?"

  "In Central Park."

  Probably this was the truth, Clay reflected. He could take the man'sword or not as he pleased. There was no way to disprove it now.

  He recovered his revolver, threw the automatic out of the window, andwalked to the door.

  "Joe's tied up in a back room," he said over his shoulder.

  Thirty seconds later Clay stepped into the street. He walked across toa subway station and took an uptown train.

  Men looked at him curiously. His face was bruised and bleeding, hisclothes disheveled, his hat torn. Clay grinned and thought of the oldanswer:

  "They'd ought to see the other man."

  One young fellow, apparently a college boy, who had looked upon thewine when it was red, was moved to come over and offer condolence.

  "Say, I don't want to butt in or anything, but--he didn't do a thing toyou, did he?"

  "I hit the edge of a door in the dark," explained Clay solemnly.

  "That door must have had several edges." The youth made a confidentialadmission. "I've got an edge on myself, sort of."

  "Not really?" murmured Clay politely.

  "Surest thing you know. Say, was it a good scrap?"

  "I'd hate to mix in a better one."

  "Wish I'd been there." The student fumbled for a card. "Didn't catchyour name?"

  Clay had no intention of giving his name just now to any casualstranger. He laughed and hummed the chorus of an old range ditty:

  "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, And a long way from home."