With deft motions Clay worked swiftly. He was fastening the rope to the chimney of the house. Every instant he expected to hear a voice raised in excited discovery of him crouched in the shadows. But his fingers were as sure and as steady as though he had minutes before him instead of seconds.
"There's the guy—over by the chimney."
Clay threw the slack of the line from the roof. He had no time to test the strength of the rope nor its length. As the police rushed him he slid over the edge and began to lower himself hand under hand.
Would they cut the rope? Or would they take pot shots at him. He would know soon enough.
The wide eaves protected him. A man would have to hang out from the wall above the ledge to see him.
Clay's eyes were on the gutter above while he jerked his way down a foot at a time. A face and part of a body swung out into sight.
"We've got yuh. Come back or I'll shoot," a voice called down.
A revolver showed against the black sky.
The man from Arizona did not answer and did not stop. He knew that shooting from above is an art that few men have acquired.
A bullet sang past his ear just as he swung in and crouched on the window-sill. Another one hit the bricks close to his head.
The firing stopped. A pair of uniformed legs appeared dangling from the eaves. A body and a head followed these. They began to descend jerkily.
Clay took a turn at the gun-play. He fired his revolver into the air.
The spasmodic jerking of the blue legs abruptly ceased.
"He's got a gun!" the man in the air called up to those above.
The fact was obvious. It could not be denied.
"Yuh'd better give up quietly. We're bound to get yuh," an officer shouted from the roof by way of parley.
The cattleman did not answer except by the smashing of glass. He had forced his way into two houses within the past hour. He was now busy breaking into a third. The window had not yielded to pressure. Therefore he was knocking out the glass with the butt of his revolver.
He crawled through the opening just as some one sat up in bed with a frightened exclamation.
"Who—is—s—s—s it?" a masculine voice asked, teeth chattering.
Clay had no time to gratify idle curiosity. He ran through the room, reached the head of the stairs, and went down on the banister to the first floor. He fled back to the rear of the house and stole out by the kitchen door.
The darkness of the alley swallowed him, but he could still hear the shouts of the men on thereof and answering ones from new arrivals below.
Five minutes later he was on board a street car. He was not at all particular as to its destination. He wanted to be anywhere but here. This neighborhood was getting entirely too active for him.
CHAPTER XV
THE GANGMAN SEES RED
Exactly thirty minutes after Clay had left him to break into the house, Johnnie lifted his voice in a loud wail for the police. He had read somewhere that one can never find an officer when he is wanted, but the Bull-of-Bashan roar of the cowpuncher brought them running from all directions.
Out of the confused explanations of the range-rider the first policeman to reach him got two lucid statements.
"They're white-slavin' a straight girl. This busher says his pal went in to rescue her half an hour ago and hasn't showed up since," he told his mates.
With Johnnie bringing up the rear they made a noisy attack on the front door of Number 121. Almost immediately it was opened from the inside. Four men had come down the stairs in a headlong rush to cut off the escape of one who had outwitted and taunted them.
Those who wanted to get in and those who wanted to get out all tried to talk at once, but as soon as the police recognized Jerry Durand they gave him the floor.
"We're after a flat-worker," explained the ex-pugilist. "He must be tryin' for a roof getaway." He turned and led the joint forces back up the stairs.
Thugs and officers surged up after him, carrying with them in their rush the Runt. He presently found himself on the roof with those engaged in a man-hunt for his friend. When Clay shattered the window and disappeared inside after his escape from the roof, Johnnie gave a deep sigh of relief. This gun-play got on his nerves, since Lindsay was the target of it.
The bandy-legged range-rider was still trailing along with the party ten minutes later when its scattered members drew together in tacit admission that the hunted man had escaped.
"Did youse get a look at his mug, Mr. Durand?" asked one of the officers. "It's likely we've got it down at headquarters in the gall'ry."
Durand had already made up his mind on that point.
"We didn't see his face in the light, Pete. No, I wouldn't know him again."
His plug-uglies took their cue from him. So did the officers. If
Durand did not want a pinch there would, of course, not be one.
The gang leader was in a vile temper. If this story reached the newspapers all New York would be laughing at him. He could appeal to the police, have Clay Lindsay arrested, and get him sent up for a term on the charge of burglary. But he could not do it without the whole tale coming out. One thing Jerry Durand could not stand was ridicule. His vanity was one of his outstanding qualities, and he did not want it widely known that the boob he had intended to trap had turned the tables on him, manhandled him, jeered at him, and locked him in a room with his three henchmen.
Johnnie Green chose this malapropos moment for reminding the officers of the reason for the coming to the house.
"What about the young lady?" he asked solicitously.
Durand wheeled on him, looked him over with an insolent, malevolent eye, and jerked a thumb in his direction. "Who is this guy?"
"He's the fellow tipped us off his pal was inside," answered one of the patrolmen. He spoke in a whisper close to the ear of Jerry. "Likely he knows more than he lets on. Shall I make a pinch?"
The eyes of the gang leader narrowed. "So he's a friend of this second-story bird, is he?"
"Y'betcha!" chirped up Johnnie, "and I'm plumb tickled to take his dust too. Now about this yere young lady—"
Jerry caught him hard on the side of the jaw with a short arm jolt. The range-rider hit the pavement hard. Slowly he got to his feet nursing his cheek.
"What yuh do that for, doggone it?" he demanded resentfully. "Me, I wasn't lookin' for no trouble. Me, I—"
Durand leaped at him across the sidewalk. His strong fingers closed on the throat of the bow-legged puncher. He shook him as a lion does his kill. The rage of the pugilist found a vent in punishing the friend of the man he hated. Johnnie grew black in the face. His knees sagged and his lips foamed.
The officers pried Jerry loose from his victim with the greatest difficulty. He tried furiously to get at him, lunging from the men who were holding his arms.
The puncher sank helplessly against the wall.
"He's got all he can carry, Mr. Durand," one of the bluecoats said soothingly. "You don't wantta croak the little guy."
The ex-prize-fighter returned to sanity. "Says I'm white-slavin' a girl, does he? I'll learn him to lie about me," he growled.
Johnnie strangled and sputtered, fighting for breath to relieve his tortured lungs.
"Gimme the word, an' I'll run him in for a drunk," the policeman suggested out of the corner of a whispering mouth.
Jerry shook his head. "Nope. Let him go, Pete."
The policeman walked up to the Runt and caught him roughly by the arm. "Move along outa here. I'd ought to pinch you, but I'm not gonna do it this time. See? You beat it!"
Durand turned to one of his followers. "Tail that fellow. Find out where he's stayin' and report."
Helplessly Johnnie went staggering down the street. He did not understand why he had been treated so. His outraged soul protested at such injustice, but the instinct of self-preservation carried him out of the danger zone without argument about it. Even as he wobbled away he was looking with unwavering faith to his friend
to right his wrongs. Clay would fix this fellow Durand for what he had done to him. Before Clay got through with him the bully would wish he had never lifted a hand to him.
CHAPTER XVI
A FACE IN THE NIGHT
Clay did his best under the handicap of a lack of entente between him and the authorities to search New York for Kitty. He used the personal columns of the newspapers. He got in touch with taxicab drivers, ticket-sellers, postmen, and station guards. So far as possible he even employed the police through the medium of Johnnie. The East Side water-front and the cheap lodging-houses of that part of the city he combed with especial care. All the time he knew that in such a maze as Manhattan it would be a miracle if he found her.
But miracles are made possible by miracle-workers. The Westerner was a sixty-horse-power dynamo of energy. He felt responsible for Kitty and he gave himself with single-minded devotion to the job of discovering her.
His rides and walks with Beatrice were rare events now because he was so keen on the business of looking for his Colorado protégée. He gave them up reluctantly. Every time they went out together into the open Miss Whitford became more discontented with the hothouse existence she was living. He felt there was just a chance that if he were constant enough, he might sweep her off her feet into that deeper current of life that lay beyond the social shallows. But he had to sacrifice this chance. He was not going to let Kitty's young soul be ship-wrecked if he could help it, and he had an intuition that she was not wise enough nor strong enough to keep off the rocks alone.
A part of his distress lay in the coolness of his imperious young friend who lived on the Drive. Beatrice resented his divided allegiance, though her own was very much in that condition. Clay and she had from the first been good comrades. No man had ever so deeply responded to her need of friendship. All sorts of things he understood without explanations. A day with him was one that brought the deep content of happiness. That, no doubt, she explained to herself, was because he was such a contrast to the men of cramped lives she knew. He was a splendid tonic, but of course one did not take tonics except occasionally.
Yet though Beatrice intended to remain heart-whole, she wanted to be the one woman in Clay's life until she released him. It hurt her vanity, and perhaps something deeper than her vanity, that such a girl as she conceived Kitty Mason to be should have first claim on the time she had come to consider her own. She made it plain to him, in the wordless way expert young women have at command, that she did not mean to share with him such odd hours as he chose to ask for. He had to come when she wanted him or not at all. Without the name of Kitty having been mentioned, he was given to understand that if he wished to remain in the good graces of Beatrice Whitford he must put the cigarette girl out of his mind.
For all his good nature Clay was the last man in the world to accept dictation of this sort. He would go through with anything he started, and especially where it was a plain call of duty. Beatrice might like it or not as she pleased. He would make his own decisions as to his conduct.
He did.
Bee was furious at him. She told herself that there was either a weak streak in him or a low one, else he would not be so obsessed by the disappearance of this flirtatious little fool who had tried to entrap him. But she did not believe it. A glance at this brown-faced man was sufficient evidence that he trod with dynamic force the way of the strong. A look into his clear eyes was certificate enough of his decency.
When Clay met Kitty at last it was quite by chance. As it happened
Beatrice was present at the time.
He had been giving a box party at the Empire. The gay little group was gathered under the awning outside the foyer while the limousine that was to take them to Shanley's for supper was being called. Colin Whitford, looking out into the rain that pelted down, uttered an exclamatory "By Jove!"
Clay turned to him inquiringly.
"A woman was looking out of that doorway at us," he said. "If she's not in deep water I'm a bad guesser. I thought for a moment she knew me or some one of us. She started to reach out her hands and then shrank back."
"Young or old?" asked the cattleman.
"Young—a girl."
"Which door?"
"The third."
"Excuse me." The host was off in an instant, almost on the run.
But the woman had gone, swallowed in the semi-darkness of a side street. Clay followed.
Beatrice turned to her father, eyebrows lifted. There was a moment's awkward silence.
"Mr. Lindsay will be back presently," Whitford said. "We'll get in and wait for him out of the way a little farther up the street."
When Clay rejoined them he was without his overcoat. He stood in the heavy rain beside the car, a figure of supple grace even in his evening clothes, and talked in a low voice with Beatrice's father. The mining man nodded agreement and Lindsay turned to the others.
"I'm called away," he explained aloud. "Mr. Whitford has kindly promised to play host in my place. I'm right sorry to leave, but it's urgent."
His grave smile asked Beatrice to be charitable in her findings. The eyes she gave him were coldly hostile. She, too, had caught a glimpse of the haggard face in the shadows and she hardened her will against him. The bottom of his heart went out as he turned away. He knew Beatrice did not and would not understand.
The girl was waiting where Clay had left her, crouched against a basement milliner's door under the shelter of the steps. She was wearing the overcoat he had flung around her. In its pallid despair her face was pitiable.
A waterproofed policeman glanced suspiciously at them as he sloshed along the sidewalk in the splashing rain.
"I—I've looked for you everywhere," moaned the girl. "It's been—awful."
"I know, but it's goin' to be all right now, Kitty," he comforted.
"You're goin' home with me to-night. To-morrow we'll talk it all over."
He tucked an arm under hers and led her along the wet, shining street to a taxicab. She crouched in a corner of the cab, her body shaken with sobs.
The young man moved closer and put a strong arm around her shoulders.
"Don't you worry, Kitty. Yore big brother is on the job now."
"I—I wanted to—to kill myself," she faltered. "I tried to—in the river—and—it was so black—I couldn't." The girl shivered with cold. She had been exposed to the night rain for hours without a coat.
He knew her story now in its essentials as well as he did later when she wept it out to him in confession. And because she was who she was, born to lean on a stronger will, he acquitted her of blame.
They swung into Broadway and passed taxis and limousines filled with gay parties just out of the theaters. Young women in rich furs, wrapped from the cruelty of life by the caste system in which wealth had encased them, exchanged badinage with sleek, well-dressed men. A ripple of care-free laughter floated to him across the gulf that separated this girl from them. By the cluster lights of Broadway he could see how cruelly life had mauled her soft youth. The bloom of her was gone, all the brave pride and joy of girlhood. It would probably never wholly return.
He saw as in a vision the infinite procession of her hopeless sisters who had traveled the road from which he was rescuing her, saw them first as sweet and merry children bubbling with joy, and again, after the world had misused them for its pleasure, haggard and tawdry, with dragging steps trailing toward the oblivion that awaited them. He wondered if life must always be so terribly wasted, made a bruised and broken thing instead of the fine, brave adventure for which it was meant.
CHAPTER XVII
JOHNNIE MAKES A JOKE
As Kitty stepped from the cab she was trembling violently.
"Don't you be frightened, li'l' pardner. You've come home. There won't anybody hurt you here."
The soft drawl of Clay's voice carried inexpressible comfort. So too did the pressure of his strong hand on her arm. She knew not only that he was a man to trust, but that so far as could be he would take
her troubles on his broad shoulders. Tears brimmed over her soft eyes.
The Arizonan ran her up to his floor in the automatic elevator.
"I've got a friend from home stayin' with me. He's the best-hearted fellow you ever saw. You'll sure like him," he told her without stress as he fitted his key to the lock.
He felt her shrink beneath his coat, but it was too late to draw back now. In another moment Lindsay was introducing her casually to the embarrassed and astonished joint proprietor of the apartment.
The Runt was coatless and in his stockinged-feet. He had been playing a doleful ditty on a mouth-organ. Caught so unexpectedly, he blushed a beautiful brick red to his neck.
Johnnie ducked his head and scraped the carpet with his foot in an attempt at a bow. "Glad to meet up with you-all, Miss. Hope you're feelin' tol'able."
Clay slipped the coat from her shoulders and saw that the girl was wet to the skin.
"Heat some water, Johnnie, and make a good stiff toddy. Miss Kitty has been out in the rain."
He lit the gas-log and from his bedroom brought towels, a bathrobe, pajamas, a sweater, and woolen slippers. On a lounge before the fire he dumped the clothes he had gathered. He drew up the easiest armchair in the room.
"I'm goin' to the kitchen to jack up Johnnie so he won't lay down on his job," he told her cheerily. "You take yore time and get into these dry clothes. We'll not disturb you till you knock. After that we'll feed you some chuck. You want to brag on Johnnie's cookin'. He thinks he's it when it comes to monkeyin' 'round a stove."
When her timid knock came her host brought in a steaming cup. "You drink this. It'll warm you good."
"What is it?" she asked shyly.
"Medicine," he smiled. "Doctor's orders."
While she sipped the toddy Johnnie brought from the kitchen a tray upon which were tea, fried potatoes, ham, eggs, and buttered toast.
The girl ate ravenously. It was an easy guess that she had not before tasted food that day.
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