by Unknown
To Clay, standing at the head of the stairs, came a sound that stiffened him to a tense wariness. A key was being turned in the lock of the street door below. He moved back into the deeper shadows as the door swung open.
Two men entered. One of them cursed softly as he stumbled against a chair in the dark hall.
"Where's that rat Joe?" he demanded in a subdued voice.
Then came a click of the lock. The sound of the street rain ceased. Clay knew that the door had been closed and that he was shut in with two desperate criminals.
What have they done with Kitty? Why was she not with them? He asked himself that question even as he slipped back into a room that opened to the left.
He groped his way through the darkness, for he dared not flash his light to guide him. His fingers found the edge of a desk. Round that he circled toward a closet he remembered having noted. Already the men were tramping up the stairs. They were, he could tell, in a vile humor. From this he later augured hopefully that their plans had not worked out smoothly, but just now more imperative business called him.
His arm brushed the closet door. Next moment he was inside and had closed it softly behind him.
And none too soon. For into the room came the gunmen almost on his heels.
CHAPTER XXII
TWO MEN IN A LOCKED ROOM
"Jerry'll raise hell," a heavy voice was saying as they entered the room. "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 we poked our nose out from the Park at Seventy-Second Street."
Some one pressed a button and the room leaped to light. Through the open crack of the closed door Clay recognized Gorilla Dave. The second of the gunmen was out of range of his vision.
From the sound of creaking furniture Clay judged that the unseen man had sat down heavily. "It was that blowout queered us. And say--how came 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 all right," 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 was switched on.
"'Lo, Jerry," Gorilla Dave called softly.
He closed the room door and the sound of the voices was shut off instantly.
The uninvited guest dared not step out of the closet to listen, for at any instant the men might reënter. He crouched in his hiding-place, the thirty-eight in his hand.
The minutes dragged interminably. More than once Clay almost made up his mind to steal out to learn what the men were doing. But his judgment 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," a bullying voice was ordering.
The owner of the voice came in and slammed the door behind him. He sat down at the desk, his back to the closet. Through the chink Clay saw that the man was Jerry Durand.
From his vest pocket he took a fat black cigar, struck a match and lit it. He slumped down in the swivel chair. It took no seer to divine that his mind was busy working out a problem.
Clay stepped softly from his place of refuge, but not so noiselessly that the gangman did not detect his presence. Jerry swung round in the chair and leaped up with cat-like activity. He stood without moving, poised on the balls of his feet, his deep-set eyes narrowed to shining slits. It was in his thought to hurl himself headlong on the man holding steadily the menacing revolver.
"Don't you! I've got the dead wood on you," said the Arizonan, a trenchant saltness in his speech. "I'll shoot you down sure as hell's hot."
The eyes of the men clashed, measuring each the other's strength of will. They were warily conscious even of the batting of an eyelid. Durand's face wore an ugly look of impotent malice, but his throat was dry as a lime kiln. He could not estimate the danger that confronted him 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 gangman enraged 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 and stood swallowing his furious rage. It had come home to him that this narrow-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 hands touch 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 inner side of the lock, turned it, and put it in his pocket.
The cornered gangman took a chance. He ducked for the shelter of the desk, tore open a drawer, and snatched out an automatic.
Simultaneously the cowpuncher pressed the button beside the door and plunged the room in darkness. He side-stepped swiftly and without noise.
A flash of lightning split the blackness.
Clay dropped to his knees and crawled away. Another bolt, with its accompanying roar, flamed out.
Still the Westerner did not fire in answer, though he knew just where the target for his bullet was. A plan had come to him. In the blackness of that room one might empty his revolver and not score a hit. To wait was to take a chance of being potted, but he did not want the 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 was resolved to wait until his enemy grew restless and betrayed himself.
The delay became a test of moral stamina. Each man knew that death was in that room lying in wait for him. The touch of a finger might send it flying across the floor. Upon the mantel a clock ticked maddeningly, the only sound to be heard.
The contest was not one of grit, but of that unflawed nerve which is so much the result of perfect physical fitness. Clay's years of clean life on the desert counted heavily now. He was master of himself, though his mouth was dry as a whisper and there were goose quills on his flesh.
But Durand, used to the fetid atmosphere of bar-rooms and to the soft living of the great city, found his nerve beginning to crack under the strain. Cold drops stood out on his forehead and his hands shook from excitement and anxiety. What kind of a man was his enemy to lie there in the black silence and not once give a sign of where he was, in spite of crashing bullets? There was something in it hardly human. For the first 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 the ex-prize-fighter.
A chair crashed wildly. Durand fired again and yet again, his nerves giving way to a panic that carried him to swift action. He could not have stood another moment without screaming.
There came the faint sound of a hand groping on the wall and immediately after a flood of light filled the room.
Clay stood by the door. His revolver covered the crouching gang leader. His eyes were hard and pitiless.
"Try another sh
ot," he advised ironically.
Jerry did. A harmless click was all the result he got. He knew now that the cowman had tempted him to waste his last shots at a bit of furniture 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 of flying bullets since he had mentioned the girl before.
"You can't kill me, when I haven't a loaded gun," Durand answered between dry lips.
The other man nodded an admission of the point. "That's an advantage you've got of me. You could kill me if I didn't have a gun, because you're a yellow wolf. But I can't kill you. That's right. But I can beat 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," jeered Jerry.
With a flirt of his hand Clay tossed the revolver to the top of a book-case, out of easy reach of a man standing on the floor. He ripped open the buttons of his overcoat and slipped out of it, then moved forward 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 liable to hand me. Go to it."
Durand had the heavy shoulders and swelling muscles that come from years of training for the ring. Like most pugilists out of active service he had taken on flesh. But the extra weight was not fat, for Jerry kept always in good condition. He held his leadership partly at least because of his physical prowess. No tough in New York would willingly have met him in rough-and-tumble fight.
The younger man was more slightly built. He was a Hermes rather than a Hercules. His muscles flowed. They did not bulge. But when he moved it was with the litheness of a panther. The long lines of shoulder and loin had the flow of tigerish grace. The clear eyes in the brown face told of a soul indomitable in a perfectly synchronized body.
Durand lashed out with a swinging left, all the weight of his body behind the blow. Clay stepped back, shot a hard straight right to the cheek, and ducked the counter. Jerry rushed him, flailing at his foe blow on blow, intending to wear him out by sheer hard hammering. He butted with head and knee, used every foul trick he had learned in his rotten trade of prize-fighting. Active as a wild cat, the Arizonan side-stepped, scored a left on the eye, ducked again, and fought back the 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 hardly touched his agile opponent.
He rushed again. Nothing but his temper, the lack of self-control that made him see red and had once put him at the mercy of a first-class ring general with stamina and a punch, had kept Jerry out of a world championship. He had everything else needed, but he was the victim of his own passion. It betrayed him now. His fighting was that of a wild cave man, blind, furious, damaging. He threw away his science and his skill in order to destroy the man he hated. He rained blows on him--fought him with head and knee and fist, was on top of him every moment, controlled by one dominating purpose to make that dancing figure 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 he knew 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 himself out, and taking only the punishment he must. But he was getting home some 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 and spent. Instantly Clay took the offensive. He was a trained boxer as well as a fighter, and he had been taught how to make every ounce of his weight count. Ripping in a body blow as a feint, he brought down Durand's guard. A straight left crashed home between the eyes and a heavy solar plexus shook the man to the heels.
Durand tried to close with him. An uppercut jolted him back. He plunged forward again. They grappled, knocking over chairs as they threshed across the room. When they went down Clay was underneath, but as they struck the floor he whirled and landed on top.
The man below fought furiously to regain his feet. Clay's arm worked like a piston rod with short-arm jolts against the battered face.
A wild heave unseated the Arizonan. They clinched, rolled over and bumped against the wall, Clay again on top. For a moment Durand got a thumb in his foe's eye and tried to gouge it out. Clay's fingers found the throat of the gang leader and tightened. Jerry struggled to free himself, catching at the sinewy wrist with both hands. He could not break the iron grip. Gasping for breath, he suddenly collapsed.
Clay got to his feet and waited for Durand to rise. His enemy rolled over and groaned.
"Had enough?" demanded the Westerner.
No answer came, except the heavy, irregular breathing of the man on the floor who was clawing for air in his lungs.
"I'll ask you once more where Kitty Mason is. And you'll tell me unless you want me to begin on you all over again."
The beaten pugilist sat up, leaning against the wall. He spoke with a kind of heavy despair, as though the words were forced out of him. He felt ashamed and disgraced by his defeat. Life for him had lost its savor, for he had met his master.
"She--got away."
"How?"
"They turned her loose, to duck the bulls," came the slow, sullen answer.
"Where?"
"In Central Park."
Probably this was the truth, Clay reflected. He could take the man's word or not as he pleased. There was no way to disprove it now.
He recovered his revolver, threw the automatic out of the window, and walked 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 to a subway station and took an uptown train.
Men looked at him curiously. His face was bruised and bleeding, his clothes disheveled, his hat torn. Clay grinned and thought of the old answer:
"They'd ought to see the other man."
One young fellow, apparently a college boy, who had looked upon the wine 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 to you, 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 confidential admission. "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 catch your name?"
Clay had no intention of giving his name just now to any casual stranger. 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."
CHAPTER XXIII
JOHNNIE COMES INTO HIS OWN
When Clay shot off at a tangent from the car and ceased to function as a passenger, Johnnie made an effort to descend and join his friend, but already the taxi was traveling at a speed that made this dangerous. He leaned out of the open door and shouted to the driver.
"Say, lemme out, doggone you. I wantta get out right here."
The chauffeur paid not the least attention to him. He skidded round a corner, grazing the curb, and put his foot on the accelerator. The car jumped forward.
The passenger, about to drop from the running-board, changed his mind. He did not want to break a bone or two in the process of alighting.
"'F you don't lemme off right away I'll not pay you a cent for the ride," Johnnie shouted. "You got no right to pack me off thisaway."
The car was sweeping down the wet street, now and again skidding
dangerously. The puncher felt homesick for the security of an outlaw bronco's back. This wild East was no place for him. He had been brought up in a country where life is safe and sane and its inhabitants have a respect for law. Tame old Arizona just now made a big appeal to one of its sons.
The machine went drunkenly up the street, zigzagging like a homeward-bound reveler. It swung into Fourth Avenue, slowing to take the curve. At the widest sweep of the arc Johnnie stepped down. His feet slid from under him and he rolled to the curb across the wet asphalt. Slowly he got up and tested himself for broken bones. He was sure he had dislocated a few hips and it took him some time to persuade himself he was all right, except for some bruises.
