by Otto Penzler
Then he lifted himself over, without even touching that step, as a wolf might break a snare and still shun it in sheer excess of wild caution. He crawled on to the landing. The house was dead as the tomb behind him as he slid along the passage to the rear room.
He was noiseless. He was sure. He was quick. His pulse kept a temperate beat in his throat. His muscles responded smoothly, slipping with silken, steely precision to do his will. His eyes were clear and steady as a cat’s. His eardrums were tuned to finest perception. Every sense of his spare, wiry body was alert, thin drawn.
His was the keen, gaunt perfection of training that the starving thing of prey attains.
In some twenty hours he had not eaten. In some three weeks he had not known a full meal. In some twenty-six years, all he could boast, he had never enjoyed the chance to blunt his fine animal appetites or to dull his fine animal equipment with satiety.
It was in him to live, to endure, to keep his strength where the weaker went to the wall. His nature was the tough, tenacious, elastic, close-compacted metal that does not snap….
Resistless poverty had ground him upon its whetting edge. Remorseless labor had shaped and hardened him. Relentless hunger had driven him forth at last, a cutting tool, finished and ready for crime.
And now he had found his work….
Thin bands of moonlight cut in at an angle through the windows of the rear room. They were big windows, reaching from floor to ceiling, and barred to waist height with graceful iron grilles. They were wide open upon the garden below.
He curled in the heavy shadow along the wall near the door and watched, listened….
Vagrant breaths of the summer night stirred the curtains. Vague rumors of the sleeping city stole mysteriously from the void. Nothing more.
Between winkings, almost without sensible movement, he was across the room to the far side, feeling out the shape and details of the wall cabinet, adjusting his sight to the ghostly reflection of moon glow.
The outer section of the cabinet was a writing desk. A blind, according to his tip. He slipped the bent end of the burnished implement he carried—his sole outfit—against the edge of the lock.
The smooth, lifting pressure gave him his first heave of effort, his first thrill of power. He had a ton at command in that leverage. And the lid came away like the top of a wet cardboard box.
He could make out the interior of the desk dimly. A model desk; there were pigeonholes, paper trays, two rows of shallow wooden drawers. At least, the veneer was of wood, and each inlaid panel was furnished with a neat little glass knob.
His tip saved him the trouble that would have been necessary to establish the incidental fact that behind the trays and the pigeonholes, behind the false fronts and the glass knobs, stood a solid foot of chrome steel plates….
Swiftly, still relying on that valuable tip, he began to unscrew the little glass knobs from the imitation-drawer panels. As he drew each knob off he pressed the tiny screw shaft that was left standing in the wood, and each time he paused, expectant. Even the wonderful tip could not tell him which was the vital knob.
It proved to be the fourth on the left-hand row.
When he pressed, the fourth screw gave like a tiny plunger. The operating current closed. Springs released with an oily snicking. And the whole interior of the cabinet moved outward from the wall in a solid, silent swing like the shift of a scenic illusion.
It was a dainty job. The steps of it fitted like the parts of a jigsaw picture. No hitch, no hurry, no gap, no confusion. He foresaw, he judged, he made the adequate gesture. He applied the exact necessary force. And the act was complete—
It took him three minutes to open the small inner compartment. Three minutes that passed without a jar, without an audible breath, without a hasty movement. Three minutes, until he caught the shock of the snapping steel with deft balance of body, with perfect release of joint and sinew….
He did not grab.
He searched the inner compartment lightly with one hand. When he drew it out, it brought a tiny, flat leather-bound casket. Kneeling there beside the open door of the safe at the edge of the moonlight band, he turned back the cover of the casket.
—
The moment of success is the test of the criminal. Achievement shows the nerve of the social wolf. Method, judgment, readiness retain their steadfast, savage purpose—or weaken and fumble in the flurry of desire.
He was under full control. His brain was level, cool. His heart had not jumped a stroke. He kept everything he had used about him. Nothing was mislaid. He knew his precise position. He was ready to flit on the instant, leaving no mark, no clue behind. He was fit. He proved it now.
Gently he picked out the Thing that nestled in the casket on its velvet bed.
He lifted the Thing between finger and thumb, as one might lift a sparrow’s egg, and held it before him so that the moonlight fell upon it and was knotted there in a tangle of pale glory and was wafted through in delicate strands of spectral splendor….
He gazed, quietly fascinated, not by the beauty of what he saw, but by what it meant to him.
—
A sound beat upon his ear—from close at hand—in the same room. He turned his head with birdlike quickness. For the rest he did not move, did not start.
“Keep it right there,” said a voice dryly, calmly.
He kept it there.
“Just as you are,” advised the voice.
He obeyed the suggestion.
“Pretty effect!”
A figure detached itself from the shadows about the doorway. As it advanced into the moonlight it was revealed as that of a man, tall, powerfully built, massively shouldered.
He was draped in an ample dressing gown, hanging loose and untied. He carried a big revolver in his fist carelessly, with the ease of habit. He had the air of one just aroused from a nap, and not at all excited by the incident.
He must have been a magnificent specimen of physical development at one time, this man. Even now he was little more than just beyond the ripeness of his powers. A fleshy droop under the eyes scarce marred his hard-cut features. A certain grossness about the body seemed no clog upon his strength. A heeling tread was as formidable without the spring and litheness it must once have owned.
He was still young, in spite of the marks of indulgence; easy, masterful, and sure in every gesture.
He stood regarding the glistening marvel in the moonshine for an appreciative moment. Then he reached out casually with his free hand.
“I’ll take it….Thanks!”
He turned his bold, confident face down upon the burglar with a grimly humorous smile. The burglar knelt staring up at him, immobile. Idly, almost indifferently, the big man’s hand closed over the extended fingers, took the prize, weighed it an instant, and passed it to a waistcoat pocket.
His eyes were still fixed upon the burglar in lazy mockery. It was all so easy a triumph.
“Get up!”
The voice was deeper and shorter now that the dramatic effectiveness of the incident was complete.
The burglar stood up….
The big man inspected him. His lip lifted as he took in the other’s commonplace exterior. His glance sharpened as he noted each detail of lean wretchedness, of furtive shabbiness.
He dominated his captive in pride and arrogance, scowling down at him.
“And you’re the lad who thought he could lift the Rangely diamond!” he exclaimed incredulously. “You!”
He continued his survey.
“Here’s ambition!”
But his curious glance traveled beyond to the rifled safe, standing wide, and suddenly sarcasm was not adequate to him.
“Now tell me how in hell you did it?”
It rumbled from him in quick anger. The anger of privileged grievance and righteous disappointment.
“How the hell did you get that box open?”
The burglar said nothing.
The big head sank forward. The voice slid down
another note.
“Look here,” his restraint of word was ominous, “I think you’d better answer up promptly like a wise little man. I’ve a mind anyway to smash you like a bug! It’d please me a whole lot, and there’s nothing to keep me, you know!…
“I want to hear how a poor sap like you managed to waltz right into that safe!…I’m waiting!”
There was something rawer and closer than menace in the tone.
“I got a tip,” answered the burglar sullenly, at last.
“Where?”
“Off—a guy.”
“What guy?”
“Usta work for a safe company.”
There was silence between them for a time. A silence because the big man was pulling at the band of his collar.
“Never had to force it at all?”
“No.”
“Never even figured to force it?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re some master hand, ain’t you! Then what?”
“I watched.”
“The house?”
“Yes.”
“Go on!”
“And the newspapers.”
“Well?”
“I saw where the old lady—where Mrs. Rangely was jumped to the hospital yest’d’y—and her husban’ hired a room to stay near her.”
“And—the son?”
“I saw where it said the son was livin’ at some club or ’nother.”
“Servants?”
“I saw the last of ’m go out two hours ago.”
“Some student! Some clever crook, eh?…So then you thought you had your chance?”
“Yes.”
“Having doped it all down to a fine point like they do in the books, you thought you’d just happen along and scoop up the Rangely diamond! You thought that?”
“Yes.”
“And I bet you fell into the wires a dozen times on your way up. Do you know that stairway is wired?”
“Yeah.”
“Do, eh?…Where?”
The burglar told him.
“And you dodged the connections?”
“I cut ’m.”
Sudden wrath flared in the questioner.
“Why, damn your grubby little soul, anyway! Where did you get the brazen cheek to think of a job like this? Say—who the hell are you, anyhow?”
He gathered the slack of the dressing gown under an arm and took one heavy stride. The huge revolver jammed against the captive’s ribs. The hard-jawed face sneered into his with brutal contempt….
“Did you ever turn a big trick?”
“No.”
“Did you ever blow a box?”
“No.”
“Did you ever pull off anything above petty larceny in your life?”
He emphasized each question with the gun muzzle.
“No,” muttered the burglar.
“Then what are you doing here? By Jove! I hoped it was somebody of some account. I hoped, anyway, it might be somebody!…Have you got any record of any kind?”
“Nah.”
“And still you had the gall to go after the Rangely diamond! Didn’t you know the best men in the business would have their work cut out to cop such a prize? Didn’t you know the smartest operators in the world would be none too smart for this job? Men like Max Shimburn, or Perry, or even Meadow himself? And you sticking your dirty little paws into the game!…”
He gave a final thrust that sent the other spinning back upon the door of the safe.
The act of violence seemed to make him aware for the first time of the curious height to which his surge of personal resentment had risen.
He laughed at himself.
“Why look at me getting all fussed up!” he observed.
He considered a moment. When he spoke again his voice had regained something of its former dry calm. His manner, too, had reverted somewhat to the self-appreciatory dramatic….
“We’ll teach you a lesson,” he decided. “We’ll teach you to stick to frisking and till-banking and second-story work—where you belong!”
The burglar stared at him.
“You need to be shown, you guttersnipe! You need to be put in your proper place. Jobs like this are not for such as you….I’ll prove it!”
No whimsically cruel punishment would have seemed beyond the possible fancy of that contemptuous colossus.
“Beat it!” he growled.
The burglar still stared.
“That’s what. You’re not important enough! I’m giving you just what you’re worth. I’m ignoring you. Understand?…On your way out of this house and don’t linger!”
He stood there in the moonlight, a powerful, commanding figure, smiling to himself once more at his conceit, restored to casual amusement by his own fanciful disposal of the situation and the effective little play he had made of it. The picture of confidence, strength, and assurance.
For an instant longer the burglar stared, expressionless. Perhaps he was too crushed to understand. The big man banished him with a gesture.
He obeyed….
He slid away from the safe. He glided along the side of the room. He did not even look back from the doorway. He passed through to the hall, to the head of the stairs. He began his descent, an audible descent.
He obeyed….
But at the third stair from the top he introduced a trifling variation into the maneuver of retreat.
He stayed for an instant—just the fleeting fraction of a minute, while his weight bore upon the step; while he stooped; while his nimble fingers found the two free ends of the severed wire and touched, merely touched, the exposed tips of copper, one upon the other.
When he continued his flight it was as if he had not paused at all.
He obeyed.
But at the second floor he deviated again from the letter of his instructions.
He left the balustrade and crept down the hall toward the rear room, just as he had done at his first entrance. The rear room was similar to the one above. Like that, it was empty. Like that, its windows opened wide on the garden side….
The burglar made straight to the farther window. He lifted himself over the ornamental grille. The frame gave him a handhold.
At the back of the house next to the Rangely residence was a one-story conservatory extension. It was vine-grown, flat-roofed.
He knew the exact measurement of the gap from the window ledge to the coping of that room. He bridged it in a step. For a space he was in the full eye of the moon. For such a space as a cat needs to dart across a fence. After that he disappeared from view at the extreme rear end of the conservatory roof in the black shadow of the chimney that raised its square bulk like a tower.
He had obeyed, now he waited….
—
For all his alertness he was never quite certain whence came the first definite sign of results. Nor exactly when it came.
But presently there was some living presence in the garden below him. Presently, too, he knew that feet were softly astir in the basement of the Rangely house. At about the same time he was made aware of furtive movement in the side street, beyond the wall that hedged the garden two houses above. And glancing up at the sky line of the block he had a glimpse of a police cap spotted against the star dust for a wink….
It was a circling attack, collected and delivered with a promptness, an energy, a cautious eagerness that offered startling proof of the standing of the Rangely family, the importance of the Rangely residence, and the value of the Rangely possessions in the anxious view of the authorities.
It came out of the void of the sleeping city, starting at the flicker of a needle on a dial, centering like a sweep of hornets, closing with a full cordon.
To an observer of ordinary police methods it might have seemed amazing, almost supernatural. To the initiated it might have furnished a cynic commentary on the efficiency that is reserved for the need of the wealthy and the great.
No slighting an emergency call from that locality. The response was swift and
adequate….
Meanwhile the man who crouched unseen in the shadow of the chimney on the observatory wing fixed his gaze upon the third-floor windows of the Rangely house.
Those windows were large. They were open from floor to ceiling. From his vantage some fifty feet away he was placed so as to command a low-angled sweep of vision over the sills.
He waited as a man in the pit waits for the rise of the curtain.
And when it did lift it went up on a smash of tense action….
A muffled shout came from the depths of the house—the first challenge; the stamp of feet; then two bursting shots.
“Stand!” bellowed a bull voice. “Who’s there?…Stand, or I’ll fire again!”
The rush had checked on the stairs. Evidently a competent revolver was commanding that well.
“Inspector Lavery and ten men!” came the answer.
A pause, dropping in like the suck of a wave before its breaking. A pause that was tense with possibilities and indecision.
Then—
“Police?” rumbled the big voice. “What’s all the excitement?”
The third-floor rear leaped with sudden radiance as the bulbs were switched on.
“All right, police!”
Upon the brilliantly lighted stage beyond the open windows appeared a knot of blue uniforms. Crowding in the doorway the policemen found themselves confronted by a young giant in a dressing robe who faced them coolly, a fisted weapon hanging by his side.
“Inspector Lavery?” he inquired. “Charmed, I’m sure! How did you get in?”
The inspector came forward.
“Walked in,” he returned crisply. “The front door was open for all and sundry. And you, Mr.—”
“Rangely is my name.”
The inspector looked him over.
“You live here?” he inquired, with considerably less rasp to his tone.
“At present, in the absence of my parents. But—I don’t understand. The door open? The outer door?”
“And an alarm was touched from here about seven minutes ago.”
“Alarm? Strange!…I rang no alarm.”
“It was automatic. You have heard nothing? No disturbance in the house?”
“Not until I was wakened by tramping on the stairs and fired at random just now.”
“You’re quick with a gun!” commented the inspector grimly. “The servants?”
