by James Hay
“I wish I had some water,” Pole’s little whisper rang out.
Involuntarily there flashed through Vinal’s mind a story he had read years before of the carrying power of certain actors’ voices. Pole, he thought, undoubtedly would have made a good actor.
Before he took the next step he got both the pistols from his pockets and held them ready. He was possessed by a mania for speed, a wild desire to make a rush, to liberate his muscles from the captivity of care, to throw from his limbs the manacles of tediousness. But as he went forward, gaining at every step a clearer consciousness of where the two men sat, he did not hurry in the slightest. Each contraction of his muscles was as slow as it had been at the hearth in the other room. And even at this moment, when the whole fabric of his success hung on the slender chain of a few silent seconds, he thought with astonishment of how perfectly his mind controlled every smallest atom of his body.
The climax came exactly as he had planned it. He ended the torture of slowness with a rush of motion and cut the stillness with a whisper. With one lightning-like sweep the revolvers flashed through two feet of space and came down, muzzles forward, on the backs of the two men’s necks. He could tell by the way the flesh at the end of the right-hand revolver gave way that the little Pole shrank down in his chair as far as he could. The left-hand gun met the thickness of Dowell’s neck and moved only a few inches.
“If you make a sound I’ll pull the trigger!” he said, and he put the threat in a murmur scarcely louder than had been the whispers he had heard.
For nearly half a minute the group was motionless—only Pole’s breathing began to come and go with a hissing sound.
Finally Dowell broke the stillness.
“What do you want?” he asked aloud, but in a subdued tone.
“Don’t do that again!” Vinal’s whisper was sharp enough to be like a blow. “I want you both. I’ve got you. Now listen. There’s another man in this house, and if you make a sound he may make a getaway. You are going with me quietly—or get shot.”
There began in Pole’s throat what would have developed into a whimper, but Vinal stopped it with his thumb.
“Now,” he whispered his directions, “I’ll guide you out of this room through the next into the hall and down to the front door. You go the way these guns press you.”
Dowell had made no sign of emotion, except that his breathing was faster. Both he and Pole rose to their feet and turned as Vinal indicated with the revolvers. To be more certain in his guidance he had thrust the muzzles of the revolvers inside their collars.
“Where are your shoes?” he asked, whispering softly.
It was Dowell who replied:
“Over in the corner.”
“They are not in the way? We won’t stumble against them?”
“No.”
He was still desirous of silence. Nobody must enter the house to interfere with his work, his capture. He would deliver them at the front door, on the pavement, to the sleepy policemen. But the three could not traverse three flights of stairs without some noise, and this angered him. Whenever his captives made a board creak he gouged them mercilessly with the revolvers; but he did not whisper.
Quietly, with reasonable quickness, they reached the vestibule. Pole, weak and small, was flinching under every thrust of the revolver against his collarbone. Occasionally he trembled violently. Dowell, knowing that the game was up, went deliberately, almost calmly, as directed by the cold steel inside his collar.
Once or twice Vinal was seized by the impulse he had felt upstairs to shriek, to cry out, to end the thing with a storm of blows and shots. He had been tortured past human endurance ever since entering the house. But whenever he felt the impulse to give way the thought of Finkman and his men, of the Bloomer operators and of the commissioner himself nerved him on for the few remaining minutes.
At the door he flashed his hand from Pole’s shoulder and left the revolver hanging in the little man’s collar. It was only for the two seconds required to snap back the latch and fling open the door. He grasped the revolver again and thrust the two men before him into the brilliantly lighted street.
“Here!” he called out imperiously. “Come here, you men! Here they are! Grab ’em!”
Pole and Dowell stood blinking in the light and the two policemen sprang forward, willing but dazed. One of them, the fellow with a red mustache, paused before he leaped, and blew his whistle.
In the twinkling of an eye they had the two captives. As if by magic the street was filled with flying feet and excited cries. Men and women ran from all directions, and on the crest of the wave came other policemen, forming quickly a circle round the two white-faced silent men.
Vinal, with blackened face, shouted excitedly to the red-mustached policeman:
“Got ’em upstairs! Did it all myself! Why, you poor fools—you and your detectives—they’ve been up there all day!”
Two of the officers rushed into the house to search it again. Another put in a call for a patrol wagon.
From the crowd that was closing more tightly all the time about the captives and the police rang yells and jeers:
“Chickens come home to roost!”
“Oh, you chloroform!”
“Where’s de guy dat nipped ’em?”
“Ain’t dat little gink a nice lookin’ slice of pie!”
When the wagon, carrying its new load of captive wretchedness, rumbled over the cobblestones to the stationhouse five blocks away the spectators followed only to be stopped at the doorway.
Inside, the desk sergeant was inclined to get out of the situation all the pleasure possible. He grinned affably at Dowell and Pole, who stood near the railing while their clothing was being searched by rough and ready hands.
“I guess the Bloomers got you,” he commented. “Well, it’ll be quick work with you! As soon as we get the Colonel the three of you will hang—hang nice and high.”
This was too much for the nerves of the little, rat-like Pole. He burst into wild hysterical laughter, and fell forward against the desk, beating his skinny hands on the hardwood. He began to shriek, and one of the policemen put a hand over his mouth.
He wrenched his head away.
“Aw!” he squeaked, the tears streaming down his face. “You poor fools! The Colonel’s got a big start on you! The man who brought us down the steps was the Colonel. That was Vinal himself. He’s made another getaway!”
