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The Big-Town Round-Up, a fiction by William MacLeod Raine |
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Chapter 14. Starring As A Second-Story Man |
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_ CHAPTER XIV. STARRING AS A SECOND-STORY MAN Darkness engulfed Clay as he closed the trapdoor overhead. His exploring feet found each tread of the ladder with the utmost caution. Near the foot of it he stopped to listen for any sound that might serve to guide him. None came. The passage was as noiseless as it was dark. Again he had that sense of cold finger-tips making a keyboard of his spine. An impulse rose in him to clamber up the ladder to the safety of the open-skyed roof. He was a son of the wide outdoors. It went against his gorge to be blotted out of life in this trap like some foul rodent. But he trod down the panic and set his will to carry on. He crept forward along the passage. Every step or two he stopped to listen, nerves keyed to an acute tension. A flight of stairs brought him to what he knew must be the second floor. To him there floated a murmur of sounds. They came vague and indistinct through a closed door. The room of the voices was on the left-hand side of the corridor. He soft-footed it closer, reached the door, and dropped noiselessly to a knee. A key was in the lock on the outside. With infinite precaution against rattling he turned it, slid it out, and dropped it in his coat pocket. His eye fastened to the opening. Three men were sitting round a table. They were making a bluff at playing cards, but their attention was focused on a door that evidently led into another room. Two automatic revolvers were on the table close to the hands of their owners. A blackjack lay in front of the third man. Clay recognized him as Gorilla Dave. The other two were strangers to him. They were waiting. Sometimes they talked in low voices. For the most part they were silent, their eyes on the door of the trap that had been baited for a man Clay knew and was much interested in. Something evil in the watchfulness of the three chilled momentarily his veins. These fellows were the gunmen of New York he had read about--paid assassins whose business it was to frame innocent men for the penitentiary or kill them in cold blood. They were of the underworld, without conscience and without honor. As he looked at them through the keyhole, the watcher was reminded by their restless patience of mountain wolves lying in wait for their kill. Gorilla Dave sat stolidly in his chair, but the other two got up from time to time and paced the room silently, always with an eye to the door of the other room. Then things began to happen. A soft step sounded in the corridor behind the man at the keyhole. He had not time to crawl away nor even to rise before a man stumbled against him. Clay had one big advantage over his opponent. He had been given an instant of warning. His right arm went up around the neck of his foe and tightened there. His left hand turned the doorknob. Next moment the two men crashed into the room together, the Westerner rising to his feet as they came, with the body of the other lying across his back from hip to shoulder. Gorilla Dave leaped to his feet. The other two gunmen, caught at disadvantage a few feet from the table, dived for their automatics. They were too late. Clay swung his body downward from the waist with a quick, strong jerk. The man on his back shot heels over head as though he had been hurled from a catapult, crashed face up on the table, and dragged it over with him in his forward plunge to the wall. Before any one else could move or speak, Lindsay's gun was out. "Easy now." His voice was a gentle drawl that carried a menace. "Lemme be boss of the _rodeo_ a while. No, Gorilla, I wouldn't play with that club if I was you. I'm sure hell-a-mile on this gun stuff. Drop it!" The last two words came sharp and crisp, for the big thug had telegraphed an unintentional warning of his purpose to dive at the man behind the thirty-eight. Gorilla Dave was thick-headed, but he was open to persuasion. Eyes hard as diamonds bored into his, searched him, dominated him. The barrel of the revolver did not waver a hair-breadth. His fingers opened and the blackjack dropped from his hand to the floor. "For the love o' Mike, who is this guy?" demanded one of the other men. "I'm the fifth member of our little party," explained Clay. "Wot t'ell do youse mean? And what's the big idea in most killin' the chief?" The man who had been flung across the table turned over and groaned. Clay would have known that face among a thousand. It belonged to Jerry Durand. "I came in at the wrong door and without announcin' myself," said the cattleman, almost lazily, the unhurried indolence of his manner not shaken. "You see I wanted to be on time so as not to keep you waitin'. I'm Clay Lindsay." The more talkative of the gunmen from the East Side flashed one look at the two automatics lying on the floor beside the overturned table. They might as well have been in Brazil for all the good they were to him. "For the love o' Mike," he repeated again helplessly. "You're the--the--" "--the hick that was to have been framed for house-breaking. Yes, I'm him," admitted Clay idiomatically. "How long had you figured I was to get on the Island? Or was it yore intention to stop my clock for good?" "Say, how did youse get into de house?" demanded big Dave. "Move over to the other side of the room, Gorilla, and join yore two friends," suggested the master of ceremonies. "And don't make any mistake. If you do you won't have time to be sorry for it. I'll ce'tainly shoot to kill." The big-shouldered thug shuffled over. Clay stepped sideways, watching the three gunmen every foot of the way, kicked the automatics into the open, and took possession of them. He felt safer with the revolvers in his coat pocket, for they had been within reach of Durand, and that member of the party was showing signs of a return to active interest in the proceedings. "When I get you right I'll croak you. By God, I will," swore the gang leader savagely, nursing his battered head. "No big stiff from the bushes can run anything over on me." "I believe you," retorted Clay easily. "That is, I believe you're tellin' me yore intentions straight. There's no news in that to write home about. But you'd better make that _if_ instead of _when_. This is three cracks you've had at me and I'm still a right healthy rube." "Don't bank on fool luck any more. I'll get you sure," cried Durand sourly. The gorge of the Arizonan rose. "Mebbeso. You're a dirty dog, Jerry Durand. From the beginning you were a rotten fighter--in the ring and out of it. You and yore strong-arm men! Do you think I'm afraid of you because you surround yoreself with dips and yeggmen and hop-nuts, all scum of the gutter and filth of the earth? Where I come from men fight clean and out in the open. They'd stomp you out like a rattlesnake." Clay moved back to the door and looked around from one to another, a scorching contempt in his eyes. "Rats--that's what you are, vermin that feed on offal. You haven't got an honest fight in you. All you can do is skulk behind cover to take a man when he ain't lookin'." He whipped open the door, stepped out, closed it, and took the key from his pocket. A moment, and he had turned the lock. From within there came a rush that shook the panels. Clay was already busy searching for Kitty. He tore open door after door, calling her loudly by name. Even in the darkness he could see that the rooms were empty of furniture. There was a crash of splintering panels, the sound of a bursting lock. Almost as though it were an echo of it came a heavy pounding upon the street door. Clay guessed that the thirty minutes were up and that the Runt was bringing the police. He dived back into one of the empty rooms just in time to miss a rush of men pouring along the passage to the stairs. Cut off from the street, Clay took to the roof again. It would not do for him to be caught in the house by the police. He climbed the ladder, pushed his way through the trapdoor opening, and breathed deeply of the night air. But he had no time to lose. Already he could hear the trampling of feet up the stairs to the second story. Lightly he vaulted the wall and came to the roof door leading down to number 123. He found it latched. The eaves of the roof projected so far that he could not from there get a hold on the window casings below. He made a vain circuit of the roof, then passed to the next house. Again he was out of luck. The tenants had made safe the entrance against prowlers of the night. He knew that at any moment now the police might appear in pursuit of him. There was no time to lose. He crossed to the last house in the block--and found himself barred out. As he rose from his knees he heard the voices of men clambering through the scuttle to the roof. At the same time he saw that which brought him to instant action. It was a rope clothes-line which ran from post to post, angling from one corner of the building to another and back to the opposite one. No man in Manhattan's millions knew the value of a rope or could handle one more expertly than this cattleman. His knife was open before he had reached the nearest post. One strong slash of the blade severed it. In six long strides he was at the second post unwinding the line. He used his knife a second time at the third post. Through the darkness he could see the dim forms of men stopping to examine the scuttle. Then voices came dear to him in the still night. "If he reached the roof we've got him." "Unless he found an open trap," a second answered. 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. _ |
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