Макс Брэнд
Ronicky Doone
Chapter Twenty
Trapped!
"Get the money," said Ronicky to Jerry Smith.
"There it is!"
He pointed to the drawer, where McKeever, as banker, had kept the money. The wounded man in the meantime had disappeared.
"How much is ours?" asked Jerry Smith.
"All you find there," answered Ronicky calmly.
"But there's a big bunch—large bills, too. McKeever was loaded for bear."
"He loses—the house loses it. Out in my country, Jerry, that wouldn't be half of what the house would lose for a little trick like what's been played on us tonight. Not the half of what the house would lose, I tell you! He had us trimmed, Jerry, and out West we'd wreck this joint from head to heels."
The diffident Jerry fingered the money in the drawer of the table uncertainly. Ronicky Doone swept it up and thrust it into his pocket. "We'll split straws later," said Ronicky. "Main thing we need right about now is action. This coin will start us."
In the hall, as they took their hats, they found big Frederic Fernand in the act of dissuading several of his clients from leaving. The incident of the evening was regrettable, most regrettable, but such things would happen when wild men appeared. Besides, the fault had been that of McKeever. He assured them that McKeever would never again be employed in his house. And Fernand meant it. He had discarded all care for the wounded man.
Ronicky Doone stepped to him and drew him aside. "Mr. Fernand," he said, "I've got to have a couple of words with you."
"Come into my private room," said Fernand, eager to get the fighter out of view of the rest of the little crowd. He drew Ronicky and Jerry Smith into a little apartment which opened off the hall. It was furnished with an almost feminine delicacy of style, with wide-seated, spindle-legged Louis XV. chairs and a couch covered with rich brocade. The desk was a work of Boulle. A small tapestry of the Gobelins made a ragged glow of color on the wall. Frederic Fernand had recreated an atmosphere two hundred years old.
He seated them at once. "And now, sir," he said sternly to Ronicky Doone, "you are aware that I could have placed you in the hands of the police for what you've done tonight?"
Ronicky Doone made no answer. His only retort was a gradually spreading smile. "Partner," he said at length, while Fernand was flushing with anger at this nonchalance on the part of the Westerner, "they might of grabbed me, but they would have grabbed your house first."
"That fact," said Fernand hotly, "is the reason you have dared to act like a wild man in my place? Mr. Doone, this is your last visit."
"It sure is," said Ronicky heartily. "D'you know what would have happened out in my neck of the woods, if there had been a game like the one tonight? I wouldn't have waited to be polite, but just pulled a gat and started smashing things for luck."
"The incident is closed," Fernand said with gravity, and he leaned forward, as if to rise.
"Not by a long sight," said Ronicky Doone. "I got an idea, partner, that you worked the whole deal. This is a square house, Fernand. Why was I picked out for the dirty work?"
It required all of Fernand's long habits of self control to keep him from gasping. He managed to look Ronicky Doone fairly in the eyes. What did the youngster know? What had he guessed?
"Suppose I get down to cases and name names? The gent that talked to you about me was John Mark. Am I right?" asked Ronicky.
"Sir," said Fernand, thinking that the world was tumbling about his ears, "what infernal—"
"I'm right," said Ronicky. "I can tell when I've hurt a gent by the way his face wrinkles up. I sure hurt you that time, Fernand. John Mark it was, eh?"
Fernand could merely stare. He began to have vague fears that this young devil might have hypnotic powers, or be in touch with he knew not what unearthly source of information.
"Out with it," said Ronicky, leaving his chair.
Frederic Fernand bit his lip in thought. He was by no means a coward, and two alternatives presented themselves to him. One was to say nothing and pretend absolute ignorance; the other was to drop his hand into his coat pocket and fire the little automatic which nestled there.
"Listen," said Ronicky Doone, "suppose I was to go a little farther still in my guesses! Suppose I said I figured out that John Mark and his men might be scattered around outside this house, waiting for me and Smith to come out: What would you say to that?"
"Nothing," said Fernand, but he blinked as he spoke. "For a feat of imagination as great as that I have only a silent admiration. But, if you have some insane idea that John Mark, a gentleman I know and respect greatly, is lurking like an assassin outside the doors of my house—"
"Or maybe inside 'em," said Ronicky, unabashed by this gravity.
"If you think that," went on the gambler heavily, "I can only keep silence. But, to ease your own mind, I'll show you a simple way out of the house—a perfectly safe way which even you cannot doubt will lead you out unharmed. Does that bring you what you want?"
"It sure does," said Ronicky. "Lead the way, captain, and you'll find us right at your heels." He fell in beside Jerry Smith, while the fat man led on as their guide.
"What does he mean by a safe exit?" asked Jerry Smith. "You'd think we were in a smuggler's cave."
"Worse," said Ronicky, "a pile worse, son. And they'll sure have to have some tunnels or something for get-aways. This ain't a lawful house, Jerry."
As they talked, they were being led down toward the cellar. They paused at last in a cool, big room, paved with cement, and the unmistakable scent of the underground was in the air.
"Here we are," said the fat man, and, so saying, he turned a switch which illumined the room completely and then drew aside a curtain which opened into a black cavity.
Ronicky Doone approached and peered into it. "How does it look to you, Jerry?" he asked.
"Dark, but good enough for me, if you're all set on leaving by some funny way."
"I don't care how it looks," said Ronicky thoughtfully. "By the looks you can't make out nothing most of the time—nothing important. But they's ways of smelling things, and the smell of this here tunnel ain't too good to me. Look again and try to pry down that tunnel with your flash light, Jerry."
Accordingly Jerry raised his little pocket electric torch and held it above his head. They saw a tunnel opening, with raw dirt walls and floor and a rude framing of heavy timbers to support the roof. But it turned an angle and went out of view in a very few paces.
"Go down there with your lantern and look for the exit," said Ronicky Doone. "I'll stay back here and see that we get our farewell all fixed up."
The damp cellar air seemed to affect the throat of the fat man. He coughed heavily.
"Say, Ronicky," said Jerry Smith, "looks to me that you're carrying this pretty far. Let's take a chance on what we've got ahead of us?"
The fat man was chuckling: "You show a touching trust in me, Mr. Doone."
Ronicky turned on him with an ugly sneer. "I don't like you, Fernand," he said. "They's nothing about you that looks good to me. If I knew half as much as I guess about you I'd blow your head off, and go on without ever thinking about you again. But I don't know. Here you've got me up against it. We're going to go down that tunnel; but, if it's blind, Fernand, and you trap us from this end, it will be the worst day of your life."
"Take this passage, Doone, or turn around and come back with me, and I'll show some other ways of getting out—ways that lie under the open sky, Doone. Would you like that better? Do you want starlight and John Mark—or a little stretch of darkness, all by yourself?" asked Fernand.
Ronicky Doone studied the face of Fernand, almost wistfully. The more he knew about the fellow the more thoroughly convinced he was that Fernand was bad in all possible ways. He might be telling the truth now, however—again he might be simply tempting him on to a danger. There was only one way to decide. Ronicky, a gambler himself, mentally flipped a coin and nodded to Jerry.
"We'll go in," he said, "but man, man, how my old scars are pricking!"
They walked into the moldy, damp air of the tunnel, reached the corner, and there the passage turned and ended in a blank wall of raw dirt, with a little apron of fallen debris at the bottom of it. Ronicky Doone walked first, and, when he saw the passage obstructed in this manner, he whirled like a flash and fired at the mouth of the tunnel.
A snarl and a curse told him that he had at least come close to his target, but he was too late. A great door was sliding rapidly across the width of the tunnel, and, before he could fire a second time, the tunnel was closed.
Jerry Smith went temporarily mad. He ran at the door, which had just closed, and struck the whole weight of his body against it. There was not so much as a quiver. The face of it was smooth steel, and there was probably a dense thickness of stonework on the other side, to match the cellar walls of the house.
"It was my fool fault," exclaimed Jerry, turning to his friend. "My fault, Ronicky! Oh, what a fool I am!"
"I should have known by the feel of the scars," said Ronicky. "Put out that flash light, Jerry. We may need that after a while, and the batteries won't last forever."
He sat down, as he spoke, cross-legged, and the last thing Jerry saw, as he snapped out the light, was the lean, intense face and the blazing eyes of Ronicky Doone. Decidedly this was not a fellow to trifle with. If he trembled for himself and Ronicky, he could also spare a shudder for what would happen to Frederic Fernand, if Ronicky got away. In the meantime the light was out, and the darkness sat heavily beside and about them, with that faint succession of inaudible breathing sounds which are sensed rather than actually heard.
"Is there anything that we can do?" asked Jerry suddenly. "It's all right to sit down and argue and worry, but isn't it foolish, Ronicky?"
"How come?"
"I mean it in this way. Sometimes when you can't solve a problem it's very easy to prove that it can't be solved by anyone. That's what I can prove now, but why waste time?"
"Have we got anything special to do with our time?" asked Ronicky dryly.
"Well, my proof is easy. Here we are in hard-pan dirt, without any sort of a tool for digging. So we sure can't tunnel out from the sides, can we?"
"Looks most like we can't," said Ronicky sadly.
"And the only ways that are left are the ends."
"That's right."
"But one end is the unfinished part of the tunnel; and, if you think we can do anything to the steel door—"
"Hush up," said Ronicky. "Besides, there ain't any use in you talking in a whisper, either. No, it sure don't look like we could do much to that door. Besides, even if we could, I don't think I'd go. I'd rather take a chance against starvation than another trip to fat Fernand's place. If I ever enter it again, son, you lay to it that he'll get me bumped off, mighty pronto."
Jerry Smith, after a groan, returned to his argument. "But that ties us up, Ronicky. The door won't work, and it's worse than solid rock. And we can't tunnel out the side, without so much as a pin to help us dig, can we? I think that just about settles things. Ronicky, we can't get out."
"Suppose we had some dynamite," said Ronicky cheerily.
"Sure, but we haven't."
"Suppose we find some?"
Jerry Smith groaned. "Are you trying to make a joke out of this? Besides, could we send off a blast of dynamite in a closed tunnel like this?"
"We could try," said Ronicky. "Way I'm figuring is to show you it's bad medicine to sit down and figure out how you're beat. Even if you owe a pile of money they's some satisfaction in sitting back and adding up the figures so that you come out about a million dollars on top—in your dreams. Before we can get out of here we got to begin to feel powerful sure."
"But you take it straight, friend: Fernand ain't going to leave us in here. Nope, he's going to find a way to get us out. That's easy to figure out. But the way he'll get us out will be as dead ones, and then he can dump us, when he feels like it, in the river. Ain't that the simplest way of working it out?"
The teeth of Jerry Smith came together with a snap. "Then the thing for us to do is to get set and wait for them to make an attack?"
"No use waiting. When they attack it'll be in a way that'll give us no chance."
"Then you figure the same as me—we're lost?"
"Unless we can get out before they make the attack. In other words, Jerry, there may be something behind the dirt wall at the end of the tunnel."
"Nonsense, Ronicky."
"There's got to be," said Ronicky very soberly, "because, if there ain't, you and me are dead ones, Jerry. Come along and help me look, anyway."
Jerry rose obediently and flashed on his precious pocket torch, and they went down to pass the turn and come again to the ragged wall of earth which terminated the passage. Jerry held the torch and passed it close to the dirt. All was solid. There was no sign of anything wrong. The very pick marks were clearly defined.
"Hold on," whispered Ronicky Doone. "Hold on, Jerry. I seen something." He snatched the electric torch, and together they peered at the patch from which the dried earth had fallen.
"Queer for hardpan to break up like that," muttered Ronicky, cutting into the surface beneath the patch, with the point of his hunting knife. Instantly there was the sharp gritting of steel against steel.
The shout of Ronicky was an indrawn breath. The shout of Jerry Smith was a moan of relief.
Ronicky continued his observations. The thing was very clear. They had dug the tunnel to this point and excavated a place which they had guarded with a steel door, but, in order to conceal the hiding place, or whatever it might be, they cunningly worked the false wall of dirt against the face of it, using clay and a thin coating of plaster as a base.
"It's a place they don't use very often, maybe," said Ronicky, "and that's why they can afford to put up this fake wall of plaster and mud after every time they want to come down here. Pretty clever to leave that little pile of dirt on the floor, just like it had been worked off by the picks, eh? But we've found 'em, Jerry, and now all we got to do is to get to the door and into whatever lies beyond."
"We'd better hurry, then," cried Jerry.
"How come?"
"Take a breath."
Ronicky obeyed; the air was beginning to fill with the pungent and unmistakable odor of burning wood!
Chapter Twenty-one
The Miracle
No great intelligence was needed to understand the meaning of it. Fernand, having trapped his game, was now about to kill it. He could suffocate the two with smoke, blown into the tunnel, and make them rush blindly out. The moment they appeared, dazed and uncertain, the revolvers of half a dozen gunmen would be emptied into them.
"It's like taking a trap full of rats," said Ronicky bitterly, "and shaking them into a pail of water. Let's go back and see what we can."
They had only to turn the corner of the tunnel to be sure. Fernand had had the door of the tunnel slid noiselessly open, then, into the tunnel itself, smoking, slowly burning, pungent pieces of pine wood had been thrown, having been first soaked in oil, perhaps. The tunnel was rapidly filling with smoke, and through the white drifts of it they looked into the lighted cellar beyond. They would run out at last, gasping for breath and blinded by the smoke, to be shot down in a perfect light. So much was clear.
"Now back to the wall and try to find that door," said Ronicky.
Jerry had already turned. In a moment they were back and tearing with their fingers at the sham wall, kicking loose fragments with their feet.
All the time, while they cleared a larger and larger space, they searched feverishly with the electric torch for some sign of a knob which would indicate a door, or some button or spring which might be used to open it. But there was nothing, and in the meantime the smoke was drifting back, in more and more unendurable clouds.
"I can't stand much more," declared Jerry at length.
"Keep low. The best air is there," answered Ronicky.
A voice called from the mouth of the tunnel, and they could recognize the smooth tongue of Frederic Fernand. "Doone, I think I have you now. But trust yourselves to me, and all may still be well with you. Throw out your weapons, and then walk out yourselves, with your arms above your heads, and you may have a second chance. I don't promise—I simply offer you a hope in the place of no hope at all. Is that a good bargain?"
"I'll see you hung first," answered Ronicky and turned again to his work at the wall.
But it seemed a quite hopeless task. The surface of the steel was still covered, after they had cleared it as much as they could, with a thin, clinging coat of plaster which might well conceal the button or device for opening the door. Every moment the task became infinitely harder.
Finally Jerry, his lungs nearly empty of oxygen, cast himself down on the floor and gasped. A horrible gagging sound betrayed his efforts for breath.
Ronicky knelt beside him. His own lungs were burning, and his head was thick and dizzy. "One more try, then we'll turn and rush them and die fighting, Jerry."
The other nodded and started to his feet. Together they made that last effort, fumbling with their hands across the rough surface, and suddenly—had they touched the spring, indeed?—a section of the surface before them swayed slowly in. Ronicky caught the half-senseless body of Jerry Smith and thrust him inside. He himself staggered after, and before him stood Ruth Tolliver!
While he lay panting on the floor, she closed the door through which they had come and then stood and silently watched them. Presently Smith sat up, and Ronicky Doone staggered to his feet, his head clearing rapidly.
He found himself in a small room, not more than eight feet square, with a ceiling so low that he could barely stand erect. As for the furnishings and the arrangement, it was more like the inside of a safe than anything else. There were, to be sure, three little stools, but nothing else that one would expect to find in an apartment. For the rest there was nothing but a series of steel drawers and strong chests, lining the walls of the room and leaving in the center very little room in which one might move about.
He had only a moment to see all of this. Ruth Tolliver, hooded in an evening cloak, but with the light gleaming in her coppery hair, was shaking him by the arm and leaning a white face close to him.
"Hurry!" she was saying. "There isn't a minute to lose. You must start now, at once. They will find out—they will guess—and then—"
"John Mark?" he asked.
"Yes," she exclaimed, realizing that she had said too much, and she pressed her hand over her mouth, looking at Ronicky Doone in a sort of horror.
Jerry Smith had come to his feet at last, but he remained in the background, staring with a befuddled mind at the lovely vision of the girl. Fear and excitement and pleasure had transformed her face, but she seemed trembling in an agony of desire to be gone. She seemed invincibly drawn to remain there longer still. Ronicky Doone stared at her, with a strange blending of pity and admiration. He knew that the danger was not over by any means, but he began to forget that.
"This way!" called the girl and led toward an opposite door, very low in the wall.
"Lady," said Ronicky gently, "will you hold on one minute? They won't start to go through the smoke for a while. They'll think they've choked us, when we don't come out on the rush, shooting. But they'll wait quite a time to make sure. They don't like my style so well that they'll hurry me." He smiled sourly at the thought. "And we got time to learn a lot of things that we'll never find out, unless we know right now, pronto!"
He stepped before the girl, as he spoke. "How come you knew we were in there? How come you to get down here? How come you to risk everything you got to let us out through the treasure room of Mark's gang?"
He had guessed as shrewdly as he could, and he saw, by her immediate wincing, that the shot had told.
"You strange, mad, wild Westerner!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean to tell me you want to stay here and talk? Even if you have a moment to spare you must use it. If you knew the men with whom you are dealing you would never dream of—"
In her pause he said, smiling: "Lady, it's tolerable clear that you don't know me. But the way I figure it is this: a gent may die any time, but, when he finds a minute for good living, he'd better make the most of it."
He knew by her eyes that she half guessed his meaning, but she wished to be certain. "What do you intend by that?" she asked.
"It's tolerable simple," said Ronicky. "I've seen square things done in my life, but I've never yet seen a girl throw up all she had to do a good turn for a gent she's seen only once. You follow me, lady? I pretty near guess the trouble you're running into."
"You guess what?" she asked.
"I guess that you're one of John Mark's best cards. You're his chief gambler, lady, and he uses you on the big game."
She had drawn back, one hand pressed against her breast, her mouth tight with the pain. "You have guessed all that about me?" she asked faintly. "That means you despise me!"
"What folks do don't matter so much," said Ronicky. "It's the reasons they have for doing a thing that matters, I figure, and the way they do it. I dunno how John Mark hypnotized you and made a tool out of you, but I do know that you ain't changed by what you've done."
Ronicky Doone stepped to her quickly and took both her hands. He was not, ordinarily, particularly forward with girls. Now he acted as gracefully as if he had been the father of Ruth Tolliver. "Lady," he said, "you've saved two lives tonight. That's a tolerable lot to have piled up to anybody's credit. Besides, inside you're snow-white. We've got to go, but I'm coming back. Will you let me come back?"
"Never, never!" declared Ruth Tolliver. "You must never see me—you must never see Caroline Smith again. Any step you take in that direction is under peril of your life. Leave New York, Ronicky Doone. Leave it as quickly as you may, and never come back. Only pray that his arm isn't long enough to follow you."
"Leave Caroline?" he asked. "I'll tell you what you're going to do, Ruth. When you get back home you're going to tell Caroline that Jerry, here, has seen the light about Mark, and that he has money enough to pay back what he owes."
"But I haven't," broke in Jerry.
"I have it," said Ronicky, "and that's the same thing."
"I'll take no charity," declared Jerry Smith.
"You'll do what I tell you," said Ronicky Doone. "You been bothering enough, son. Go tell Caroline what I've said," he went on to the girl. "Let her know that they's no chain on anybody, and, if she wants to find Bill Gregg, all she's got to do is go across the street. You understand?"
"But, even if I were to tell her, how could she go, Ronicky Doone, when she's watched?"
"If she can't make a start and get to a man that loves her and is waiting for her, right across the street, she ain't worth worrying about," said Ronicky sternly. "Do we go this way?"
She hurried before them. "You've waited too long—you've waited too long!" she kept whispering in her terror, as she led them through the door, paused to turn out the light behind her, and then conducted them down a passage like that on the other side of the treasure chamber.
It was all deadly black and deadly silent, but the rustling of the girl's dress, as she hurried before them, was their guide. And always her whisper came back: "Hurry! Hurry! I fear it is too late!"
Suddenly they were climbing up a narrow flight of steps. They stood under the starlight in a back yard, with houses about them on all sides.
"Go down that alley, and you will be on the street," said the girl. "Down that alley, and then hurry—run—find the first taxi. Will you do that?"
"We'll sure go, and we'll wait for Caroline Smith—and you, too!"
"Don't talk madness! Why will you stay? You risk everything for yourselves and for me!"
Jerry Smith was already tugging at Ronicky's arm to draw him away, but the Westerner was stubbornly pressing back to the girl. He had her hand and would not leave it.
"If you don't show up, lady," he said, "I'll come to find you. You hear?"
"No, no!"
"I swear!"
"Bless you, but never venture near again. But, oh, Ronicky Doone, I wish ten other men in the whole world could be half so generous and wild as you!" Suddenly her hand was slipped from his, and she was gone into the shadows.
Down the alley went Jerry Smith, but he returned in an agony of dread to find that Ronicky Doone was still running here and there, in a blind confusion, probing the shadowy corners of the yard in search of the girl.
"Come off, you wild man," said Jerry. "They'll be on our heels any minute—they may be waiting for us now, down the alley—come off, idiot, quick!"
"If I thought they was a chance of finding her I'd stay," declared Ronicky, shaking his head bitterly. "Whether you and me live, don't count beside a girl like that. Getting soot on one tip of her finger might mean more'n whether you or me die."
"Maybe, maybe," said the other, "but answer that tomorrow; right now, let's start to make sure of ourselves, and we can come back to find her later."
Ronicky Doone, submitting partly to the force and partly to the persuasion of his friend, turned reluctantly and followed him down the alley.
