Chapter Nine. A Bold Venture
But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer, how, above all, to make sure that he was really the power controlling Caroline Smith, were problems which could not be solved in a moment.
Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea. "We've waited a week to see her; now that we've seen her let's keep on waiting," he said, and Ronicky agreed. They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged for such a length of time that it was impossible to keep it as strictly as it had been observed before. Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long watching and the shock of the disappointment of that day, went completely to pieces and in the early evening fell asleep. But Ronicky Doone went out for a light dinner and came back after dark, refreshed and eager for action, only to find that Bill Gregg was incapable of being roused. He slept like a dead man.
Ronicky went to the window and sat alone. Few of the roomers were home in the house opposite. They were out for the evening, or for dinner, at least, and the face of the building was dark and cold, the light from the street lamp glinting unevenly on the windowpanes. He had sat there staring at the old house so many hours in the past that it was beginning to be like a face to him, to be studied as one might study a human being. And the people it sheltered, the old hag who kept the door, the sneering man and Caroline Smith, were to the house like the thoughts behind a man's face, an inscrutable face. But, if one cannot pry behind the mask of the human, at least it is possible to enter a house and find—
At this point in his thoughts Ronicky Doone rose with a quickening pulse. Suppose he, alone, entered that house tonight by stealth, like a burglar, and found what he could find?
He brushed the idea away. Instantly it returned to him. The danger of the thing, and danger there certainly would be in the vicinity of him of the sardonic profile, appealed to him more and more keenly. Moreover, he must go alone. The heavy-footed Gregg would be a poor helpmate on such an errand of stealth.
Ronicky turned away from the window, turned back to it and looked once more at the tall front of the building opposite; then he started to get ready for the expedition.
The preparations were simple. He put on a pair of low shoes, very light and with rubber heels. In them he could move with the softness and the speed of a cat. Next he dressed in a dark-gray suit, knowing that this is the color hardest to see at night. His old felt hat he had discarded long before in favor of the prevailing style of the average New Yorker. For this night expedition he put on a cap which drew easily over his ears and had a long visor, shadowing the upper part of his face. Since it might be necessary to remain as invisible as possible, he obscured the last bit of white that showed in his costume, with a black neck scarf.
Then he looked in the glass. A lean face looked back at him, the eyes obscured under the cap, a stern, resolute face, with a distinct threat about it. He hardly recognized himself in the face in the glass.
He went to his suit case and brought out his favorite revolver. It was a long and ponderous weapon to be hidden beneath his clothes, but to Ronicky Doone that gun was a friend well tried in many an adventure. His fingers went deftly over it. It literally fell to pieces at his touch, and he examined it cautiously and carefully in all its parts, looking to the cartridges before he assembled the weapon again. For, if it became necessary to shoot this evening, it would be necessary to shoot to kill.
He then strolled down the street, passing the house opposite, with a close scrutiny. A narrow, paved sidewalk ran between it and the house on its right, and all the windows opening on this small court were dark. Moreover, the house which was his quarry was set back several feet from the street, an indentation which would completely hide him from anyone who looked from the street. Ronicky made up his mind at once. He went to the end of the block, crossed over and, turning back on the far side of the street, slipped into the opening between the houses.
Instantly he was in a dense darkness. For five stories above him the two buildings towered, shutting out the starlight. Looking straight up he found only a faint reflection of the glow of the city lights in the sky.
At last he found a cellar window. He tried it and found it locked, but a little maneuvering with his knife enabled him to turn the catch at the top of the lower sash. Then he raised it slowly and leaned into the blackness. Something incredibly soft, tenuous, clinging, pressed at once against his face. He started back with a shudder and brushed away the remnants of a big spider web.
Then he leaned in again. It was an intense blackness. The moment his head was in the opening the sense of listening, which is ever in a house, came to him. There were the strange, musty, underground odors which go with cellars and make men think of death.
However, he must not stay here indefinitely. To be seen leaning in at this window was as bad as to be seen in the house itself. He slipped through the opening at once, and beneath his feet there was a soft crunching of coal. He had come directly into the bin. Turning, he closed the window, for that would be a definite clue to any one who might pass down the alley.
As he stood surrounded by that hostile silence, that evil darkness, he grew somewhat accustomed to the dimness, and he could make out not definite objects, but ghostly outlines. Presently he took out the small electric torch which he carried and examined his surroundings.
The bin had not yet received the supply of winter coal and was almost empty. He stepped out of it into a part of the basement which had been used apparently for storing articles not worth keeping, but too good to be thrown away—an American habit of thrift. Several decrepit chairs and rickety cabinets and old console tables were piled together in a tangled mass. Ronicky looked at them with an unaccountable shudder, as if he read in them the history of the ruin and fall and death of many an old inhabitant of this house. It seemed to his excited imagination that the man with the sneer had been the cause of all the destruction and would be the cause of more.
He passed back through the basement quickly, eager to be out of the musty odors and his gloomy thoughts. He found the storerooms, reached the kitchen stairs and ascended at once. Halfway up the stairs, the door above him suddenly opened and light poured down at him. He saw the flying figure of a cat, a broom behind it, a woman behind the broom.
"Whisht! Out of here, dirty beast!" The cat thudded against Ronicky's knee, screeched and disappeared below; the woman of the broom shaded her eyes and peered down the steps. "A queer cat!" she muttered, then slammed the door.
It seemed certain to Ronicky that she must have seen him, yet he knew that the blackness of the cellar had probably half blinded her. Besides, he had drawn as far as possible to one side of the steps, and in this way she might easily have overlooked him.
In the meantime it seemed that this way of entering the house was definitely blocked. He paused a moment to consider other plans, but, while he stayed there in thought, he heard the rattle of pans. It decided him to stay a while longer. Apparently she was washing the cooking utensils, and that meant that she was near the close of her work for the evening. In fact, the rim of light, which showed between the door frame and the door, suddenly snapped out, and he heard her footsteps retreating.
Still he delayed a moment or two, for fear she might return to take something which she had forgotten. But the silence deepened above him, and voices were faintly audible toward the front of the house.
That decided Ronicky. He opened the door, blessing the well-oiled hinges which kept it from making any noise, and let a shaft from his pocket lantern flicker across the kitchen floor. The light glimmered on the newly scrubbed surface and showed him a door to his right, opening into the main part of the house.
He passed through it at once and sighed with relief when his foot touched the carpet on the hall beyond. He noted, too, that there was no sign of a creak from the boards beneath his tread. However old that house might be, he was a noble carpenter who laid the flooring, Ronicky thought, as he slipped through the semi-gloom. For there was a small hall light toward the front, and it gave him an uncertain illumination, even at the rear of the passage.
Now that he was definitely committed to the adventure he wondered more and more what he could possibly gain by it. But still he went on, and, in spite of the danger, it is doubtful if Ronicky would have willingly changed places with any man in the world at that moment.
At least there was not the slightest sense in remaining on the lower floor of the house. He slipped down the shadow of the main stairs, swiftly circled through the danger of the light of the lower hall lamp and started his ascent. Still the carpet muffled every sound which he made in climbing, and the solid construction of the house did not betray him with a single creaking noise.
He reached the first hall. This, beyond doubt, was where he would find the room of the man who sneered—the archenemy, as Ronicky Doone was beginning to think of him. A shiver passed through his lithe, muscular body at the thought of that meeting.
He opened the first door to his left. It was a small closet for brooms and dust cloths and such things. Determining to be methodical he went to the extreme end of the hall and tried that door. It was locked, but, while his hand was still on the knob, turning it in disappointment, a door, higher up in the house, opened and a hum of voices passed out to him. They grew louder, they turned to the staircase from the floor above and commenced to descend at a running pace. Three or four men at least, there must be, by the sound, and perhaps more!
Ronicky started for the head of the stairs to make his retreat, but, just as he reached there, the party turned into the hall and confronted him.
