Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 28, No. 3, November 12, 1927

“None o’ that,” Markley said with frightful calm: “we know your game — going to clean yourself up and spoil it. But we won’t stand for that!”

In an instant, I was flung back into the chair I had just left, and my hands and ankles were lashed in a way to make further hope of my plan impossible.

“It’s time we were starting,” Mueller said impassively. He had not moved a muscle, and now looked at me only reflectively. “Call a taxi, Cottrell!”

Then, when Cottrell had left: “Don’t tie his feet! Get that stuff off his ankles, Markley — he’s got to walk down the steps to the taxi, hasn’t he? You’ll find his coat and hat in that closet, probably, Hilliard.

“Put them on him, just fold the coat over his shoulders and button it in front at the top, when Cottrell comes with the taxi. Wait; I’ve got a better way — free his hands, too, Branley!”

“What, you think you’re doing,” Markley demanded. “Don’t touch those cords on his wrists, Branley!”

Mueller still did not move, except to the extent of shifting from one corner of his mouth to the other the cigar he was idly smoking.

“Markley, who’s running this thing? You or I?”

“Well,” Markley replied, “you’re running it, I guess; but I don’t like the idea of his hands being free.”

“If I’m running it, I’m running it,” Mueller said. “I’m going to take him, I mean we’re going to take him, to Luigi’s place on Christopher Street, and—” The rest of the sentence was whispered by Mueller into Markley’s ear.

“Say, that’s too much,” Markley ground out from between his clenched teeth. “The first thing he’ll do will be to—” He, in his ton, whispered something to Mueller.

“No, he won’t — not that first,” Mueller replied. “I’ll tell you what he’ll do first, and it’s just what we want him to do.” Again he whispered something to Markley.

“If he does, it’s what we want, as you say,” Markley replied; “but how can you be so sure?”

“Wait and see,” Mueller said.

Then Cottrell came in, saying that the taxi was at the door.

Mueller had his way: my wrists were freed, and I was told to stand up. Then Hilliard gave me my hat and overcoat.

“You’re going to walk down the steps to the taxi with us,” Mueller said, standing close by me. “You’re going to ride with us and not say a word or make a sign to any one, no matter who you see or what he says to you.

“Try anything, Mr. Crane, and whatever happens to us as a result, you’ll be as dead as Dorgan is now and as Stannistreet soon will be!” He showed me an automatic ready in a hand that was as cool and steady as a rock. Then we went out to the taxi.

From our apartment — the one which had been Ruggles’s and mine — on West Eighty-Sixth Street — to Luigi’s place, at No. 17 Christopher, was about five miles. Again and again, of course, on the way down, we stopped with the traffic, often with a traffic officer at our very side.

One word, shouted by me, would have riveted his attention on us and he would have ordered our driver to pull up to the curb. But Mueller’s gun kept pressing against my side and I knew he would keep his word. At my first attempt to call help, Mueller would plunge me into eternity.

On and on we went, in absolute silence, past officer after officer, not one of whom dreamed that Markley, murderer of their brother officer, was one of the men in that orange and black taxicab.

Then the cab came up to the curb opposite the gloomy rookery known as “Luigi’s place.” Stannistreet had been right when he said that Ruggles and I knew the spot, having captured Pendler, the drug-vendor there in March. Ruggles had not told Stannistreet, but the fact was that we had known that dubious den long before that, for we had taken even more dangerous and worse “wanted” criminals than Pendler, the drug-vendor, from Luigi’s place.

But in spite of the evil repute the old shambling, slatternly building bore, I was sure that none of those who had fled to it from justice, had ever been “wanted” more than Markley was now for the murder of Dorgan, the policeman.

The taxi stopped at a word from Mueller; Hilliard and Branley and Cottrell got out, crossed the street, and went into Luigi’s, leaving Markley, Mueller and me in the taxi.

After a few moments, which Mueller kept track of by the watch on his plump wrist, he got out of the taxi and whispered, as he leaned in through the open door toward me:

“Get out, now, Mr. Crane. Lean over so as to hide your face and alter your appearance as much as you can, then run across the street and into the side door! You know the place?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Don’t speak,” Mueller said softly; “answer me with a gesture. Nod, when you mean yes. I can see you clearly. After you have gone into the side door, you will meet Hilliard, who will direct your next move. Now; run, and bend over! The side door! Understand? Run, when I count three. Got that?”

I nodded.

He counted in his soft voice — “One — two — three!”

At the last word, I bolted — not into the side door, but for the alley to the right.

A bullet, fired from an automatic with a perfect silencer, hit the cement just ahead of me, pinged off and crashed through a window somewhere. I abandoned all hope of the alley and swerved into the side door of Luigi’s and there Hilliard was waiting for me.

Without a word, almost without looking at me, and indicating his next move only by closing an iron hand on one of my wrists, he led me swiftly up a flight of stairs, where Cottrell, as silent as Hilliard, and as prompt, took me up another flight, Hilliard going swiftly down the stairs up which we had come.

It was Branley who met me at the top of the second flight of those ill-kept and forbidding stairs, and he dragged me up still another flight and plunged me into that small, breathless, lightless back room from which, only three months before, Ruggles and I had carried the senseless body of Pendler, the drug-vendor.

What their intention was in bringing me here, only they knew — it had all been worked out by Mueller, undoubtedly, and I realized the futility of my trying to plumb the dark depths of Mueller’s mind.

Back in the comfortable little apartment which had come to mean so much to me, I had heard Mueller assure Markley that when they had brought me to this tomblike room at Luigi’s, I could safely and surely be counted on to do a certain thing — a thing, moreover, absolutely essential to the success of their plot to bring about the death, to-night, of Stannistreet.

There was something bewildering in realizing that, without my being told or in any way consulting me, these men confidently looked to me to perform, on scheduled time and with complete obedience to them, an act by which they, my enemies, would profit.

I tried to imagine what this anticipated act of mine was to be; in their plans for me and for themselves, it unquestionably played a vital part, but the more I groped for it, the less able I was to settle on anything which, in my mind, could be the thing they had planned for me to do.

But, though I could not fathom their plans for me, I knew that they had overplayed their hands: I did indeed know this old rookery — I knew it far better than they thought I did.

It was not for nothing that Ruggles and I had hunted Pendler and others as bad and even worse through this ancient ruin of a building.

Markley and Mueller would be waiting in the taxi across the street, and Cottrell, Hilliard, and Branley unquestionably were stationed at the front and the two side doors; but there was still another exit and I needed no flash light to find it for me.

All in a flash, I had remembered this. Ruggles himself had showed it to me. Instantly, I abandoned all effort at imagining what my recent captors had planned for me to do.

Standing motionless by the wall against which Branley had thrust me, I closed my eyes and visualized the approach to the tunnel by which I knew I should presently escape.

I had ascended three flights of stairs, the first under the espionage of Hilliard, the second with Cottrell, and the third with Branley; I was now on the fourth floor. To reach the exit I had so luckily remembered, I had, I knew, to descend to the street floor; but I would reach it by the back stairs and not by those up which I had come.

It was a matter of only an instant for me to feel in my back hip pocket for my small automatic; there is was, and my fingers told me that it was loaded and ready if I needed it.

Slipping the gun into my right side coat pocket, then taking off my shoes and tying the laces together, I fastened my belt over the connecting strings and thus made the shoes fast at the same time having both my hands free.

There was no light in this room I knew; and it was as dark as if its four walls, floor, and ceiling had been sheathed with tar paper. I felt along until I touched the door, then stood motionless again.

The moment of danger would come when I opened that door and stepped into the hall which, I remembered, was lighted none too well for general purposes and yet much too well for mine, by low-turned and weakly flickering gas jets.

I felt reasonably sure that Markley and his gang would be waiting outside; but they might have stationed some one outside my door, for all that.

Whatever the risk was, however, ft had to be taken, and I took it quickly in a series of bounds which almost instantly carried me past the head of the stairs and into the almost pitch-black corridor in the first angle of which I crouched, panting but overcome with relief.