LITMIR.BIZ

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room, as usual, was in darkness save for the blaze of light from the electric lamp upon the table. This gleamed on one wall, and was faintly reflected on the window; but the corners of the room were black. I motioned Ashenhurst to silence, and whispered his instructions. He nodded understandingly—relieved, I think, that shortly the whole matter would be ended. A glance at the clock showed three hours before midnight, and another intolerable wait was before us.

      At ten o’clock, Ashenhurst snapped off his light at the switch, and the remainder of the vigil was kept in darkness. At eleven, the door creaked gently, and through the blackness Jimmie Lavender came to our side.

      “All well,” he whispered. “Our men are placed, and there ought to be no hitch. You understand your part, Ashenhurst?”

      “Every comma,” said the long student, in the same tone, “except this damned silence, Mr. Lavender. It gets on my nerves.”

      “Sorry,” Lavender whispered back, “but it can’t be helped. The danger is from within the house. I thought you had guessed that. You may smoke if you like.”

      We felt better when we had all lighted cigars. The room seemed less black, the silence less profound. So another hour passed away and midnight was upon us.

      “Ready!” murmured Lavender. “Stand by the window, Ashenhurst; let yourself be seen. When he passes, rush for the door, with some noise, and downstairs after him. Don’t upset the neighborhood, but don’t be afraid of a little noise. I want it perfectly evident that you are leaving the house.”

      Ashenhurst followed instructions without an error. The stone faun held no terror for any of us now, and the patter of racing feet in the outside darkness only told us that the moment for action had come. Ashenhurst, leaning far out of the window, cried out once as the white figure shot past, then jumped for the door and pelted down the stairs in the darkness. I moved toward the window, but Lavender’s hand restrained me.

      “Careful!” he sharply whispered. “The trouble begins now—and I don’t know where it will come from!”

      Almost as he spoke, there sounded beyond the door a light thudding of feet; then the door creaked and swung inward and a long beam of white light cut a rib-bony path across the carpet. It was followed by the dark figure of a man, holding an electric torch, who, with a swift lithe bound, sprang to a corner of the room and stooped to the boards. It had all happened so quickly that for a moment I was breathless; then as I was about to spring upon the intruder, Lavender’s restraining hand again fell upon my arm. There followed a moment of tense and painful silence, then a crackling sound as of splintering wood, and the heavy breathing of the man in the corner. He was working furiously in the patch of light thrown by his torch, and once, as he half-turned, the gleam fell across a hard, seamed face and an eye that glittered like that of a madman. Save for his asthmatic breathing, and the occasional crackling of wood, the room was heavy with silence.

      Our time had come. Lavender’s hand was taken from my arm. Then his voice, swift and hard, and icy as a mountain stream, cut through the chamber.

      “Hands up, Wilcox! Quick!” And to me, “Lights, Gilly!”

      But as I sprang for the electric lamp, the intruder, ignoring the command and the leveled revolver which he knew lay back of it, flung himself forward in the darkness in the direction of Lavender’s voice. Instantly, I, too, jumped into action, and more by luck than design, blundered at once into the man called Wilcox. In an instant the fight of my life was on.

      We met with a shock that was terrific, and clung like tigers. The fellow had a grasp like an animal; against it my own proved powerless. A chair crashed over, and we began to whirl. We whirled until I thought my wits were deserting me. Up and down the room we thrashed, colliding with everything, unmindful of bumps and bruises; and all without a sound from either of us. Inextricably mixed as we were, Lavender could do nothing but encourage me with his voice. My hands tried desperately to work themselves upward to the throat of the man who was crushing me, but I was a child in his grasp. The constant pressure and the wild, whirling waltz had stolen my breath. I felt myself slipping—giving.

      At that instant, Lavender, who had discovered the lights, out at the switch, flooded the room with light from every bulb; and at the same instant we crashed into the center table. The impact broke my opponent’s grasp; he sprang back, then leaped for the door. Two seconds later the fight was over, and the man called Wilcox was helpless on the floor. Lavender, cool and collected, had greeted the fellow’s spring with a straight right, shot forward with all the force of the trained back and loins that lay behind it. The blow was terrific, and the man dropped as if he had been pole-axed.

      Lavender stooped and studied the hard face for a moment, almost with pity. Then I heard the clink of handcuffs, and with a little shrug my friend rose to his feet.

      “Bernard Wilcox,” he said laconically. “Paroled convict—used to occupy this room. Planted his loot here and went to jail. Came back for it tonight.”

      He added with a grin, “R. I. P.” Then lighted a cigar and dropped into a chair to await the coming of Ashenhurst.

      V

      Twenty minutes later, Mr. Oakley Ashenhurst, wearing a highly decorative black eye and a wide smile, tramped upstairs at the head of an extraordinary procession. After him there entered the room two husky detectives, half-carrying between them what had once been the celebrated Bert Jordan of the “Famous Jordan Family,” and behind them stalked a tall, uniformed officer in whom I recognized Captain D’Arcy of the Lincoln Park station. Bringing up the rear was a motley of half-gowned, bathrobed citizens and citizenesses, among whom were the shrinking figures of old Mr. and Mrs. Harden and the two other roomers, elderly women with their hair in curl-papers. It was a sight to move the gods to laughter, and Lavender and I, being essentially human, lay back and laughed. D’Arcy, too, wore a broad grin.

      “Got him, I see,” said the police captain, with a nod to the prostrate Wilcox. He stooped over the man on the floor. “Yep, it’s Wilcox!”

      Bernard Wilcox, who had recovered his senses, glowered back with evil eyes.

      “And you, I see, have Jordan,” said Lavender pleasantly. “The others, I suppose, escaped?”

      “Yes,” answered D’Arcy with a frown. “Big auto all ready to pick up Jordan, over in the next block. He had to run through a passage to get to it, and they may have seen us nail Jordan in the passage; I don’t know. Anyway, all we saw when we got over there was a trail of dust and sound.”

      “Unimportant,” said Lavender, “although you’ll probably get them through Jordan. Our statue doesn’t seem as lively a cricket as he was a little while ago.”

      All eyes were turned back to the amazing figure of Bert Jordan of the “Famous Jordan Family.” He was an astonishing spectacle. From neck to ankle he was encased in dull white fleshings, above which his white, painted face, like that of a clown, now registered profound depression. His hair, elaborately whitened and held in place by a white net, had been curled in neat horns on his brow and temples, but at the moment it was much disordered. On his feet were white gloves of the sort worn by fashionable bathers in the sands of expensive bathing beaches. But the celebrated Bert Jordan had lost much of his “white” in his tussle with Ashenhurst and the police, and he now presented a very lugubrious appearance. I felt sorry for the fellow, and I think Lavender did, too.

      “Want to talk, Jordan?” inquired Lavender. “Might as well, you know.”

      Jordan grinned sheepishly. “Sure, I’ll talk,” he said, “What d’ya want to know?”

      “What did you soak Mr. Ashenhurst for?”

      “Dough!” replied Mr. Jordan promptly. “Plenty of dough!”

      “So I should imagine. Mr. Wilcox foot the bill?”

      “Whatever his name is,” said Jordan.

      “He’s a liar!” asserted Wilcox, from the floor, with a string of oaths.

      “Well, I’ll talk,” said Lavender.

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