LITMIR.BIZ

      9. A BOLD VENTURE

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      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.

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