Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist Part 16

"So!" Bohlmier put down the flute and looked at the big athlete over the rims of his spectacles. "Yah, I suppose I haf one yet." He arose and opened a small register. "Your name you will put inside here," he directed.

Scanlon did as requested; then the proprietor toiled, in a short-breathed fas.h.i.+on, up the stairs before them, unlocked a door and stood aside for Scanlon to enter. The room was small and slimly furnished; but it was clean and had two windows peering upon what looked, in the dimness, like a courtyard.

"If you do not der stable mind," suggested Bohlmier, "der ventilation is goot, by der windows."

"Nice," said Bat "This will do me--great."

When the proprietor had gone, Big Slim shuffled about the room, his hands in his pockets.

"The Dutchman's real," said he, to Bat. "I've known him for some time, and he's in on more than anybody would think."

The athlete threw some cigarettes upon the table and drew up two chairs.

"Sit down," said he, with a ready air of owners.h.i.+p. "Let's get better acquainted."

"Not now," replied Big Slim. "Some other time, maybe, I'll open a can of experience with you; but to-night," and he leered knowingly, "I've got a little business."

"All right," said Bat. "I'll see you to-morrow, then."

"Sure," said the lank burglar. "I don't want to lose sight of you, pal, for I owe you one."

"Oh, that's all right," said Scanlon, as he shook hands with the other at the room door. "It was only a little try-out for a freight car like me."

Scanlon stood in the doorway and watched the angular, stoop-shouldered figure go down the hall; there was something so slinking, so furtively deadly in the burglar's motions that Bat felt a p.r.i.c.kly sensation run up and down his spine.

"That's the kind of a fellow that would snuff out your light and never lose an hour's sleep over it," said the big athlete to himself. "A wolf!

A prowling wolf! But, just as Kirk thought, he's got something inside that lean head of his that I ought to know about, and I mean to know it."

Big Slim turned a sharp angle and disappeared from view; but Scanlon stood looking down the hall, and thinking. The corridor was low ceilinged and narrow; the lights were dim and the doors ran in an unbroken line on either side, each with a black number upon it.

"Nice," p.r.o.nounced Bat, "every thing clean and orderly. The old Swiss is there with the soap and dust brush. I'll hand it to him for that.

But----"

He paused and a wrinkle appeared between his eyes. Yes, the place was much better than he had expected--that is, as far as he could see. But sometimes there were things not to be seen; if you were aware of them at all, you _felt_ them. And as Bat Scanlon stood looking down the dim hall with its two rows of expressionless doors, he was aware of a peculiar something from which his mind drew back. Rising from an invisible source, much as a miasma arises from a marsh, there came a subtle quality--an impression of evil; it seemed to creep by and around him; silently, insidiously, poisonously.

The big man stepped into his room and quietly closed the door. Then, grimly, he slipped a huge Colt's revolver from a holster hooked under the left armhole of his vest; with a snap he threw it open, and the ejector threw the black, oily, murderous looking cartridges upon the table with a rattle. Bat inspected and tested the working parts of the weapon; satisfied that all was right, he replaced the cartridges with practiced fingers.

"I only had that feeling once before in my life," said he, "and that was the night in Dacy's place at Holdover when the four 'breeds' were waiting for me in the dark room." He put the Colt back in its holster, and stood ruminating. "What was it the burglar fellow said about the skipper of this outfit? 'He's in on more than anybody would think.'

Well, I'd better watch myself," and Bat smiled, though his eyes narrowed at the same time; "for when a bald-headed old simp with a flute is on the cross, he's sure to be the limit. The surprise kind of crook always is."

He walked the floor for a few moments, then he shot the bolt on the door and stretched himself across the low iron cot, with the light turned off. Bat Scanlon's mind was not a particularly imaginative one; but at the same time it possessed one of the attributes of the imaginative type: and that was the mental antennae which felt things while they were still in the distance. As he lay there upon the hard bed in the closet-like room, he kept sensing something, but could get no clear idea of its shape.

"That's where Kirk pins on the medal," spoke Bat. "These things never come to him done up in fogs; they are always pretty clear pictures and have a definite meaning."

However, vague as the premonition was, Bat was confident of one thing; that was: whatever shape the thing took, it would have something to do with the affair at Stanwick.

"Maybe I believe it because I've got a mind full of the Stanwick thing,"

Scanlon told himself; "a fellow does fool himself that way sometimes.

But this time ain't one of them. Before I get out of this phony hotel I'm going to get another little jolt."

Another jolt! Bat whistled between his teeth in dismay. Were there not jolts enough in the thing already? One by one, as he lay there, he marshaled his impressions in his mind, in the order in which they had occurred. When Nora first called him on the telephone there had unquestionably been a note of fear in her voice. In her dread of the police, as afterward shown, he fancied he recalled something more than the shrinking of a sensitive nature. And her eagerness to know what was going forward at Stanwick was--well, it was curious.

And to Stanwick he had gone. He saw the ugly evidence of a brutal crime; he saw a sick girl, very much attached to her brother, who quivered with dread at what had happened, and who, so he fancied, was even in a deeper state of fear at what might yet come to pa.s.s. Also he had watched and listened to a hara.s.sed young man who seemed to be groping his way amidst the bitter resentments of years, the frightful actualities of the moment, and a disconcerting sense of impending disaster.

"And that same young fellow's in bad," said the big man, to the darkness of the little room. "The cops always make it tough for the man they pick out to bear the weight of a crime. They try and twist everything to point his way."

And after this came the evident interest of Ashton-Kirk in the matter.

"I don't know but what he was interested even before that," thought Bat.

"He saw something I didn't see--which ain't hard to do, for I'm a dub at that kind of a thing."

He remembered that Nora was even more agitated when he saw her again than she had been the first time. Young Burton was innocent! He must be freed! She _knew_ he didn't do it! She _knew_!

"How did she?" Bat asked himself. "That's strong talk."

And, then, there was the bruise upon her forehead. Nora had deceived them about that. There were the footprints behind the rose arbor, there was the small revolver, there were the marks of the "creepers" in the yard at Stanwick and upon the scaffold outside Nora's window. And, then, there was also the apparently sudden resolution upon the girl's part to place her jewels in a place of security.

"People don't get these sudden notions for no reason at all," mused Bat.

"And Nora had her own reasons for doing that. But," and there was a little tightening of his mind, an unpleasant straining which made him want to draw back from the thought, "she didn't want to tell anything about it. I believe in Nora. Nothing could drive me from that; but she is holding back on us; she knows things that she won't tell."

At some of these things Bat could guess; some others Ashton-Kirk's hints had partly covered. But the background, the reason for it all, puzzled him. He pondered deeply for a long time, but not a ray of light appeared through the mists that obscured the matter.

"But this burglar fellow's got something I want to know!" Bat sat up, and his forceful hands shut tightly. "And maybe it's just the thing we need. Maybe it's just the----"

He stopped. When he had turned off his single gas jet a half hour before, all had been dark outside. Now there was a flare of light from below. He arose and looked out. A wall loomed across the courtyard; and in the previous darkness he had thought it blank. But now he saw there were windows in it; and two of them, on the ground floor, were illuminated.

"Huh!" said Bat, as he stood looking down. "There's old Bohlmier, and exercising his old flute again."

The bald dome of the old Swiss shone under the gas light; the sc.r.a.p of thumbed music was propped up against a bottle, and he was blowing gravely into his instrument, his fingers moving up and down and along the keys with methodical precision.

"Just like an old-fas.h.i.+oned picture," said Bat, the quaint characteristics of the composition in the frame of the window appealing to him. "I wonder if I've not been a little hasty with these notions of mine about this place. That old lad looks as harmless as----"

But he stopped! For the composition below had suddenly changed. Some one had evidently knocked at the door of the room in which old Bohlmier sat. One hand had reached, in a clawing motion, at the music; the flute was held pinned to the table in a bony, convulsive grip by the other; the bald head was thrust forward and seemed to wave gently to and fro like that of a snake. The big athlete drew in his breath, hissingly.

"The bets are off!" said he, between his teeth. "That old rat's got it in him! I'll bet his veins run ice water; and if you gave him the chance to knife a man, you'd be doing him a favor."

The Swiss had apparently spoken to whomever had knocked, and now, although still invisible to Bat, had entered the room. Bohlmier leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped before him; but from the motions of the s.h.i.+ny poll, Bat knew he was speaking.

"That room must be somewhere behind the office," Bat told himself.

"Maybe a private den of the old fellow's."

Here Bohlmier suddenly pushed back his chair and stood up. With head thrust forward once more he seemed to stab a question at his visitor, a question apparently of vast importance. Evidently this was answered to the liking of the Swiss; eagerly, triumphantly, inquiringly, one hand went up and hung pointing across the room to a point behind the other.

"The door's there," said Bat, intuitively getting the meaning of the gesture. "And on the other side of it is some one, or something the old man's been expecting to see."

Then there followed a period of earnest talk between the hotel-keeper and the unseen visitor. It was carried on in a low tone; Bat recognized this fact by the att.i.tudes and gestures of the old Swiss who finally, with almost trembling hands, pulled open a drawer in the table at which he had been seated. From this he took something which he patted, almost fondly. But a hand came across the table--the hand of the unknown--a big bony hand, and pushed it aside.

"It's Big Slim!" exclaimed Bat, with fresh interest. "And old smooth top is up to something he don't like."