Louie Martin, the gem expert, was a little tallow-faced man with a straggling, peaked beard and shifty eyes. He had no real appetite for this sort of thing, but for personal reasons he was more willing than usual to go on duty tonight.
Slipping his automatic into the holster under his arm, he struck off along the road toward the house of Ah Wing, whose gables were visible from the cottage. A light wind was blowing from the southeast, and he could see the mist rising over the marshes. Somewhere from the steamy air above a night heron screamed raucously. Involuntarily, Louie shivered.
He was glad to turn his thoughts to his own immediate affairs. Louie Martin had made up his mind to strike out for himself. He had always admired Colonel Knight—or “Count von Hondon”—for the shrewd stroke of business he had done; and Louie was keen enough to perceive that Monte Jerome was not equal to the task of holding the Wolves together. At the present time there was open dissension among them. One of these days one of them would squeal on the others—that was the way this mob stuff usually ended.
No, Louie had made up his mind to watch his chance for a crack at the jewels—and then a clean getaway.
He reached the private road leading to the Chinaman’s house, paused for a moment to listen and reconnoiter, then stealthily struck into the grounds. Five minutes later he had skirted the west wing and was peering up through the shrubbery at the lighted windows of Colonel Knight’s apartment. Their location had been sketched for him by Monte.
“So that’s where the old devil is!” thought Louie. “Let’s just have a look-see!”
He climbed into a pepper tree—the same from which Monte and the “Kid” had seen Knight—and stared into the room. It was lighted, but there was no one in sight. Then, through a vista of open doors, he saw the man whom he had been sent to watch, walking slowly about with his hands clasped behind him, a cigar between his lips.
“Had a good supper, and now he’s enjoying a smoke!” Louie mumbled enviously. “Well, that’s good enough for me, too! Let’s have a look at that window!”
He slipped down from the tree and glanced about. At the corner of the house was a galvanized iron can, evidently used for lawn clippings. Louie lifted this cautiously and carried it over under the end window. Then he climbed upon it, raising his head cautiously till he was standing just beside the half-open window.
A silent inspection of the bars showed him that they were all securely fastened, with one possible exception: the bottom bar seemed to be loose in its niche. Louie climbed down, changed the can over to the opposite side, and examined the opposite end. Sure enough, it showed a crumble of concrete around the bolt which was supposed to hold it in place. With the utmost caution, fearing that the loose bar might be connected with an alarm system, the crook tested it.
A smile twisted his thin lips. It could be moved in and out of its niche.
A sound came from somewhere close at hand; and with the speed and silence of a wolf Louie Martin leaped to the ground, caught up the can, and replaced it where he had found it. Next instant he was hidden in a clump of flowering shrubs.
From this position he could see the top of a flight of steps leading down to the basement of the house of Ah Wing. He stood listening and watching, and presently he heard a door open and close, followed by steps ascending the stairs. Then some one came up out of the basement, and he saw the figure of a tall Chinaman walking deliberately toward the bush in which he was hiding. Louie reached under his coat for his pistol—
Ah Wing turned, and Louie saw that he was following a graveled path. And he was carrying something in one hand—a contrivance of twisted wires, like an iron basket.
As Ah Wing disappeared into the mist, Louie made up his mind. Tonight, after Knight had gone to bed, he would strike: he was not to be relieved till two o’clock, and that would give him time to put through his coup. But now he meant to follow Ah Wing. He needed all the information he could secure about the master of this silent house.
The Chinaman had disappeared into the eddying mist, but Louie struck into the path and soon came within hearing of the crisp footsteps. Ah Wing reached the edge of the grounds and crossed over into a marshy field.
Instinctively, the crook worked closer to the man he was shadowing. There was something oddly menacing about this night, with its mist and its fitful, salt-laden wind.
Suddenly through the swirling fog there appeared a light, which seemed to be suspended ten feet or so above the ground. It was moving slowly along in front of them—a murky light, like a blood-red mist.
Then Louie saw that it was the light suspended from the mast of a boat, and that the boat itself was moving slowly along before them, almost hidden by the banks of the canal. The tide must be out, he thought.
Ah Wing swung on through the night, and presently the man following him made out the silhouette of a building, perched above the canal. Louie slunk cautiously forward and saw that the boat, whose lantern he had previously observed, was making fast at that wharf.
Ah Wing leaped lightly to the sunken deck and disappeared down the companionway. Before Louie could decide what he was to do, the Chinaman reappeared and climbed back to the wharf. Louie had just time to slip into the shelter of a group of piling when the Chinaman passed the corner of the building.
And in his hand was another of the wire contrivances, filled with squirming, squeaking rats!
The white man felt his stomach doing queer antics. He had heard of Chinamen eating rats. Was that what this fellow was up to? What else could he want with them?
Ah Wing walked swiftly, and the man behind kept as close as he dared. Again they entered the grounds surrounding the big house, and the Oriental crossed to the basement stairs and went down. Louie paused in the bushes.
“I’m going to gamble,” he whispered suddenly to himself. “I’ll just sneak down those steps, and if he tries to come out before I can duck, I’ll bean him! I want to know what he’s up to!”
Stealthily, he approached the steps. All that he could see was a murky hole, into which the cement stairs disappeared. A step at a time he made his way down—
And then he paused, holding himself bent forward, rigid as a man of stone. From beyond the door which opened out of this pit came a strange sound, the like of which he had never before heard. It was like a jet of steam, or like sand sifting into a tin pail from a considerable height.
Then came another sound—the sing-song voice of the Chinaman, crooning something in a rhythmic chant. Louie could not understand the words, but there was a swing and lilt to the thing that had a curious effect on him: _he felt as if he were being rocked to sleep_.
He threw off this mood with a start. There had come another sound—the squealing of many rats. And there was a grating noise, as if a heavy body were dragging itself about the floor. The rat chorus swelled. The creatures evidently had been turned loose, and were racing about the floor in an agony of terror.
The chorus thinned. Something was happening to them. Presently the last of the rats emitted one long, agonized squeal, and was still.
Louie Martin made his way out of the cellarway and hurried dizzily back to the shelter of the bushes. He didn’t know what had been happening behind that horrible door, but he knew that it was something which turned his flesh to ice. A strange smell had come to him from under the door—
Louie noted with relief that the lights in Colonel Knight’s rooms had been snapped off. That meant that the Colonel had gone to bed. Soon he would be sleeping, and then Louie could put his plan into execution—that would enable him to forget this baffling but vaguely horrible experience.
Somehow, he felt as if great unseen creatures were flying about him, striking at him with black, featherless wings. The air seemed to be in motion.
He caught himself firmly.
“Got to cut it out!” he mumbled under his breath. “Getting dippy! Likely to bite somebody! Got to think about something else!”
He began to think about the jewels; and then his mind shifted, and he was thinking of the woman from whom he and his companions had stolen the pendant. She had been called “Mother of the Friendless.” The jewels had been given to her by a rich patron, to assist in the work of providing for the many who were dependent on her for charity.
The wolves had done a clever bit of work that time. They had caught the jewels while they were in process of transfer from the original owner to the old woman—
Another tangent. Louie was thinking with cold amusement of the fate of Madam Celia, the “Mother of the Friendless.” Luck had turned against her, with the loss of the jewels. Others who had helped her in her earlier years had turned away after that—as if the old woman had suffered contamination by accepting this gift, bequeathed by a certain rather notorious beauty whose affairs had upset thrones and dynasties.