But there had been this about it: on the banker’s left forearm, underneath, there had been a curious birth-mark; the derelict had spoken of it, but upon examination the arm showed smooth and bare. The investigator from Mojave had been obviously skeptical until, abruptly, the ragged claimant had taken from his pocket a curious, removable bridge; a dentist in Mojave who had made it, he said, could identify it. It fitted perfectly.
This looked like proof, but the thing was obviously impossible. And then, as “Axworthy” was being taken back to Mojave, he went suddenly stark, staring crazy, repeating over and over, with reference to the bridge:
“It’s the one thing they didn’t get—the one thing....”
And there the matter rested, save that, upon arrival in Mojave, the bridge was found to be missing. The emissary from Mojave seemed to remember a dark-faced stranger who had been seated opposite them in the train, but that was all; the man had jostled against his charge upon alighting; the last proof, if indeed it might be called a proof, was gone.
Annister frowned thoughtfully, his mind upon that canceled check in his pocket. And he was remembering one other thing, and that was the square of paper which he had found among his father’s effects, for on it had been a name, or, rather, two: the name of Hamilton Rook, and of another, unknown to Annister. And as to that Axworthy case, it was common knowledge that lunatics, for instance, entertained frequently the delusion that they were people of importance. There was nothing new in that.
Somehow, it seemed to him that he held in his hands the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle that, even if put together, made but a patchwork of motives and design, which yet, if he could but find the key, would be as clear as crystal.
That paper found in his father’s office; the interview with Childers, at Washington; the long trip westward; the warning message on the train; the big man with the ice-blue eye and the square jaw of a fighter; the attack in the hotel; the meeting with Rook, and the meeting with the girl; the finding of that canceled check—and, last, the matter of those queerly related news items just under his hand—these made a pattern to be unraveled only by the warp and woof of Fate.
And the chance meeting with the bearded stranger at the corner of the street: consider how he would, Annister’s mind kept turning backward to that meeting and those eyes that were like the eyes of a damned soul, malignant, cold, in their abysmal, cold cruelty of discarnate Evil.
Discarnate! That was it; that would express it; for the man, as he recalled him, seemed somehow less than human; there had been about him an aura, an emanation, that was like a tide rising from the depths, from darkness unto darkness....
Annister was scarcely superstitious, but he was again conscious of that icy chill; he shivered, as a man is said to shiver when, according to an ancient superstition, someone is said to be walking over his grave.
He rose, walking to the window, to peer outward into the sunwashed street. The coil was tightening; he felt it; and he was but one man against many. And knowing what he knew, or suspecting what he suspected, it seemed to him all at once that the sunlight had flattened to a heatless flaming of pale radiance; there seemed a menace in it, even as there seemed a menace in the very air, a waiting, a tension, like a fine wire drawn and singing at a pitch too low for sound.
Abruptly he heard a sound; it was like the scratching of a rat in the wainscot, faint and thin. His door was locked.
Now, looking at it, the knob turned, slowly, stealthily. He could see it turning.
Then, faint but unmistakable, came a knock.
_CHAPTER SEVEN_
THROUGH THE DOOR
The knocking was not loud; it was merely a discreet tap; but there was a quality of hurry in it.
Annister, moving without sound on the thick pile of the rug, almost with the same motion turned the key and flung wide the door.
At first he could see nothing. The corridor, thick-piled with shadows even at high noon, showed merely as a darkling glimmer out of which there sprang suddenly a face, like a white, glimmering oval; a voice came, with a quick, hissing sibilance:
“_Ssh!_ Quiet! I must not be seen! Or else he.... Close the door!”
The girl stepped inward swiftly, her white face turned to the man before her in a sort of frozen calm. Annister had a vague impression of having seen her somewhere before: that golden head beneath its close-fitting toque; the faint, remembered odor of fresh violets; the face, with a piquant loveliness just now, however, white and drawn; it was like a strain of music, heard and then forgotten.
Closing the heavy door and locking it, he turned swiftly to the girl.
“Well—?” he said, his gaze upon her in a cold, searching scrutiny. “Isn’t this a trifle—_sudden_?”
But the girl lifted a stony face.
“I have little time,” she said, with a curious, spent breathlessness, as if she had been running. “I am Cleo Ridgley, secretary to Hamilton Rook—that is, I _was_; I am his secretary no longer, but he does not know about it—yet.”
She paused, again with that hard-held breathing, moistening her stiff lips.
“I warned you that day on the train; do you remember? I warned you because I knew Hamilton Rook.... I know him even better now. He meant to kill you, Mr. Annister, and now he schemes—”
“—To use me—is that it?” interrupted Annister dryly; then, at her slow head-shake, he stiffened.
“He would have finished you even after your—agreement—but that is not his way. But he will not make use of you in the way that you think. That careful plan of which he told you—that was just a blind; there are no ranches near enough. The S. S. S.—that, too, was just a part of the story. You see, he wants to keep you here, that is all, until such time as he thinks it necessary to—remove you. But his real motive, his actual plan I know nothing about. I may suspect, but I do not _think_ about it.”
She paused again, her expression rigid, as there sounded a faint, half-audible footfall from the corridor without. It passed.
“He would—kill me—if he knew,” she continued tonelessly. “That warning on the train—I did that at his order. If he could have frightened you off, he would have been satisfied with that, but now, it will be—different, I tell you this on my own account. And now—”she laid a slim hand on his arm—“don’t go to that rendezvous tonight, Mr. Annister. Ellison will be there; you remember him? He was the man who tried to keep you on that train.”
She smiled faintly with her lips, but her eyes were sombre.
“Ellison is Rook’s jackal, just as Rook is—”
The sentence was never completed. There came a coughing grunt from just outside the door, a streak of flame from the half-open transom just above; the girl stiffened, her face went blank; she slid downward to the rug, even as Annister, snapping back the lock, had flung wide the door.
Gun out, he burst into the corridor, as, from the shadows at a far corner, he fancied that he heard the faint echo of a taunting laugh.
But there was no one there.
Rushing to the stair-head, he found nothing, nobody. The man who had fired that shot had used a silencer; he had disappeared, either into one of the bed-chambers to right and left, or down the stair. But it was no time for speculation. The girl would be needing attention, if, indeed, she was not already past all aid.
Annister had wasted no time. But, for a heart-beat, as he raced backward along the hall, his eye was caught and held by the quick glint of metal from the carpet at his feet. Stooping as he ran, he swept up the object, possibly an empty shell; then, on the threshold of his room, recoiled with a gasping oath.
For the girl had vanished!
Stunned, Annister stood silent, mechanically unclosing his stiff fingers upon the object which they held. He stared at it now, rigid with remembrance, and a growing fear.
Oddly twisted and distorted, its dull gold surface glinting dully under the light, the thing that he had found lay on his open palm.
_It was a dentist’s bridge._
_CHAPTER EIGHT_
ODDS—AND THE MAN
Annister had been absent from that room not longer than ten racing seconds. It was unthinkable that the girl had vanished of her own volition, even had it been physically possible.
Glancing around the room, he saw that the windows were closed and bolted; the flooring was solid, substantial; there could be no ingress save by the door through which he had just come.
There was another door; it led to the next room; but Annister, with a habit of inbred caution, had tried it, and found it locked. Now, in two swift strides, he had covered the space between, had tried that door, setting his weight against it as he turned the knob.
Under his weight it gave outward with a sudden slatting clatter. They, whoever they might be, had unlocked it; it had been through this adjoining room that they had taken the girl.
Annister, glancing swiftly around this room, saw that it was obviously unoccupied; the bed had been made up; there was no sort of clue that he could see. The invisible assassin had had a key; that was it, of course.