The Red Mouse Part 5

Never was victory more certain than at the present time.

"If I win," at last he said with great earnestness, "you will swear to leave me--you will leave _us_ alone?"

Challoner nodded.

Hargraves seized his gla.s.s and extended it to bind the bargain.

Challoner seized his, but found it empty. He left his seat and came back with it filled.

"It's a go!" he said, and pressed a b.u.t.ton.

With the same sense of responsibility upon him, Pemmican responded; and on Challoner's order he went out and returned with ten new packs of cards, tossing them on the table with their wrappers unbroken.

"Cold hands," announced Challoner, "five hundred a throw."

Hargraves pulled forth his roll of bills and placed it on the table; then, placing a hand on the arm of Challoner, he exclaimed vehemently, so that the other should not forget it:--

"It's understood now, Challoner, that if I win you're to leave us alone--sure?"

Pemmican left the room and closed the door behind him. Challoner smiled across the table, and a new, strange expression crossed his features that Hargraves did not, could not understand.

"Sure," repeated Challoner, placing the decanter upon the table. Then they started in to play.

Twenty minutes later Pemmican rushed pell-mell into Room A.

"There's a big row on," he said to himself; "a row over a lady and a game of cards."

And so it proved.

There was a row on between the men who occupied Room A, and but for the isolation of the room it was a row that might well have roused the house.

"You've lost, I tell you!" one of the men exclaimed; the other laughed boisterously, defiantly, victoriously.

"If I've lost, so have you!" he answered.

What followed happened in an instant and before Pemmican had been in Room A thirty seconds. For suddenly one of the men there had whipped from his coat-pocket a weapon that glinted in the white light; as suddenly he had taken aim, and then came a flash, a report, a cloud of smoke.

Pemmican looked on, speechless.

Presently one of the men crossed the room and sank into a chair in a dazed sort of fas.h.i.+on, his head lolling across the upholstered arm; while the other glanced about him for an instant, looked at Pemmican, looked at the figure lying on the chair, and then started suddenly toward the door.

Three minutes later Pemmican switched off the lights and plunged the room in darkness.

"A row over a lady," he murmured breathlessly, "a row over a lady and a game of cards."

At two o'clock that morning, Officer Keogh of the night squad, patrolling a dimly lighted thoroughfare in the rear of Cradlebaugh's, stumbled over an object lying in deep shadow.

"Good Lord! It's a man!" said Keogh, stooping down suddenly and as suddenly drawing back. He drew himself together, bent down again, felt cautiously about, wiped his hands and shuddered, and drew back once again, as he whispered to himself:--

"A dead man--shot to death!"

He rapped wildly with his night-stick--the wild, irregular tattoo that makes the slumberer rise suddenly in bed and tremble, and then crouch between the bed-clothes s.h.i.+vering--and pending the arrival of a.s.sistance he stooped once more and fumbled in the pockets of the dead man.

Presently from the breast-pocket of the coat he drew forth a yellow pigskin wallet, and upon its corner in glaring gold, that even in the dim light glittered garishly, appeared the letters, "R. H."

In this wise the body of Colonel Richard Hargraves, man-about-town, was found lying in the gloom at two o'clock that morning.

IV

Officer Keogh, an hour later, under the white light of the desk lamps over at the ---- Precinct, was telling his story to the desk-sergeant behind the rail. The desk-sergeant listened disinterestedly until he heard mentioned the name Cradlebaugh. At that juncture he held up his hand, placed a warning finger on his lips, nodded toward the drowsy doorman and toward two of the reserve squad in the room, and looking Keogh in the eyes, whispered:--

"Officer, speak low."

Keogh, taken aback for the moment, dropped his voice as he went on with his story. Once more the sergeant stopped him.

"The most important thing is just where the body was found. Be exact now, if possible; it's important."

Keogh went on to give a minute description, and wound up by saying:--

"The man was dragged, all right, after he was dead."

The desk-sergeant's eyes narrowed to pin points as he demanded:--

"In which direction?"

"To the west."

The desk-sergeant shook his head portentously, and observed:--

"Looks for sure like this was pulled off in Cradlebaugh's."

"_That's_ what _I've_ been telling everybody," returned Keogh, the pride of proper diagnosis resting cheerfully upon him.

The desk-sergeant shot out his forefinger and exclaimed:--

"The least you have to say about the matter the better. This is not a case for you or for me, but for the captain in the morning."

The captain appeared unusually early in the morning with some half-dozen papers in his hand. Slapping the morning editions, scareheads, uppermost in front of the sergeant, he blurted out:--

"What's this here?"

The sergeant glanced at the topmost sheet and skimmed rapidly over the details.

"Don't know where they got the facts, but it looks like they got 'em _right_."