The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 10

"I see--you mean you stole it, at the Plaza?"

"Not at all, monsieur!" she murmured languidly back. Then she drew a deeper breath, and sat more rigid in her straight-back chair.

Something about her face, at that moment, puzzled me. It seemed to hold some latent note of confidence. The last trace of fear had fled from it. There was something strangely like triumph, m.u.f.fled triumph, in it.

An arrow of apprehension shot through me, as I stooped peering into her shadowy eyes. It went through my entire body, sharp as an electric shock. It brought me wheeling suddenly about with my back to her and my face to the open room.

Then I understood. I saw through it all, in one tingling second. For there, facing me, stood the figure of a man in navy blue. It was the same figure that I had followed through the square.

But now there was nothing secretive or circuitous about his att.i.tude.

It was quite the other way; for as he stood there he held a blue-barreled revolver in his hand. And I could see, only too plainly, that it was leveled directly at me. The woman's ruse had worked. I had wasted too much time. The confederate for whom she was plainly waiting had come to her rescue.

The man took three or four steps farther into the room. His revolver was still covering me. I heard a little gasp from the woman as she rose to her feet. I took it for a gasp of astonishment.

"You are going to kill him?" she cried in German.

"Haven't I got to?" asked back the man. He spoke in English and without an accent. "Don't you understand _he's a safe-breaker_? He's broken into this house? So! He's caught in the act--he's shot in self-defense!"

I watched the gun barrel. The man's calm words seemed to horrify the woman at my side. But there was not a trace of pity in her voice as she spoke again.

"Wait!" she cried.

"Why?" asked the man with the gun.

"He has everything--the code, the plans, everything."

"Get them!" commanded the man.

"But he's armed," she explained.

A sneer crossed the other's impa.s.sive face.

"What if he is? Take his gun; take everything!"

The woman stepped close to where I stood. Again I came within the radius of her perfumes. I could even feel her breath on my face. Her movements were more than ever panther-like as she went through my pockets, one by one. Yet her flas.h.i.+ng and dextrous hands found no revolver, for the simple reason there was none to find. This puzzled and worried her.

"Hurry up!" commanded the man covering me.

She stepped back and to one side, with the packet in her hand.

"Now close the windows!" ordered the man.

My heart went down in my boots as I heard the thud of that second closed window. There was going to be no waste of time.

I thought of catching the woman and holding her s.h.i.+eld-like before me.

I thought of the telephone; the light-switch; the window. But they all seemed hopeless.

The woman turned away, holding her hands over her ears. The incongruous thought flashed through me that two hours before I had called the city flat and stale; and here, within a rifle shot of my own door, I was standing face to face with death itself!

"Look here," I cried, much as I hated to, "what do you get out of this?"

"_You!_" said the man.

"And what good will that do?"

"It'll probably shut your mouth, for one thing!"

"But there are other mouths," I cried. "And I'm afraid they'll have a great deal to say."

"I'm ready for them!" was his answer.

I could see his arm raise a little, and straighten out as it raised.

The gun barrel was nothing but a black "O" at the end of my line of vision. I felt my heart stop, for I surmised what the movement meant.

Then I laughed outright, aloud, and altogether foolishly and hysterically.

The strain had been too much for me, and the snap of the release had come too suddenly, too unexpectedly. I could see the man with the gun blink perplexedly, for a second or two, and then I could see the tightening of his thin-lipped mouth. But that was not all I had seen.

For through the half-closed door I had caught sight of the slowly raised iron rod, the very rod I had wrenched from the outer hall window. I had seen its descent at the moment I realized the finality in those quickly tightening lips.

It struck the arm on its downward sweep. But it was not in time to stop the discharge of the revolver. The report thundered through the room as the bullet ripped and splintered into the pine of the floor.

At the same moment the discharged firearm went spinning across the room, and as the man who held it went down with the blow, young Palmer himself swung toward me through the drifting smoke.

As he did so, I turned to the woman with her hands still pressed to her ears. With one fierce jerk I tore the rubber-banded packet of papers from her clutch.

"But the code?" gasped Palmer, as he tugged crazily at the safe door.

I did not answer him, for a sudden movement from the woman arrested my attention. She had stooped and caught up the fallen revolver. The man in blue, rolling over on his hip, was drawing a second gun from his pocket.

"Quick!" I called to Palmer as I swung him by the armpit and sent him catapulting out through the smoke to the open door. "Quick--and duck low!"

The shots came together as we stumbled against the stairhead.

"Quick!" I repeated, as I pulled him after me.

"But the code?" he cried.

"I've got it!" I called out to him as we went panting and plunging down through that three-tiered well of darkness to the street and liberty.

"I've got it--I've got everything!"

CHAPTER IV

THE OPEN DOOR

"Shall I call the car, sir?" asked the solicitous-eyed Benson, covertly watching me as I made ready for the street.