THE POPULAR SHORT STORY WRITER, journalist, and screenwriter John Russell (1885–1956) is frequently confused with John Russell Fearn, a British writer of American pulp fiction often credited with some of Russell’s stories.
Russell, an American born in Davenport, Iowa, was a reporter for the New York City News Association and the New-York Tribune. He began writing crime and adventure short stories for top magazines and newspapers, then moved to California to work for the motion picture industry. He wrote numerous silent films, his best-known being Beau Geste (1926), which starred Ronald Colman as the titular adventurer; he also worked, uncredited, on the iconic Frankenstein (1931), starring Boris Karloff.
“The Lost God,” a short story originally published in Collier’s Weekly, served as the basis for The Sea God (1930), a Paramount film written and directed by George Abbott. A South Seas adventure, the type of fiction for which Russell was best known, it tells the not-unfamiliar story of an explorer, Phillip “Pink” Barker (Richard Arlen), who becomes a god while battling with Square Deal McCarthy (Eugene Pallette) for the affections of Daisy (Fay Wray). The now lost silent film, Where the Pavement Ends (1923), was based on “The Passion Vine,” a story from Russell’s South Seas story collection, Where the Pavement Ends (1921); it was written and directed by Rex Ingram and starred Alice Terry and Ramon Novarro. The Pagan (1929), a part-silent, part-talking film that also starred Novarro, was based on a similar Russell story.
Russell’s best stories were collected in The Red Mark and Other Stories (1919), Where the Pavement Ends (1921), In Dark Places (1923), and Cops ’n Robbers (1930).
“The Burglar,” originally published in magazine form in the October 1913 issue of New Story Magazine, was first collected in Cops ’n Robbers (New York, W. W. Norton, 1930).
THREE STEPS SHORT of the third floor, and he stopped and grinned to himself inside the blinding mask of the dark, feeling with careful finger tips.
He found the wire at one side, plucked it out in a loop, and severed it neatly, finishing off each end with a scrape of the knife from mechanical habit of thoroughness….
Then he lifted himself over, without even touching that step, as a wolf might break a snare and still shun it in sheer excess of wild caution. He crawled on to the landing. The house was dead as the tomb behind him as he slid along the passage to the rear room.
He was noiseless. He was sure. He was quick. His pulse kept a temperate beat in his throat. His muscles responded smoothly, slipping with silken, steely precision to do his will. His eyes were clear and steady as a cat’s. His eardrums were tuned to finest perception. Every sense of his spare, wiry body was alert, thin drawn.
His was the keen, gaunt perfection of training that the starving thing of prey attains.
In some twenty hours he had not eaten. In some three weeks he had not known a full meal. In some twenty-six years, all he could boast, he had never enjoyed the chance to blunt his fine animal appetites or to dull his fine animal equipment with satiety.
It was in him to live, to endure, to keep his strength where the weaker went to the wall. His nature was the tough, tenacious, elastic, close-compacted metal that does not snap….
Resistless poverty had ground him upon its whetting edge. Remorseless labor had shaped and hardened him. Relentless hunger had driven him forth at last, a cutting tool, finished and ready for crime.
And now he had found his work….
Thin bands of moonlight cut in at an angle through the windows of the rear room. They were big windows, reaching from floor to ceiling, and barred to waist height with graceful iron grilles. They were wide open upon the garden below.
He curled in the heavy shadow along the wall near the door and watched, listened….
Vagrant breaths of the summer night stirred the curtains. Vague rumors of the sleeping city stole mysteriously from the void. Nothing more.
Between winkings, almost without sensible movement, he was across the room to the far side, feeling out the shape and details of the wall cabinet, adjusting his sight to the ghostly reflection of moon glow.
The outer section of the cabinet was a writing desk. A blind, according to his tip. He slipped the bent end of the burnished implement he carried—his sole outfit—against the edge of the lock.
The smooth, lifting pressure gave him his first heave of effort, his first thrill of power. He had a ton at command in that leverage. And the lid came away like the top of a wet cardboard box.
He could make out the interior of the desk dimly. A model desk; there were pigeonholes, paper trays, two rows of shallow wooden drawers. At least, the veneer was of wood, and each inlaid panel was furnished with a neat little glass knob.
His tip saved him the trouble that would have been necessary to establish the incidental fact that behind the trays and the pigeonholes, behind the false fronts and the glass knobs, stood a solid foot of chrome steel plates….
Swiftly, still relying on that valuable tip, he began to unscrew the little glass knobs from the imitation-drawer panels. As he drew each knob off he pressed the tiny screw shaft that was left standing in the wood, and each time he paused, expectant. Even the wonderful tip could not tell him which was the vital knob.
It proved to be the fourth on the left-hand row.
When he pressed, the fourth screw gave like a tiny plunger. The operating current closed. Springs released with an oily snicking. And the whole interior of the cabinet moved outward from the wall in a solid, silent swing like the shift of a scenic illusion.
It was a dainty job. The steps of it fitted like the parts of a jigsaw picture. No hitch, no hurry, no gap, no confusion. He foresaw, he judged, he made the adequate gesture. He applied the exact necessary force. And the act was complete—
It took him three minutes to open the small inner compartment. Three minutes that passed without a jar, without an audible breath, without a hasty movement. Three minutes, until he caught the shock of the snapping steel with deft balance of body, with perfect release of joint and sinew….
He did not grab.
He searched the inner compartment lightly with one hand. When he drew it out, it brought a tiny, flat leather-bound casket. Kneeling there beside the open door of the safe at the edge of the moonlight band, he turned back the cover of the casket.
The moment of success is the test of the criminal. Achievement shows the nerve of the social wolf. Method, judgment, readiness retain their steadfast, savage purpose—or weaken and fumble in the flurry of desire.
He was under full control. His brain was level, cool. His heart had not jumped a stroke. He kept everything he had used about him. Nothing was mislaid. He knew his precise position. He was ready to flit on the instant, leaving no mark, no clue behind. He was fit. He proved it now.
Gently he picked out the Thing that nestled in the casket on its velvet bed.
He lifted the Thing between finger and thumb, as one might lift a sparrow’s egg, and held it before him so that the moonlight fell upon it and was knotted there in a tangle of pale glory and was wafted through in delicate strands of spectral splendor….
He gazed, quietly fascinated, not by the beauty of what he saw, but by what it meant to him.
A sound beat upon his ear—from close at hand—in the same room. He turned his head with birdlike quickness. For the rest he did not move, did not start.
“Keep it right there,” said a voice dryly, calmly.
He kept it there.
“Just as you are,” advised the voice.
He obeyed the suggestion.
“Pretty effect!”
A figure detached itself from the shadows about the doorway. As it advanced into the moonlight it was revealed as that of a man, tall, powerfully built, massively shouldered.
He was draped in an ample dressing gown, hanging loose and untied. He carried a big revolver in his fist carelessly, with the ease of habit. He had the air of one just aroused from a nap, and not at all excited by the incident.
He must have been a magnificent specimen of physical development at one time, this man. Even now he was little more than just beyond the ripeness of his powers. A fleshy droop under the eyes scarce marred his hard-cut features. A certain grossness about the body seemed no clog upon his strength. A heeling tread was as formidable without the spring and litheness it must once have owned.
He was still young, in spite of the marks of indulgence; easy, masterful, and sure in every gesture.
He stood regarding the glistening marvel in the moonshine for an appreciative moment. Then he reached out casually with his free hand.
“I’ll take it….Thanks!”
He turned his bold, confident face down upon the burglar with a grimly humorous smile. The burglar knelt staring up at him, immobile. Idly, almost indifferently, the big man’s hand closed over the extended fingers, took the prize, weighed it an instant, and passed it to a waistcoat pocket.
His eyes were still fixed upon the burglar in lazy mockery. It was all so easy a triumph.
“Get up!”
The voice was deeper and shorter now that the dramatic effectiveness of the incident was complete.
The burglar stood up….
The big man inspected him. His lip lifted as he took in the other’s commonplace exterior. His glance sharpened as he noted each detail of lean wretchedness, of furtive shabbiness.
He dominated his captive in pride and arrogance, scowling down at him.
“And you’re the lad who thought he could lift the Rangely diamond!” he exclaimed incredulously. “You!”
He continued his survey.
“Here’s ambition!”
But his curious glance traveled beyond to the rifled safe, standing wide, and suddenly sarcasm was not adequate to him.
“Now tell me how in hell you did it?”
It rumbled from him in quick anger. The anger of privileged grievance and righteous disappointment.
“How the hell did you get that box open?”
The burglar said nothing.
The big head sank forward. The voice slid down another note.
“Look here,” his restraint of word was ominous, “I think you’d better answer up promptly like a wise little man. I’ve a mind anyway to smash you like a bug! It’d please me a whole lot, and there’s nothing to keep me, you know!…
“I want to hear how a poor sap like you managed to waltz right into that safe!…I’m waiting!”
There was something rawer and closer than menace in the tone.
“I got a tip,” answered the burglar sullenly, at last.
“Where?”
“Off—a guy.”
“What guy?”
“Usta work for a safe company.”
There was silence between them for a time. A silence because the big man was pulling at the band of his collar.
“Never had to force it at all?”
“No.”
“Never even figured to force it?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re some master hand, ain’t you! Then what?”
“I watched.”
“The house?”
“Yes.”
“Go on!”
“And the newspapers.”
“Well?”
“I saw where the old lady—where Mrs. Rangely was jumped to the hospital yest’d’y—and her husban’ hired a room to stay near her.”
“And—the son?”
“I saw where it said the son was livin’ at some club or ’nother.”
“Servants?”
“I saw the last of ’m go out two hours ago.”
“Some student! Some clever crook, eh?…So then you thought you had your chance?”
“Yes.”
“Having doped it all down to a fine point like they do in the books, you thought you’d just happen along and scoop up the Rangely diamond! You thought that?”
“Yes.”
“And I bet you fell into the wires a dozen times on your way up. Do you know that stairway is wired?”
“Yeah.”
“Do, eh?…Where?”
The burglar told him.
“And you dodged the connections?”
“I cut ’m.”
Sudden wrath flared in the questioner.
“Why, damn your grubby little soul, anyway! Where did you get the brazen cheek to think of a job like this? Say—who the hell are you, anyhow?”
He gathered the slack of the dressing gown under an arm and took one heavy stride. The huge revolver jammed against the captive’s ribs. The hard-jawed face sneered into his with brutal contempt….
“Did you ever turn a big trick?”
“No.”
“Did you ever blow a box?”
“No.”
“Did you ever pull off anything above petty larceny in your life?”
He emphasized each question with the gun muzzle.
“No,” muttered the burglar.
“Then what are you doing here? By Jove! I hoped it was somebody of some account. I hoped, anyway, it might be somebody!…Have you got any record of any kind?”
“Nah.”
“And still you had the gall to go after the Rangely diamond! Didn’t you know the best men in the business would have their work cut out to cop such a prize? Didn’t you know the smartest operators in the world would be none too smart for this job? Men like Max Shimburn, or Perry, or even Meadow himself? And you sticking your dirty little paws into the game!…”
He gave a final thrust that sent the other spinning back upon the door of the safe.
The act of violence seemed to make him aware for the first time of the curious height to which his surge of personal resentment had risen.
He laughed at himself.
“Why look at me getting all fussed up!” he observed.
He considered a moment. When he spoke again his voice had regained something of its former dry calm. His manner, too, had reverted somewhat to the self-appreciatory dramatic….
“We’ll teach you a lesson,” he decided. “We’ll teach you to stick to frisking and till-banking and second-story work—where you belong!”
The burglar stared at him.
“You need to be shown, you guttersnipe! You need to be put in your proper place. Jobs like this are not for such as you….I’ll prove it!”
No whimsically cruel punishment would have seemed beyond the possible fancy of that contemptuous colossus.
“Beat it!” he growled.
The burglar still stared.
“That’s what. You’re not important enough! I’m giving you just what you’re worth. I’m ignoring you. Understand?…On your way out of this house and don’t linger!”
He stood there in the moonlight, a powerful, commanding figure, smiling to himself once more at his conceit, restored to casual amusement by his own fanciful disposal of the situation and the effective little play he had made of it. The picture of confidence, strength, and assurance.
For an instant longer the burglar stared, expressionless. Perhaps he was too crushed to understand. The big man banished him with a gesture.
He obeyed….
He slid away from the safe. He glided along the side of the room. He did not even look back from the doorway. He passed through to the hall, to the head of the stairs. He began his descent, an audible descent.
He obeyed….
But at the third stair from the top he introduced a trifling variation into the maneuver of retreat.
He stayed for an instant—just the fleeting fraction of a minute, while his weight bore upon the step; while he stooped; while his nimble fingers found the two free ends of the severed wire and touched, merely touched, the exposed tips of copper, one upon the other.
When he continued his flight it was as if he had not paused at all.
He obeyed.
But at the second floor he deviated again from the letter of his instructions.
He left the balustrade and crept down the hall toward the rear room, just as he had done at his first entrance. The rear room was similar to the one above. Like that, it was empty. Like that, its windows opened wide on the garden side….
The burglar made straight to the farther window. He lifted himself over the ornamental grille. The frame gave him a handhold.
At the back of the house next to the Rangely residence was a one-story conservatory extension. It was vine-grown, flat-roofed.
He knew the exact measurement of the gap from the window ledge to the coping of that room. He bridged it in a step. For a space he was in the full eye of the moon. For such a space as a cat needs to dart across a fence. After that he disappeared from view at the extreme rear end of the conservatory roof in the black shadow of the chimney that raised its square bulk like a tower.
He had obeyed, now he waited….
For all his alertness he was never quite certain whence came the first definite sign of results. Nor exactly when it came.
But presently there was some living presence in the garden below him. Presently, too, he knew that feet were softly astir in the basement of the Rangely house. At about the same time he was made aware of furtive movement in the side street, beyond the wall that hedged the garden two houses above. And glancing up at the sky line of the block he had a glimpse of a police cap spotted against the star dust for a wink….
It was a circling attack, collected and delivered with a promptness, an energy, a cautious eagerness that offered startling proof of the standing of the Rangely family, the importance of the Rangely residence, and the value of the Rangely possessions in the anxious view of the authorities.
It came out of the void of the sleeping city, starting at the flicker of a needle on a dial, centering like a sweep of hornets, closing with a full cordon.
To an observer of ordinary police methods it might have seemed amazing, almost supernatural. To the initiated it might have furnished a cynic commentary on the efficiency that is reserved for the need of the wealthy and the great.
No slighting an emergency call from that locality. The response was swift and adequate….
Meanwhile the man who crouched unseen in the shadow of the chimney on the observatory wing fixed his gaze upon the third-floor windows of the Rangely house.
Those windows were large. They were open from floor to ceiling. From his vantage some fifty feet away he was placed so as to command a low-angled sweep of vision over the sills.
He waited as a man in the pit waits for the rise of the curtain.
And when it did lift it went up on a smash of tense action….
A muffled shout came from the depths of the house—the first challenge; the stamp of feet; then two bursting shots.
“Stand!” bellowed a bull voice. “Who’s there?…Stand, or I’ll fire again!”
The rush had checked on the stairs. Evidently a competent revolver was commanding that well.
“Inspector Lavery and ten men!” came the answer.
A pause, dropping in like the suck of a wave before its breaking. A pause that was tense with possibilities and indecision.
Then—
“Police?” rumbled the big voice. “What’s all the excitement?”
The third-floor rear leaped with sudden radiance as the bulbs were switched on.
“All right, police!”
Upon the brilliantly lighted stage beyond the open windows appeared a knot of blue uniforms. Crowding in the doorway the policemen found themselves confronted by a young giant in a dressing robe who faced them coolly, a fisted weapon hanging by his side.
“Inspector Lavery?” he inquired. “Charmed, I’m sure! How did you get in?”
The inspector came forward.
“Walked in,” he returned crisply. “The front door was open for all and sundry. And you, Mr.—”
“Rangely is my name.”
The inspector looked him over.
“You live here?” he inquired, with considerably less rasp to his tone.
“At present, in the absence of my parents. But—I don’t understand. The door open? The outer door?”
“And an alarm was touched from here about seven minutes ago.”
“Alarm? Strange!…I rang no alarm.”
“It was automatic. You have heard nothing? No disturbance in the house?”
“Not until I was wakened by tramping on the stairs and fired at random just now.”
“You’re quick with a gun!” commented the inspector grimly. “The servants?”
“Gone for the night.”
The inspector turned his head.
“Well?”
“Nothing, sir,” came a respectful answer from the hall. “Everything seems to be all right. We’ve covered the house.”
“Is Devlin satisfied?”
“I’ll ask him to report, sir.”
The inspector looked again at the big, confident, easily interested young man who occupied the middle of the floor. Nothing could have been more reassuring, more solid and untroubled than that same young man.
“Perhaps I forgot to close the door when I came in,” he was saying. “Perhaps I even touched the alarm. I’m not very familiar with the arrangements. Anyway—” He waved a casual hand while he dropped the revolver carelessly in his dressing-gown pocket. “Anyway—here is the house, and here am I. Quite at your service, but in no danger that I know of.”
The inspector hesitated….
In the pause, through the attendant group in the doorway, came thrusting an awkward, undersized man in common clothes who dropped a suit case at the inspector’s feet with a bang and grinned with a most evil squint.
“Well, Devlin?”
“Front room—found ’em under th’ bed in the front room,” announced the newcomer, in a quaint, chuckling cackle. “Jes’ give ’em the once over!”
He kicked open the suitcase as it lay.
Every man within eyeshot stood transfixed….
“As classy a set of can openers as y’ll ever see!” observed Mr. Devlin, rubbing his hands with extraordinary gusto. “Money can’t buy no better. They ain’t made no better. Poems! A package of poems in steel, sir. That’s what they are—poems!”
The inspector looked up sharply.
“That all?”
“Except that the boy who owned ’em has been makin’ hisself damn comfortable in that front room this evening! Reg’ler lordin’ it. Must ’a’ took a nap in there. Nerve! How about it for nerve?”
“You hear this, Mr.—Rangely?”
The host shrugged in frank surprise.
“Extraordinary! Apparently some one has been here—after all.”
The meager individual who had brought the suitcase turned toward the speaker, dropping his head with a curious twist. A misshapen finger plucked the inspector’s arm….
“Who does he say he is?”
“Young Rangely.”
“Huh! Well, he ain’t,” cackled Devlin, squinting. “Herbert Rangely’s about the size an’ shape of a stewed prune. This boy’d make six—Look out!”
A flash of steel from the dressing-gown pocket was swift, but no swifter than the thin spurt of yellow flame that jumped to meet it….
The report was drowned in a shock of sound like the thunder of a torrent, prisoned and plunging for freedom, a roar that pulsed with the wild fury of untamed forces, cornered and struggling.
Through the haze of the electrics on that third-floor stage a gigantic figure flailed amid a writhing mass of blue, and drove with mighty limbs toward the nearest window.
Steadily it made its way, like some slow-moving polyp of the depths, impeded but unmastered by clinging incrustations.
It seemed that nothing could stop it.
It reached the window, it caught the grille, it hurled itself bodily at space in one magnificent heave….
But there it stayed….
The captors would not loosen. They were many, and others came to help. The whole invading force joined the tussle. And the many were too many—
After a moment of swaying doubt the center of the fight collapsed. The group bore back and drew its vortex with it. The roaring ceased. Silence, rushing in, was like an ache in the ears.
A rippling police whistle called the last of the inspector’s reserves—
But there was no more resistance in the giant.
Standing once more in the middle of the room under the lights, half naked, great breast heaving, legs wide apart, he submitted while they snapped his wrists together behind his back, defiant, cursing them with his blazing beast’s eyes, but beaten.
“By God!” broke from him in a gust. “You’d never ’a’ got me if you hadn’t put that bullet through my arm!”
“Don’t y’ fool y’rself!”
It was the detective, Devlin, who answered. He was peering up at the captive with button-bright eyes and rubbing his hands briskly.
“Don’t y’ fool y’rself. We got y’ because y’r time had come! How about that for a little suggestion? Two years ago y’d ’a’ popped through that window, bullet and all, cops and all, and hell itself couldn’t ’a’ stopped y’. Y’ could ‘a’ done it then. But not now. Not now. It ain’t in y’ no more!…How d’y’ like the notion?”
The prisoner snarled down at him, crimson-faced.
Devlin cackled.
“Don’t like it, eh? It’s true. Two years more of success—two years more of easy money—two years more of night clubs and speakeasies—two years more of loafin’ and fifty-cent smokes, of gamblin’ and women—that’s what’s done it for you, ol’ boy!”
He plucked a roll of fat along the big man’s ribs. He prodded his grossness. He pointed out the sag of the cheeks and the thinning at the temples, while the captive raged.
All with the veriest nonchalance, the impersonal interest of the clinical demonstrator….
Only his glittering little eyes betrayed a more concrete meaning behind.
“That’s what’s the matter, ol’ boy. Pret’ tough! But you must ’a’ seen it comin’. A man like you, with such opportunities! Hell, you must ’a’ seen the time comin’. The time when y’d be done, like all the rest.”
The big man had gone from poppy red to wax white.
“Damn you!” he choked. “Shut up, you little fiend. You don’t know anything about me!”
“Oh, don’t I?” cackled Devlin, springing back and pointing a crooked finger. “I wonder! I wonder if I don’t—Mr. Meadow. Mr. Silver-gilt, Silk-stocking Meadow, Mr. Sportin’-life, Top-notcher Meadow, Mr. Jim Meadow, of Nowhere, wanted Everywhere, last seen Somewhere, and headed Anywhere!…I wonder if I don’t!”
A babble of excited tongues burst at the name.
“Are you sure, Devlin?” cried the inspector. “Meadow! He’s never been caught!”
“Look at his face,” triumphed the detective. “It’s writ there. He’s never been caught, no! That’s why I got his goat so easy. Look at him!”
In fact the prisoner could not control himself to put on a denial. Chagrin and rage held him helpless.
“James B. Meadow,” chuckled Devlin. “Million-dollar thief, kid-glove crook, gentleman burglar—the master that never yet did a day in stir! I got one flash at him once, and that’s as near as anybody has ever come to him before….
“There he is! And we got him, because his time was come. Ripe. He was ripe and we picked him, that’s all!”
It was a bit of theatricalism to have suited the taste of the prisoner himself, had the lines, and the supers, and the properties been somewhat altered.
He held the center. The police gathered about him with avid, exultant eyes, like a pack of hounds that have brought the biggest boar of the chase to bay.
“I only wish we’d got him at work,” observed the inspector, dwelling on him fondly. “It’s too tame a way to grab a guy with his record!”
But in the interval Devlin had discovered the wall cabinet. He swung it wide with a cackle.
“Oh, I guess it ain’t so tame as you think! That’s the Rangely safe, chief. You may have heard of it!”
“Cracked?”
“You bet!” Devlin’s eyes were like points of fire. “And chief—this—this is where the Rangely diamond lives!”
But the inspector was the first to find the inner compartment—empty!
“Then it’s moved,” he commented dryly.
Devlin forgot to cackle.
“Don’t tell me—” he began, and stopped.
He scratched his head.
“By golly, let’s see them tools.”
He swung around to the suitcase and pounced on the steel gems it contained.
“Meadow,” he snapped, jumping up. “You never cracked that safe!”
“Didn’t I?” sneered the prisoner.
Devlin was at the cabinet again, examining the mechanism.
“No, you didn’t! The outer door’s been worked with its proper combination. Not cracked at all. Them glass drawer knobs have something to do with it—and I shouldn’t wonder—
“And if it was you who used the combination, why’d you bring all them tools, and a pint of soup? No! You came expectin’ to blow her. Don’t tell me!”
The prisoner smiled superior.
“The inner box has been forced all right,” continued Devlin. “But the guy never had your beauty outfit. He wouldn’t need it. He used a plain jimmy. And he didn’t work like you!”
“No?”
“I know your signature, ol’ boy….See here, what’s it mean?”
The prisoner shrugged.
Devlin shook an ugly finger under his nose.
“That diamond’s been took, Meadow! If you got a pal—”
Meadow laughed at him.
“No, not that,” acknowledged Devlin, totally at a loss. “You never took one. But there’s been a hell of a funny evenin’ around here, first and last. Come across, ol’ boy. What was it?”
The prisoner smiled….
Devlin watched him with bright, squinting eyes, head dropped askew, boring at him.
“By gol!” he breathed.
“By gol, I might have guessed! Of course. Somebody beat y’ to it! Waterloo! It’s y’r Waterloo, this night. Fat, and flabby, and off y’r game, and y’ fall asleep in the next room while somebody beats you to it! The time had to come. It came tonight—all at once—all in a swoop. First y’ lose one of the best cribs y’ ever tackled, and then y’ get pinched on the spot. Dished! Pinched beside another feller’s leavin’s!…Dished!…Done!”
He cackled into the captive’s face.
Meadow had gone white again under the jeering lash of the detective so skillfully wielded. But he held himself with an effort.
“Think so?”
“I know so. And—tell y’, Meadow. Let me tell y’ one thing….Listen—”
He laid finger into palm, and emphasized each word slowly.
“The crook that got that diamond—whoever he was—is a better crook than you. He may be a slob. He may be a green hand—likely he was, with that jimmy. But to come and crack the crib you was after, under your nose, and such a crib! And to get away with the plum!
“Meadow, I’m glad to get you. But if I had a chance to bargain I’d exchange you in a minute—yes—ten like you, like what you are now—for just one good look at that feller!…
“He’s goin’ to make trouble, big trouble. It may take years to find him. It may be years before he loses his punch and goes off his game like you. I tell you, you’re done! You’re no account! And him—he’s just comin’!”
The quivering captive could endure no more. His pride, his self-love, his egotism—the monstrous bloated egotism of the criminal—had been slashed to the quick.
He cried out under it, as Devlin had meant he should.
“Is that so?” he yelled hoarsely. “Well, that’s all the good you are, you shrimpy sleuth! Done? I may be a little out of training. I may have run into a rotten string of luck. But I’ll show you whether I’m done or not.
“Yes, there was another guy on this job! Yes, he tried to butt in on my crib! And how far did he get with it, do you suppose? How far do you think I let him travel with my swag?
“He was a sniveling little wharf rat. Somehow, by dumb luck, he had picked up the combo of that safe. By more dumb luck he got the diamond. And then—I blew him back where he belonged….
“I’m done, am I? Feel here—in what you’ve left of my vest. The right-hand pocket!”
Devlin sprang to him, smiling.
“I hand it to you, Jim,” he cackled. “You’re a wonder! Gents—”
He fumbled in the pocket while the bluecoats pressed eagerly around.
“Gents, we have here that well-known wonder of the world, famed in song and story—the Rangely diamond!”
There was a moment’s strained silence in the rear room of the third floor, on that lighted stage offered to the windows of the night….
Then Devlin’s curiously hushed addition cut across it.
“Rangely h-ell! It’s glass!…It’s one of them blasted glass knobs off—that—blasted—safe—front!”
Such was the crisis of that impromptu midnight drama. It is likely that it might have afforded further interest.
But the audience did not wait to see. The audience had had enough. The audience was quite content to leave the action at that point, and to slip gently down the vine-laddered rear wall of the conservatory.
Safely started, he began a circumspect flight over the fences and through the yards to the far end of the block, unsuspected and unpursued….
He was noiseless. He was sure. He was quick. He gave his undivided attention to the immediate problem of getting back to his lair. He was the keen hunting prowler of the night. He had made his kill. He had done more, he had stricken down and removed from the meat trail a competitor who had interfered with his quest, a rival whose cunning had failed to match his own, a fellow wolf whose day was done.
Now he was hurrying away with his unsatisfied hunger and his lusting appetite, hurrying toward the appeasement of that hunger and that lust. But even in his triumph, even in his hour of success, he did not slacken a nerve from his savage tension, his readiness, his craft, his precision. For he was perfectly fitted for the work of prey. And he had never yet known satiety….
Only once he relaxed, when it was quite safe.
Under the edge of a garden wall, where the moonshine filtered among the lilac bushes, he took from his pocket and held in the cup of his hands for a moment a Thing, a glorious, delicate drop of shimmery light….The Rangely diamond.