A step sounded from within. It seemed to drag. It seemed as though it were covering some interminable distance inside there. And then the door opened, and an old, decrepit man, who perhaps held down a sort of pensioned night watchman’s job, a lantern in hand, stuck out his head.
“I’ve lost my way,” said Billy Kane quickly. “Can you tell me where Kegler’s place is?”
“You mean the sand docks?” inquired the other.
The man stepped out from the doorway, and pointed back along the river.
“That’s it over there,” he said. “The one beyond our wharf down here.” He glanced at the car. “But you can’t get through here with that car because this bit of road don’t connect—see? You’ll have to go back a bit the way you came.”
Billy Kane held his watch under the lantern’s light. There were neither the five, nor the four, nor the three minutes that he had dared hope might still remain. It was already after ten o’clock!
“Can I get down from here on foot—it’s shorter this way, isn’t it?” asked Billy Kane between closed teeth.
“Yes, sure, you can,” said the man. “But you won’t find no one there. They was expecting some barges in, but they haven’t come yet, and——”
Billy Kane had already swung away from the other, and was making for the river.
“Thanks!” he called out over his shoulder, as he ran. “I’ll leave the car here till I get back.”
He heard some reply from the other, but he could not make out the words. Whatever they were, they were inconsequent now. He, Billy Kane, unless by some miracle, was too late to warn her—and too late perhaps even to save her. He knew fear now as he had never known it before, but it was not fear for himself. And he knew a passion that seemed to find its roots in the very soul of him. If he was too late—at least there would be a reckoning, come what might! His lips twitched in a queer, distorted smile. It was strange! This fear and this passion, though they were supreme within him, seemed curiously under control, and he was abnormally cool and calm now, and his brain, as though lashed into virility by some powerful stimulant, was working swiftly, incisively, leaping in flashes from premises to conclusions.
It was certain that they were already there, but there was still a chance that they had not yet had time to do her any harm. And it must be his wits, not blundering force, that would be its own undoing, that must turn that chance to account. He must play the Rat now in exactly the same way as, when back there in the tenement, the thought had flashed across his mind that he might have played it in the old hag’s room. The chances of success, it was true, were a hundredfold slimmer now than they would have been then; but now it was forced upon him as the only way, and then it had seemed an unnecessary and uncalled-for risk to take. It was the one way now. It might fail, but it would gain him access inside that dark, looming building across the open stretch of brick-and-sand-strewn yard where he was running now; and once inside, if it were not already too late, there must be some way out for her. And if it were too late—well then, the Cherub, and Gypsy Joe, and Clarkie Munn would not have to press the Rat for payment for their work!