“Forget it!” he said roughly. “I’ve played straight with you, and before you go spilling any beans to the police you’d better get onto yourself. You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I know that the Wop was murdered to-night in Wong Yen’s by you, or your orders,” she said passionately. “I know that the Wop is dead—that is enough!”
“Nix!” said Billy Kane, alias Bundy Morgan, alias the Rat. “The Wop isn’t dead, and he isn’t in Wong Yen’s either. I pulled him out of there.”
She stared at him, coming still closer in the darkness until he could feel her breath upon his face. It was a long minute before she spoke.
“I do not believe you!” she said in a dead voice.
“I did not expect you to!” The Rat’s tones were insolent now. “But you can prove it, can’t you? The Wop’s safe. He’s at a minister’s house. The minister’s name is Claflin. I don’t know the address, but you can easily find it. It wouldn’t do me any good to lie to you, would it? You can’t drag me to the police by force, and whether you squealed to them in the next ten minutes, or half an hour later after finding out I was lying, I’d be just as bad off, wouldn’t I?”
She drew back—but her eyes were still fixed steadily upon him.
“I can find this minister’s house in that half hour, I think,” she said in a low voice. “And the Wop—if he is there.” Her voice hardened. “You are quite right, Bundy, it will have done you no good to have lied. I promise you that! If I do not find the Wop, the police will find—_you_!”
Billy Kane stood in the lane for a moment, staring after her through the darkness and his lips puckered in a sort of impotent little smile. She would find the Wop, of course, and thereafter the old relationship between them would be reëstablished, and——.
He whirled suddenly, and in an instant was astride the top of the fence, his face set and hard, as there came, low but unmistakably from the interior of Barloff’s house, the sound of blows and the rending of wood, as though a door were being violently forced. A glance showed him that the window had been closed and the shade drawn down. Barloff had evidently got that far in safeguarding himself, only Red Vallon’s Apachés had struck, perhaps suspicious of _her_ visit, without waiting for the old Russian to go out! What else could those blows mean but an attack on Barloff? Certainly, Barloff must still be in there, for Barloff, warned, wasn’t going out; he was going to appeal, by telephone presumably, to the police.