第64章 THE NOISELESS DEATH(4)

"You stool-pigeon! You did this for Burke!"Griggs sought still to maintain his air of innocence, and he strove well, since he knew that he fought for his life against those whom he had outraged.As he spoke again, his tones were tremulous with sincerity--perhaps that tremulousness was born chiefly of fear, yet to the ear his words came stoutly enough for truth:

"I swear I didn't! I swear it!"

Mary regarded the protesting man with abhorrence.The perjured wretch shrank before the loathing in her eyes.

"You came to me yesterday," she said, with more of restraint in her voice now, but still with inexorable rancor."You came to me to explain this plan.And you came from him--from Burke!""I swear I was on the level.I was tipped off to the story by a pal," Griggs declared, but at last the assurance was gone out of his voice.He felt the hostility of those about him.

Garson broke in ferociously.

"It's a frame-up!" he said.His tones came in a deadened roar of wrath.

On the instant, aware that further subterfuge could be of no avail, Griggs swaggered defiance.

"And what if it is true?" he drawled, with a resumption of his aristocratic manner, while his eyes swept the group balefully.

He plucked the police whistle from his waistcoat-pocket, and raised it to his lips.

He moved too slowly.In the same moment of his action, Garson had pulled the pistol from his pocket, had pressed the trigger.

There came no spurt of flame.There was no sound--save perhaps a faint clicking noise.But the man with the whistle at his lips suddenly ceased movement, stood absolutely still for the space of a breath.Then, he trembled horribly, and in the next instant crashed to the floor, where he lay rigid, dead.

"Damn you--I've got you!" Garson sneered through clenched teeth.

His eyes were like balls of fire.There was a frightful grin of triumph twisting his mouth in this minute of punishment.

In the first second of the tragedy, Dick had not understood.

Indeed, he was still dazed by the suddenness of it all.But the falling of Griggs before the leveled weapon of the other man, there to lie in that ghastly immobility, made him to understand.

He leaped toward Garson--would have wrenched the pistol from the other's grasp.In the struggle, it fell to the floor.

Before either could pick it up, there came an interruption.Even in the stress of this scene, Chicago Red had never relaxed his professional caution.A slight noise had caught his ear, he had stooped, listening.Now, he straightened, and called his warning.

"Somebody's opening the front door!"

Garson forgot his weapon in this new alarm.He sprang to the octagonal window, even as Dick took possession of the pistol.

"The street's empty! We must jump for it!" His hate was forgotten now in an emotion still deeper, and he turned to Mary.His face was all gentleness again, where just before it had been evil incarnate, aflame with the lust to destroy."Come on, Mary," he cried.

Already Chicago Red had snapped off the lights of the chandelier, had sprung to the window, thrown open a panel of it, and had vanished into the night, with Dacey at his heels.As Garson would have called out to the girl again in mad anxiety for haste, he was interrupted by Dick:

"She couldn't make it, Garson," he declared coolly and resolutely."You go.It'll be all right, you know.I'll take care of her!""If she's caught----!" There was an indescribable menace in the forger's half-uttered threat.

"She won't be." The quality of sincerity in Dick's voice was more convincing than any vow might have been.

"If she is, I'll get you, that's all," Garson said gravely, as one stating a simple fact that could not be disputed.

Then he glanced down at the body of the man whom he had done to death.

"And you can tell that to Burke!" he said viciously to the dead.

"You damned squealer!" There was a supremely malevolent content in his sneer.