Now, in the very moment of seeing his dream of the girl turned into flesh and blood, he had lost her, and there was something like death in the face of the big miner as he dropped his hat on the floor and sank into a chair.
After that he did not move so much as a finger from the position into which he had fallen limply. His legs were twisted awkwardly, sprawling across the floor in front of him; one long arm dragged down toward the floor, as if there was no strength in it to support the weight of the labor-hardened hands; his chin was fallen against his breast.
When Ronicky Doone crossed to him and laid a kind hand on his shoulder he did not look up. “It’s ended,” said Bill Gregg faintly. “Now we hit the back trail and forget all about this.” He added with a faint attempt at cynicism: “I’ve just wasted a pile of good money-making time from the mine, that’s all.”
“H’m!” said Ronicky Doone. “Bill, look me in the eye and tell me, man to man, that you’re a liar!” He added: “Can you ever be happy without her, man?”
The cruelty of that speech made Gregg flush and look up sharply. This was exactly what Ronicky Doone wanted.
“I guess they ain’t any use talking about that part of it,” said Gregg huskily.
“Ain’t there? That’s where you and me don’t agree! Why, Bill, look at the way things have gone! You start out with a photograph of a girl. Now you’ve followed her, found her name, tracked her clear across the continent and know her street address, and you’ve given her a chance to see your own face. Ain’t that something done? After you’ve done all that are you going to give up now? Not you, Bill! You’re going to buck up and go ahead full steam. Eh?”
Bill Gregg smiled sourly. “D’you know what she said when I come rushing up and saying: ‘I’m Bill Gregg!’ D’you know what she said?”
“Well?”
“‘Bill Gregg?’ she says. ‘I don’t remember any such name!’
“That took the wind out of me. I only had enough left to say: ‘The gent that was writing those papers to the correspondence school to you from the West, the one you sent your picture to and—’
“‘Sent my picture to!’ she says and looks as if the ground had opened under her feet. ‘You’re mad!’ she says. And then she looks back over her shoulder as much as to wish she was safe back in her house!”
“D’you know why she looked back over her shoulder?”
“Just for the reason I told you.”
“No, Bill. There was a gent standing up there at a window watching her and how she acted. He’s the gent that kept her from writing to you and signing her name. He’s the one who’s kept her in that house. He’s the one that knew we were here watching all the time, that sent out the girl with exact orders how she should act if you was to come out and speak to her when you seen her! Bill, what that girl told you didn’t come out of her own head. It come out of the head of the gent across the way. When you turned your back on her she looked like she’d run after you and try to explain. But the fear of that fellow up in the window was too much for her, and she didn’t dare. Bill, to get at the girl you got to get that gent I seen grinning from the window.”
“Grinning?” asked Bill Gregg, grinding his teeth and starting from his chair. “Was the skunk laughing at me?”
“Sure! Every minute.”
Bill Gregg groaned. “I’ll smash every bone in his ugly head.”
“Shake!” said Ronicky Doone. “That’s the sort of talk I wanted to hear, and I’ll help, Bill. Unless I’m away wrong, it’ll take the best that you and me can do, working together, to put that gent down!”
9. A BOLD VENTURE
But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer, how, above all, to make sure that he was really the power controlling Caroline Smith, were problems which could not be solved in a moment.
Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea. “We’ve waited a week to see her; now that we’ve seen her let’s keep on waiting,” he said, and Ronicky agreed.
They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged for such a length of time that it was impossible to keep it as strictly as it had been observed before. Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long watching and the shock of the disappointment of that day, went completely to pieces and in the early evening fell asleep. But Ronicky Doone went out for a light dinner and came back after dark, refreshed and eager for action, only to find that Bill Gregg was incapable of being roused. He slept like a dead man.
Ronicky went to the window and sat alone. Few of the roomers were home in the house opposite. They were out for the evening, or for dinner, at least, and the face of the building was dark and cold, the light from the street lamp glinting unevenly on the windowpanes. He had sat there staring at the old house so many hours in the past that it was beginning to be like a face to him, to be studied as one might study a human being. And the people it sheltered, the old hag who kept the door, the sneering man and Caroline Smith, were to the house like the thoughts behind a man’s face, an inscrutable face. But, if one cannot pry behind the mask of the human, at least it is possible to enter a house and find—
At this point in his thoughts Ronicky Doone rose with a quickening pulse. Suppose he, alone, entered that house tonight by stealth, like a burglar, and found what he could find?
He brushed the idea away. Instantly it returned to him. The danger of the thing, and danger there certainly would be in the vicinity of him of the sardonic profile, appealed to him more and more keenly. Moreover, he must go alone. The heavy-footed Gregg would be a poor helpmate on such an errand of stealth.
Ronicky turned away from the window, turned back to it and looked once more at the tall front of the building opposite; then he started to get ready for the expedition.
The preparations were simple. He put on a pair of low shoes, very light and with rubber heels. In them he could move with the softness and the speed of a cat. Next he dressed in a dark-gray suit, knowing that this is the color hardest to see at night. His old felt hat he had discarded long before in favor of the prevailing style of the average New Yorker. For this night expedition he put on a cap which drew easily over his ears and had a long visor, shadowing the upper part of his face. Since it might be necessary to remain as invisible as possible, he obscured the last bit of white that showed in his costume, with a black neck scarf.
Then he looked in the glass. A lean face looked back at him, the eyes obscured under the cap, a stern, resolute face, with a distinct threat about it. He hardly recognized himself in the face in the glass.
He went to his suit case and brought out his favorite revolver. It was a long and ponderous weapon to be hidden beneath his clothes, but to Ronicky Doone that gun was a friend well tried in many an adventure. His fingers went deftly over it. It literally fell to pieces at his touch, and he examined it cautiously and carefully in all its parts, looking to the cartridges before he assembled the weapon again. For, if it became necessary to shoot this evening, it would be necessary to shoot to kill.
He then strolled down the street, passing the house opposite, with a close scrutiny. A narrow, paved
