To flee down the stairs now would be rank folly. If there happened to be among these fellows a man of the type of him who sneered, a bullet would catch the fugitive long before he reached the bottom of the staircase. And, since he could not retreat, Ronicky went slowly and steadily ahead, for, certainly, if he stood still, he would be spoken to. He would have to rely now on the very dim light in this hall and the shadow of his cap obscuring his face. If these were roomers, perhaps he would be taken for some newcomer.

But he was hailed at once, and a hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Hello, Pete. What's the dope?"

Ronicky shrugged the hand away and went on.

"Won't talk, curse him. That's because the plant went fluey."

"Maybe not; Pete don't talk much, except to the old man."

"Lemme get at him," said a third voice. "Beat it down to Rooney's. I'm going up with Pete and get what he knows."

And, as Ronicky turned onto the next flight of the stairway, he was overtaken by hurrying feet. The other two had already scurried down toward the front door of the house.

"I got some stuff in my room, Pete," said the friendly fellow who had overtaken him. "Come up and have a jolt, and we can have a talk. 'Lefty' and Monahan think you went flop on the job, but I know better, eh? The old man always picks you for these singles; he never gives me a shot at 'em." Then he added: "Here we are!" And, opening a door in the first hall, he stepped to the center of the room and fumbled at a chain that broke loose and tinkled against glass; eventually he snapped on an electric light. Ronicky Doone saw a powerfully built, bull-necked man, with a soft hat pulled far down on his head. Then the man turned.

It was much against the grain for Ronicky Doone to attack a man by surprise, but necessity is a stern ruler. And the necessity which made him strike made him hit with the speed of a snapping whiplash and the weight of a sledge hammer. Before the other was fully turned that iron-hard set of knuckles crashed against the base of his jaw.

He fell without a murmur, without a struggle, Ronicky catching him in his arms to break the weight of the fall. It was a complete knock-out. The dull eyes, which looked up from the floor, saw nothing. The square, rather brutal, face was relaxed as if in sleep, but here was the type of man who would recuperate with great speed.

Ronicky set about the obvious task which lay before him, as fast as he could. In the man's coat pocket he found a handkerchief which, hard knotted, would serve as a gag. The window curtain was drawn with a stout, thick cord. Ronicky slashed off a convenient length of it and secured the hands and feet of his victim, before he turned the fellow on his face.

Next he went through the pockets of the unconscious man who was only now beginning to stir slightly, as life returned after that stunning blow.

It was beginning to come to Ronicky that there was a strange relation between the men of this house. Here were three who apparently started out to work at night, and yet they were certainly not at all the type of night clerks or night-shift engineers or mechanics. He turned over the hand of the man he had struck down. The palm was as soft as his own.

No, certainly not a laborer. But they were all employed by "the old man." Who was he? And was there some relation between all of these and the man who sneered?

At least Ronicky determined to learn all that could be read in the pockets of his victim. There was only one thing. That was a stub-nosed, heavy automatic.

It was enough to make Ronicky Doone sigh with relief. At least he had not struck some peaceful, law-abiding fellow. Any man might carry a gun—Ronicky himself would have been uncomfortable without some sort of weapon about him but there are guns and guns. This big, ugly automatic seemed specially designed to kill swiftly and surely.

He was considering these deductions when a tap came on the door. Ronicky groaned. Had they come already to find out what kept the senseless victim so long?

"Morgan, oh, Harry Morgan!" called a girl's voice.

Ronicky Doone started. Perhaps—who could tell—this might be Caroline Smith herself, come to tap at the door when he was on the very verge of abandoning the adventure. Suppose it were someone else?

If he ventured out expecting to find Gregg's lady and found instead quite another person—well, women screamed at the slightest provocation, and, if a woman screamed in this house, it seemed exceedingly likely that she would rouse a number of men carrying just such short-nosed, ugly automatics as that which he had just taken from the pocket of Harry Morgan.

In the meantime he must answer something. He could not pretend that the room was empty, for the light must be showing around the door.

"Harry!" called the voice of the girl again. "Do you hear me? Come out! The chief wants you!" And she rattled the door.

Fear that she might open it and, stepping in, see the senseless figure on the floor, alarmed Ronicky. He came close to the door.

"Well?" he demanded, keeping his voice deep, like the voice of Harry Morgan, as well as he could remember it.

"Hurry! The chief, I tell you!"

He snapped out the light and turned resolutely to the door. He felt his faithful Colt, and the feel of the butt was like the touch of a friendly hand before he opened the door.

She was dressed in white and made a glimmering figure in the darkness of the hall, and her hair glimmered, also, almost as if it possessed a light and a life of its own. Ronicky Doone saw that she was a very pretty girl, indeed. Yes, it must be Caroline Smith. The very perfume of young girlhood breathed from her, and very sharply and suddenly he wondered why he should be here to fight the battle of Bill Gregg in this matter—Bill Gregg who slept peacefully and stupidly in the room across the street!

She had turned away, giving him only a side glance, as he came out. "I don't know what's on, something big. The chief's going to give you your big chance—with me."

Ronicky Doone grunted.

"Don't do that," exclaimed the girl impatiently. "I know you think Pete is the top of the world, but that doesn't mean that you can make a good imitation of him. Don't do it, Harry. You'll pass by yourself. You don't need a make-up, and not Pete's on a bet."

They reached the head of the stairs, and Ronicky Doone paused. To go down was to face the mysterious chief whom he had no doubt was the old man to whom Harry Morgan had already referred. In the meantime the conviction grew that this was indeed Caroline Smith. Her free-and-easy way of talk was exactly that of a girl who might become interested in a man whom she had never seen, merely by letters.

"I want to talk to you," said Ronicky, muffling his voice. "I want to talk to you alone."

"To me?" asked the girl, turning toward him. The light from the hall lamp below gave Ronicky the faintest hint of her profile.

"Yes."

"But the chief?"

"He can wait."

She hesitated, apparently drawn by curiosity in one direction, but stopped by another thought. "I suppose he can wait, but, if he gets stirred up about it—oh, we'll, I'll talk to you—but nothing foolish, Harry. Promise me that?"

"Yes."

"Slip into my room for a minute." She led the way a few steps down the hall, and he followed her through the door, working his mind frantically in an effort to find words with which to open his speech before she should see that he was not Harry Morgan and cry out to alarm the house. What should he say? Something about Bill Gregg at once, of course. That was the thing.

The electric light snapped on at the far side of the room. He saw a dressing table, an Empire bed covered with green-figured silk, a pleasant rug on the floor, and, just as he had gathered an impression of delightful femininity from these furnishings, the girl turned from the lamp on the dressing table, and he saw—not Caroline Smith, but a bronze-haired beauty, as different from Bill Gregg's lady as day is from night.

Chapter Eleven
A Cross-Examination

He was conscious then only of green-blue eyes, very wide, very bright, and lips that parted on a word and froze there in silence. The heart of Ronicky Doone leaped with joy; he had passed the crisis in safety. She had not cried out.

"You're not—" he had said in the first moment.

"I am not who?" asked the girl with amazing steadiness. But he saw her hand go back to the dressing table and open, with incredible deftness and speed, the little top drawer behind her.

"Don't do that!" said Ronicky softly, but sharply. "Keep your hand off that table, lady, if you don't mind."

She hesitated a fraction of a second. In that moment she seemed to see that he was in earnest, and that it would be foolish to tamper with him.

"Stand away from that table; sit down yonder."

Again she obeyed without a word. Her eyes, to be sure, flickered here and there about the room, as though they sought some means of sending a warning to her friends, or finding some escape for herself. Then her glance returned to Ronicky Doone.

"Well," she said, as she settled in the chair. "Well?"

A world of meaning in those two small words—a world of dread controlled. He merely stared at her thoughtfully.

"I hit the wrong trail, lady," he said quietly. "I was looking for somebody else."

She started. "You were after—" She stopped.

"That's right, I guess," he admitted.

"How many of you are there?" she asked curiously, so curiously that she seemed to be forgetting the danger. "Poor Carry Smith with a mob—" She stopped suddenly again. "What did you do to Harry Morgan?"

"I left him safe and quiet," said Ronicky Doone.

The girl's face hardened strangely. "What you are, and what your game is I don't know," she said. "But I'll tell you this: I'm letting you play as if you had all the cards in the deck. But you haven't. I've got one ace that'll take all your trumps. Suppose I call once what'll happen to you, pal?"

"You don't dare call," he said.

"Don't dare me," said the girl angrily. "I hate a dare worse than anything in the world, almost." For a moment her green-blue eyes were pools of light flashing angrily at him.

Into the hand of Ronicky Doone, with that magic speed and grace for which his fame was growing so great in the mountain desert, came the long, glimmering body of the revolver, and, holding it at the hip, he threatened her.

She shrank back at that, gasping. For there was an utter surety about this man's handling of the weapon. The heavy gun balanced and steadied in his slim fingers, as if it were no more than a feather's weight.

"I'm talking straight, lady," said Ronicky Doone. "Sit down—pronto!"

In the very act of obedience she straightened again. "It's bluff," she said. "I'm going through that door!" Straight for the door she went, and Ronicky Doone set his teeth.

"Go back!" he commanded. He glided to the door and blocked her way, but the gun hung futile in his hand.

"It's easy to pull a gun, eh?" said the girl, with something of a sneer. "But it takes nerve to use it. Let me through this door!"

"Not in a thousand years," said Ronicky.

She laid her hand on the door and drew it back—it struck his shoulder—and Ronicky gave way with a groan and stood with his head bowed. Inwardly he cursed himself. Doubtless she was used to men who bullied her, as if she were another man of an inferior sort. Doubtless she despised him for his weakness. But, though he gritted his teeth, he could not make himself firm. Those old lessons which sink into a man's soul in the West came back to him and held him. In the helpless rage which possessed him he wanted battle above all things in the world. If half a dozen men had poured through the doorway he would have rejoiced. But this one girl was enough to make him helpless.

He looked up in amazement. She had not gone; in fact, she had closed the door slowly and stood with her back against it, staring at him in a speechless bewilderment.

"What sort of a man are you?" asked the girl at last.

"A fool," said Ronicky slowly. "Go out and round up your friends; I can't stop you."

"No," said the girl thoughtfully, "but that was a poor bluff at stopping me."

He nodded. And she hesitated still, watching his face closely.

"Listen to me," she said suddenly. "I have two minutes to talk to you, and I'll give you those two minutes. You can use them in getting out of the house—I'll show you a way—or you can use them to tell me just why you've come."

In spite of himself Ronicky smiled. "Lady," he said, "if a rat was in a trap d'you think he'd stop very long between a chance of getting clear and a chance to tell how he come to get into the place?"

"I have a perfectly good reason for asking," she answered. "Even if you now get out of the house safely you'll try to come back later on."

"Lady," said Ronicky, "do I look as plumb foolish as that?"

"You're from the West," she said in answer to his slang.

"Yes."

She considered the straight-looking honesty of his eyes. "Out West," she said, "I know you men are different. Not one of the men I know here would take another chance as risky as this, once they were out of it. But out there in the mountains you follow long trails, trails that haven't anything but a hope to lead you along them? Isn't that so?"

"Maybe," admitted Ronicky. "It's the fever out of the gold days, lady. You start out chipping rocks to find the right color; maybe you never find the right color; maybe you never find a streak of pay stuff, but you keep on trying. You're always just sort of around the corner from making a big strike."

She nodded, smiling again, and the smiles changed her pleasantly, it seemed to Ronicky Doone. At first she had impressed him almost as a man, with her cold, steady eyes, but now she was all woman, indeed.

"That's why I say that you'll come back. You won't give up with one failure. Am I right?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno. If the trail fever hits me again—maybe I would come back."

"You started to tell me. It's because of Caroline Smith?"

"Yes."

"You don't have to talk to me," said the girl. "As a matter of fact I shouldn't be here listening to you. But, I don't know why, I want to help you. You—you are in love with Caroline?"

"No," said Ronicky.

Her expression grew grave and cold again. "Then why are you here hunting for her? What do you want with her?"

"Lady," said Ronicky, "I'm going to show you the whole layout of the cards. Maybe you'll take what I say right to headquarters—the man that smiles—and block my game."

"You know him?" she asked sharply.

Apparently that phrase, "the man who smiles," was enough to identify him.

"I've seen him. I dunno what he is, I dunno what you are, lady, but I figure that you and Caroline Smith and everybody else in this house is under the thumb of the gent that smiles."

Her eyes darkened with a shadow of alarm. "Go on," she said curtly.

"I'm not going on to guess about what you all are. All I know is what I'm here trying to do. I'm not working for myself. I'm working for a partner."

She started. "That's the second man, the one who stopped her on the street today?"

"You're pretty well posted," replied Ronicky. "Yes, that's the one. He started after Caroline Smith, not even knowing her name—with just a picture of her. We found out that she lived in sight of the East River, and pretty soon we located her here."

"And what are you hoping to do?"

"To find her and talk to her straight from the shoulder and tell her what a pile Bill has done to get to her—and a lot of other things."

"Can't he find her and tell her those things for himself?"

"He can't talk," said Ronicky. "Not that I'm a pile better, but I could talk better for a friend than he could talk for himself, I figure. If things don't go right then I'll know that the trouble is with the gent with the smile."

"And then?" asked the girl, very excited and grave.

"I'll find him," said Ronicky Doone.

"And—"

"Lady," he replied obliquely, "because I couldn't use a gun on a girl ain't no sign that I can't use it on a gent!"

"I've one thing to tell you," she said, breaking in swiftly on him. "Do what you want—take all the chances you care to—but, if you value your life and the life of your friend, keep away from the man who smiles."

"I'll have a fighting chance, I guess," said Ronicky quietly."

"You'll have no chance at all. The moment he knows your hand is against him, I don't care how brave or how clever you are, you're doomed!"

She spoke with such a passion of conviction that she flushed, and a moment later she was shivering. It might have been the draft from the window which made her gather the hazy-green mantle closer about her and glance over her shoulder; but a grim feeling came to Ronicky Doone that the reason why the girl trembled and her eyes grew wide, was that the mention of "the man who smiles" had brought the thought of him into the room like a breath of cold wind.

"Don't you see," she went on gently, "that I like you? It's the first and the last time that I'm going to see you, so I can talk. I know you're honest, and I know you're brave. Why, I can see your whole character in the way you've stayed by your friend; and, if there's a possible way of helping you, I'll do it. But you must promise me first that you'll never cross the man with the sneer, as you call him."

"There's a sort of a fate in it," said Ronicky slowly. "I don't think I could promise. There's a chill in my bones that tells me I'm going to meet up with him one of these days."

She gasped at that, and, stepping back from him, she appeared to be searching her mind to discover something which would finally and completely convince him. At length she found it.

"Do I look to you like a coward?" she said. "Do I seem to be weak-kneed?"

He shook his head.

"And what will a woman fight hardest for?"

"For the youngsters she's got," said Ronicky after a moment's thought. "And, outside of that, I suppose a girl will fight the hardest to marry the gent she loves."

"And to keep from marrying a man she doesn't love, as she'd try to keep from death?"

"Sure," said Ronicky. "But these days a girl don't have to marry that way."

"I am going to marry the man with the sneer," she said simply enough, and with dull, patient eyes she watched the face of Ronicky wrinkle and grow pale, as if a heavy fist had struck him.

"You?" he asked. "You marry him?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"And you hate the thought of him!"

"I—I don't know. He's kind—"

"You hate him," insisted Ronicky. "And he's to have you, that cold-eyed snake, that devil of a man?" He moved a little, and she turned toward him, smiling faintly and allowing the light to come more clearly and fully on her face. "You're meant for a king o' men, lady; you got the queen in you—it's in the lift of your head. When you find the gent you can love, why, lady, he'll be pretty near the richest man in the world!"

The ghost of a flush bloomed in her cheeks, but her faint smile did not alter, and she seemed to be hearing him from far away. "The man with the sneer," she said at length, "will never talk to me like that, and still—I shall marry him."

"Tell me your name," said Ronicky Doone bluntly.

"My name is Ruth Tolliver."

"Listen to me, Ruth Tolliver: If you was to live a thousand years, and the gent with the smile was to keep going for two thousand, it'd never come about that he could ever marry you."

She shook her head, still watching him as from a distance.

"If I've crossed the country and followed a hard trail and come here tonight and stuck my head in a trap, as you might say, for the sake of a gent like Bill Gregg—fine fellow though he is—what d'you think I would do to keep a girl like you from life-long misery?"

And he dwelt on the last word until the girl shivered.

"It's what it means," said Ronicky Doone, "life-long misery for you. And it won't happen—it can't happen."

"Are you mad—are you quite mad?" asked the girl. "What on earth have I and my affairs got to do with you? Who are you?"

"I dunno," said Ronicky Doone. "I suppose you might say I'm a champion of lost causes, lady. Why have I got something to do with you? I'll tell you why: Because, when a girl gets past being just pretty and starts in being plumb beautiful, she lays off being the business of any one gent—her father or her brother—she starts being the business of the whole world. You see? They come like that about one in ten million, and I figure you're that one, lady."

The far away smile went out. She was looking at him now with a sort of sad wonder. "Do you know what I am?" she said gravely.

"I dunno," said Ronicky, "and I don't care. What you do don't count. It's the inside that matters, and the inside of you is all right. Lady, so long as I can sling a gun, and so long as my name is Ronicky Doone, you ain't going to marry the gent with the smile."

If he expected an outbreak of protest from her he was mistaken. For what she said was: "Ronicky Doone! Is that the name? Ronicky Doone!" Then she smiled up at him. "I'm within one ace of being foolish and saying—But I won't."

She made a gesture of brushing a mist away from her and then stepped back a little. "I'm going down to see the man with the smile, and I'm going to tell him that Harry Morgan is not in his room, that he didn't answer my knock, and then that I looked around through the house and didn't find him. After that I'm coming back here, Ronicky Doone, and I'm going to try to get an opportunity for you to talk to Caroline Smith."

"I knew you'd change your mind," said Ronicky Doone.

"I'll even tell you why," she said. "It isn't for your friend who's asleep, but it's to give you a chance to finish this business and come to the end of this trail and go back to your own country. Because, if you stay around here long, there'll be trouble, a lot of trouble, Ronicky Doone. Now stay here and wait for me. If anyone taps at the door, you'd better slip into that closet in the corner. Will you wait?"

"Yes."

"And you'll trust me?"

"To the end of the trail, lady."

She smiled at him again and was gone.

Now the house was perfectly hushed. He went to the window and looked down to the quiet street with all its atmosphere of some old New England village and eternal peace. It seemed impossible that in the house behind him there were—

He caught his breath. Somewhere in the house the muffled sound of a struggle rose. He ran to the door, thinking of Ruth Tolliver at once, and then he shrank back again, for a door was slammed open, and a voice shouted—the voice of a man: "Help! Harrison! Lefty! Jerry!"

Other voices answered far away; footfalls began to sound. Ronicky Doone knew that Harry Morgan, his victim, had at last recovered and managed to work the cords off his feet or hands, or both.

Ronicky stepped back close to the door of the closet and waited. It would mean a search, probably, this discovery that Morgan had been struck down in his own room by an unknown intruder. And a search certainly would be started at once. First there was confusion, and then a clear, musical man's voice began to give orders: "Harrison, take the cellar. Lefty, go up to the roof. The rest of you take the rooms one by one."

The search was on.

"Don't ask questions," was the last instruction. "When you see someone you don't know, shoot on sight, and shoot to kill. I'll do the explaining to the police—you know that. Now scatter, and the man who brings him down I'll remember. Quick!"

There was a new scurry of footfalls. Ronicky Doone heard them approach the door of the girl's room, and he slipped into the closet. At once a cloud of soft, cool silks brushed about him, and he worked back until his shoulders had touched the wall at the back of the closet. Luckily the enclosure was deep, and the clothes were hanging thickly from the racks. It was sufficient to conceal him from any careless searcher, but it would do no good if any one probed; and certainly these men were not the ones to search carelessly.

In the meantime it was a position which made Ronicky grind his teeth. To be found skulking among woman's clothes in a closet—to be dragged out and stuck in the back, no doubt, like a rat, and thrown into the river, that was an end for Ronicky Doone indeed!

He was on the verge of slipping out and making a mad break for the door of the house and trying to escape by taking the men by surprise, when he heard the door of the girl's room open.

"Some ex-pugilist," he heard a man's voice saying, and he recognized it at once as belonging to him who had given the orders. He recognized, also, that it must be the man with the sneer.

"You think he was an amateur robber and an expert prize fighter?" asked Ruth Tolliver.

It seemed to Ronicky Doone that her voice was perfectly controlled and calm. Perhaps it was her face that betrayed emotion, for after a moment of silence, the man answered.

"What's the matter? You're as nervous as a child tonight, Ruth?"

"Isn't there reason enough to make me nervous?" she demanded. "A robber—Heaven knows what—running at large in the house?"

"H'm!" murmured the man. "Devilish queer that you should get so excited all at once. No, it's something else. I've trained you too well for you to go to pieces like this over nothing. What is it, Ruth?"

There was no answer. Then the voice began again, silken-smooth and gentle, so gentle and kindly that Ronicky Doone started. "In the old days you used to keep nothing from me; we were companions, Ruth. That was when you were a child. Now that you are a woman, when you feel more, think more, see more, when our companionship should be like a running stream, continually bringing new things into my life, I find barriers between us. Why is it, my dear?"

Still there was no answer. The pulse of Ronicky Doone began to quicken, as though the question had been asked him, as though he himself were fumbling for the answer.

"Let us talk more freely," went on the man. "Try to open your mind to me. There are things which you dislike in me; I know it. Just what those things are I cannot tell, but we must break down these foolish little barriers which are appearing more and more every day. Not that I mean to intrude myself on you every moment of your life. You understand that, of course?"

"Of course," said the girl faintly.

"And I understand perfectly that you have passed out of childhood into young womanhood, and that is a dreamy time for a girl. Her body is formed at last, but her mind is only half formed. There is a pleasant mist over it. Very well, I don't wish to brush the mist away. If I did that I would take half that charm away from you—that elusive incompleteness which Fragonard and Watteau tried to imitate, Heaven knows with how little success. No, I shall always let you live your own life. All that I ask for, my dear, are certain meeting places. Let us establish them before it is too late, or you will find one day that you have married an old man, and we shall have silent dinners. There is nothing more wretched than that. If it should come about, then you will begin to look on me as a jailer. And—"

"Don't!"

"Ah," said he very tenderly, "I knew that I was feeling toward the truth. You are shrinking from me, Ruth, because you feel that I am too old."

"No, no!"

Here a hand pounded heavily on the door.

"The idiots have found something," said the man of the sneer. "And now they have come to talk about their cleverness, like a rooster crowing over a grain of corn." He raised his voice. "Come in!"

And Ronicky Doone heard a panting voice a moment later exclaim: "We've got him!"