The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard

it would take Hunchback Joe to reach and open Klanner’s door from the hall inside—no more. And if he could watch Hunchback Joe at work it would simplify to a very large extent his own task when Hunchback Joe was through; there would be no necessity for a search, and—ah! The window gave. He raised it noiselessly, reached inside and pulled down the roller shade to within an inch of the sill, and pulled the window down again to a little below the level of the shade. The opening left was unnoticeable—but he could now both see and hear.

      There came a faint sound from within—the creak of a slowly opening door, a step across the floor, then the flare of a match, and the light in the room went on.

      Jimmie Dale was drawn back now against the wall at one corner of the window, his eyes on a level with the sill. He had made no mistake about that misshapen, twisted shadow—it was Hunchback Joe. Jimmie Dale’s eyes travelled to the hunchback’s companion—and narrowed as he recognised the other. The man was well enough known in the underworld, a hanger-on for the most part, a confirmed hop-fighter, though when not under the influence of the drug he was counted one of the cleverest second-story workers and lock-pickers in the Bad Lands—Hoppy Meggs, they called him. Again Jimmie Dale’s eyes shifted—to Hunchback Joe once more. Like some abnormal and repulsive toad the man looked. His shoulders were thrust upward until they seemed to merge with the head itself, the body was crooked and bent forward, due to the ugly deformity of the man’s back, while the face was carried at an upward tilt, as though tardily to rectify the curvature of the spine, and out of the sinister, bearded face, the beard tawny and ill-kempt, little black eyes from under protruding brows blinked ceaselessly.

      A sudden fury, an anger hot and passionate seized upon Jimmie Dale; and there came an impulse almost overpowering to play another role, a deadlier, grimmer role than that of spectator! A toad, he had called the man. He was wrong—the man was a devil in human guise. He crushed back the impulse, a cold smile on his lips. He could afford to wait! It was not time yet. There was still the game to play out. He would have an opportunity to give full sway to impulse before the night was out, before the Tocsin should have set the Secret Service men upon the other’s trail—before midnight came.

      Hunchback Joe was speaking now.

      “Go on, Hoppy; get busy!” he ordered sharply, jerking his hand toward a trunk that stood at the foot of the cheap iron bedstead. “Get that opened. Hurry up! And see that you don’t leave any scratches on it, or—you understand!” He leaned forward, leering with sudden savagery at his companion.

      Hoppy Meggs moved forward, dropped on his knees in front of the trunk, examined the lock for an instant—and grunted in contempt.

      “Aw, it’s a cinch! Say, I could do it wid a hairpin!” he grinned—and a moment later threw back the lid.

      Hunchback Joe drew a short, ugly blackjack, a packet of papers, and a large roll of bills from his pocket, and tossed the articles into the trunk.

      “Lock it again!” he instructed tersely.

      Hoppy Meggs hesitated—he was staring into the trunk.

      “Say, youse don’t mean dat—do youse?” he demanded heavily. “Not dem papers dat—”

      Hunchback Joe’s smile was not pleasant.

      “Lock the trunk!” he said curtly. And then, as Hoppy Meggs closed down the lid: “I didn’t bring you here to offer any advice; but as I don’t want you to labour under the impression that, not having any brains of your own, there aren’t, therefore, any brains at all to stand between you and the police, I’ll tell you. If they recover the original document, besides fixing the crime on Klanner, they’ll figure they’ve got it back before any harm has been done, and before it has been passed on to whoever had paid down the little cash advance to Klanner for the job in the shape of that roll there—eh? And figuring that way they won’t change any of the plans or details as they stand now in those papers—eh? And meanwhile a copy is just as good to the man who is coughing up to you and me and the rest of us for this, isn’t it?”

      “My Gawd!” said Hoppy Meggs in fervent admiration, as he locked the trunk.

      “Yes,” said Hunchback Joe—and the snarl was back in his voice. “And now you see to it that you’ve got the rest of what you’ve got to do straight. It won’t pay you to make any mistakes! Let the Mole’s crowd start something before you pull the lights—it’s got to look like a drunken row where the bystander, with nobody but himself to blame for being in such a place as that, accidentally gets his! And you tip the Kid off again to leave Klanner by his lonesome at the table before the trouble starts, or he’ll get in bad himself. The Kid can pull a fake play to make up with some moll across the room. Klanner’s no friend of his, he never saw the man before—you understand?—just ran into him outside the dance hall, if any questions are asked. But I don’t want any questions, and there won’t be any if he plays his hand right. Tell him I said his job’s over once he has Klanner inside—and to stand from under. Get me?”

      “Sure!” said Hoppy Meggs.

      “Well, we’ll beat it, then,” snapped Hunchback Joe.

      The room was in darkness again. Jimmie Dale crouched further back along the wall. The rear door opened, two shadows emerged, passed around the corner of the tenement—and disappeared.

      The minutes passed, five of them, and then Jimmie Dale, too, was making his way softly along the areaway to the street—but in Jimmie Dale’s pockets were the short leaden blackjack, ugly for the stain on its leathern covering, the packet of papers, and the roll of banknotes that had been in Klanner’s trunk. He gained the street, paused under the nearest street lamp to consult his watch, and swung briskly along again. It was a matter of only two blocks to Baldy Jack’s, one of the most infamous dance halls in the Bad Lands, but it was already ten minutes to ten.

      And now a curious metamorphosis came to Jimmie Dale’s appearance. The neat, well-fitting Fifth Avenue tweeds did not fit quite so perfectly—the coat bunched a little at the shoulders, the trousers were drawn a little higher until they lost their “set.” His hat was pulled still farther over his eyes, but at a more rakish angle, and his tie, tucked into his shirt bosom just below the collar, exposed blatantly a diamond shirt stud. But on Jimmie Dale’s lips there was an ominous smile not wholly in keeping with the somewhat jaunty swagger he had assumed, and the lines at the corners of his mouth were drawn down hard and sharp. It was miserable work, the work of a hound and cur! Who, better than the janitor of the bank, would have had the opportunity to carry on that work there! And so they had selected Klanner as their victim. But Klanner, if allowed to talk, might be able to defend himself—therefore Klanner would not be allowed to talk. There was only one way to prevent that effectively—by killing Klanner. But, again, Klanner’s death must not appear in any way to be consequent to the murder at the bank—therefore it was to bear every evidence of having been purely inadvertent, and, in a way, an accident. Yes, it was crafty enough, hideous enough to be fully worthy even of the fiendish brain that had planned it! Kid Greer, having probably struck up an acquaintance with Klanner during the past few days, had inveigled Klanner to-night into Baldy Jack’s, ostensibly, no doubt, for an innocent and casual glass of beer, and in a general row and melee in the dance hall—not an uncommon occurrence in a place like Baldy Jack’s—Klanner would be shot and killed. The rest was obvious. The man’s effects would naturally be examined, and the evidence of his “guilt” found in his trunk. It was an open and shut game against a dead man! Even his previous good record would smash on the rock of a presumed double life. The fact that Klanner had voluntarily been in a place like Baldy Jack’s was damning in itself!

      Jimmie Dale, approaching the garishly lighted exterior of the dance hall now, lit a cigarette. The plan, if successful, placed the guilt without question or cavil upon Klanner, but that was not all—strong as that motive might be, Clarke had had still another in view, and one that perhaps took precedence over the first. Hunchback Joe had defined it clearly enough. The documents would have been valueless to Clarke, either to sell, or to put to any use himself, if the plans and arrangements they contained were subsequently altered or changed. But it was obvious that a man in Klanner’s station could