CHAPTER III

HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER

Entirely unaware that she had been observed, Helen Gilmore slipped furtively into the dark, musty vestibule of the ugly house. There were those unpleasant odors which accumulate in a decaying house, the smell that suggests neglect.

The opening of the second door automatically set a bell ringing, an unpleasant jangling that caused the woman to start and compress her lips, shutting back the nervous gasp which rose in her throat. When she closed the door the ringing stopped.

After a wait of a moment there came down the raggedly carpeted stairs a slovenly and haglike female, with straggling hair of dirty gray and the shoulders of a professional wrestler in their muscular broadness. The face of the slattern was, until she reached the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows. At the sight of it Helen instinctively retreated a step; she had never seen such a terrible face, she thought. A pair of narrow red eyes looked her up and down with appraising, impudent curiosity.

"Perhaps--perhaps I've made a mistake," Helen stammered. "I thought this was the right number; I--I wanted to see Don Haskins."

"You ain't made no mistake," came the response in a hoarse guttural. "He's upstairs. He told me he was lookin' fer comp'ny. Guess you're the swell sister he was tellin' me about."

"Y-yes," Helen answered faintly.

"Go right on up, deary; it's the thoid floor--the door at the end of the hall, the door with a busted panel, where the cops broke in. They thought, it bein' locked, Terry Mooney was there, but he wasn't." Her voice broke into a peal of cackling mirth. "No, he wasn't there; he was--somewheres else."

Starting toward the stairs, Helen turned, one hand resting upon the ancient rail.

"Then Don is wanted by--by the cops?"

"Ask him," grunted the woman with the gargoyle face; "ask him. I'll say he is, deary."

Helen went tremulously up the stairs, stumbled about the dark hallway until she found the second flight, which was narrow and, if possible, dirtier than the first. Here the boards were loose and clattered noisily beneath her step. Reaching the third floor, a bit of sun struggled feebly through the dust-filmed skylight and fell slantwise across the door with the broken panel, now patched with some unpainted strips torn from a chance packing box.

The occupant of the room had heard her approach--only a deaf man could have failed to be notified by the clatter of the loose stairway boards--for the door opened cautiously, and a haggard unshaven face looked out through a widening crack. A pair of thin lips twisted back into an unpleasant and gloating triumphant grin.

"So--so you've come, have you?" the man rasped and laughed harshly. "I thought you would. I give you credit for havin' that much sense. Real prompt, ain't you? Only mailed the letter yesterday." He moved back, making room for her to enter. His eyes, hard and glittering, followed her with a look of venomous hate that was at the same time one of admiration, as if her beauty stirred him.

The room was small, dark, and unventilated, and there was the vile odor of soured liquor that mingled nauseatingly with the stench of stale tobacco smoke. There was a narrow, tousled bed, with the white paint long since peeled from the metal framework, a broken-backed chair upon which rested a bottle of homemade whisky, that the old hag downstairs sold for ten dollars the quart.

"Why did you send for me, Don?" demanded Helen. She was plainly frightened. Looking at him she found it hard to believe that this haggard man was the same person she had first known as "Nifty Don." Don had been handsome--once.

Don Haskins placed the bottle on the floor and with a sarcastic courtesy waved her to the chair.

"Be seated, Mrs. Haskins," he sneered, and himself occupied the edge of the bed. Helen shivered, her fingers working nervously. For a moment he sat there staring.

"You still got the looks," he muttered thickly. "I--I guess I ain't ever goin' to get over bein' crazy about you, Helen--even--even when I'm hatin' you. His grimy hand reached out to her; his touch might have been tender, but at her shuddering recoil his eyes blazed again, and his fingers crushed about her white wrist until she gave a cry of pain.

"You always did think you was too good for your own kind," he snarled. "Now that I've got you where I can put on the screws, I ought to get you sent up; that's what I ought to do with you. After what you done to me----"

"I've done nothing to you, Don. Why did you send for me? You told that woman downstairs that I am----"

"Yeah, it was a good stall, tellin' 'Eighth Avenue Annie' that I gotta rich sister that would put up for me. See? Thirty bucks a week I gotta give the grafter for hidin' me away in this room, and ten dollars a bottle for this rat poison she calls whisky. I owe her a hundred now, and she won't let me skip until I pay up. If I don't pay--well, Annie fixes that by givin' the bulls a tip where I can be located. See? That's why I sent for you--to take me outta hock." He grinned sardonically. "When a guy's in trouble, ain't it the most natural thing in the world that he turns to--to his wife."

Helen shivered. "I'm not your wife!" she cried. "You know I'm not. I've never been your wife!"

"The law says different," retorted Don Haskins. "You married me, didn't you?"

"Yes," Helen admitted bitterly, "I married you. I liked you, and when you got into that trouble I--I thought I loved you. It was only pity. You rushed me into it so that I wouldn't have to testify against you--a wife can't be made to testify against her husband. I knew, before you got out of the Tombs, that I'd made a mistake."

This revival of old and bitter memories convulsed Don Haskins' face with anger.

"You lie!" he gritted. "When y' say I married you just to keep outta stir, you lie. I married you because I was crazy about you. You liked me, too, until--until you run into that other bird and fell for him. But when I got outta the Tombs I stopped that, all right."

"Yes, you stopped it," choked Helen. "I loved him--with every beat of my heart. You--you robbed me of my one chance to be happy. You--oh, why do you drag all these ghosts before me? Those are things I'm always trying to forget. I saved you from doing a twenty-year stretch, and you've been hounding me--hounding me ever since. That--that's your idea of gratitude!"

"Aw, cut out that stuff. I'm desperate. The cops is lookin' for me; I gotta make a get-away and I gotta have money."

"Oh, I see, you want money," nodded Helen, fumbling at her purse. "You said a hundred dollars----"

Don Haskins gave a contemptuous sneer.

"I said that's what I owe Annie, but I want more'n that--a lot more. Aw, I know you're well fixed. I know you married a guy that's got it. I got all the dope on you, see."

"How----"

"You thought you were pretty foxy, didn'tcha? It wasn't much trouble gettin' a line on you. When I went out West with Keegan and got nabbed pullin' the job we went out there to do in Chi, you thought I was in for a long stretch, and that you'd lose me. You changed your name, did the workin'-girl stunt, and hooked a live one--married a fellow that writes, Kirklan Gilmore.

"But the State's attorney out there made a little deal with me; I handed him some information he wanted, and he got me paroled. See? I come back, lookin' for you. Madge knew all about it, and I made her tell. Never trust a friend, girlie; that's my motto."

"So Madge told you?"

"She hadda tell; I'd have choked the life outta her if she hadn't."

"I--I suppose the past is one thing that never dies," Helen whispered. "I was a fool to think I could get away with it. I--I was a fool to take the chance."

"I ain't gonna stop you from gettin' away with it," grunted Don; "at least I ain't--providin'----"

"Don't beat around the bush, Don; get to the point. Providing--what?"

"I'll get to the point fast enough. I gotta be practical, I oughtta make you squirm, but I'm in a bad fix. What I need is a thousand bucks, and I need it quick."

Helen stared at him fixedly.

"I haven't got a thousand dollars, Don, but if two hundred will help any----" Her fingers were at the clasp of her hand bag.

"If you ain't got a thousand, then get it--from that rich husband you've swung onto."

"But he's not rich. You don't understand. He owns a house, an automobile, and lives well, but he's not rich. I doubt if he's got much money outside the royalties from his book. I--I don't see how I could ask him for a thousand dollars, without giving him some sort of an explanation, and I don't know what I could tell him."

"He ain't rich?" Don broke in skeptically. "Say, whatcha tryin' to hand me? If he ain't rich, whatcha marry him for--and risk doin' a trip for bigamy? Stuck on the guy, huh?"

Helen shook her head.

"N-no," she faltered. "I'm not 'stuck' on him. I wish to Heaven that I hadn't married him--now." Her lips twitched. "I--I suppose it looked like a chance to be respectable. I heard that you were in trouble out in Chicago, that you'd been put away for a long time. I took up typewriting after Tilliston's cabaret closed; I changed my name and got a job with a publishing house."

"Yeah, I got all that from Madge."

"Oh, what's the use going into the rest of it? I don't like to work; I never did. I met Gilmore. He was wild about me--still is. It seemed like such a wonderful chance, the wife of a famous novelist. I wonder what he'll do if he ever learns the truth? Perhaps--perhaps--he'll kill me!"

"Aw, can that stuff," growled Don Haskins. "Conversation don't help me any; what I want is that thousand bucks--quick. I'm due for a long trip up the river--or worse--if I don't jump town before the bulls nail me.

"I was in on a loft job. It was a water haul--not a ten-dollar bit between the three of us that was in on it. One of the birds got nabbed, and I know he's got a yellow streak in 'im as wide as Fifth Avenue. The cops won't have to more'n bounce a nightstick over his head when he'll come through with a squeal. I gotta get outta town, put distance behind me, because"--his voice sank to a low, hoarse whisper--"because the watchman got croaked, see! It--it's a chance of the chair, if 'Dago Mike' squeals on the other two of us.

"A guy ain't got no chance doin' a slide outta town these days unless he's well heeled. I'm flat broke. Do I get that thousand from you, or----"

"Say it, Don."

The man's eyes were narrowed.

"Or do I drop a note to Gilmore, tellin' him that his wife's got two husbands, that if he'll taxi over to Borough Hall in Brooklyn and look over the marriage-license records for October tenth, nineteen sixteen----"

"You--you wouldn't do that to me, Don?" Helen's face was deathly white. "You ungrateful rat----"

"If I'm a rat, then it was you made me a rat!" gritted the man. "When I got outta the Tombs that time and found you'd throwed me over, and was trailin' around with that swell with the Eyetalian name, it made a bum outta me. If I could have got my hands on you that first night----" His hands darted toward her, extended fingers twitching convulsively, as they neared her throat. With a stifled scream Helen protected herself with her arms.

"Don't! Don't! Don't look at me like that. I'll try to get the thousand dollars, but I don't know what--what I will tell him."

"It's up to you what kind of a song and dance you give 'im," he growled. "The big thing is--get it. It's that, or else----Now pass over that two hundred you was talkin' about; that'll help a little."

Helen's fingers trembled as she reached into her hand bag for the roll of bills. "Even if I give you the thousand dollars, I suppose I'll always be at your mercy--that you'll always be coming back for more, that you'll hound me, blackmail me----"

Haskins made no promises as to that; he grabbed the money avidly from her hand and counted it eagerly. Ten dollars lacking two hundred.

"When do I get the rest of it?" he demanded. "I can't wait long; it won't be safe--stayin' here with Eighth Avenue Annie."

Helen considered swiftly. "This--this is Monday," she said. "I may be able to get it by Wednesday. If I can get it at all I suppose I can get it by then. You--you'll give me until Wednesday?"

"Ain't got no jewelry that you can put in soak to raise the jack?" Don wanted to know.

"He--he would miss that, what little there is. I'd better try to get the money from him--if I can."

Haskins' lips twisted unpleasantly. "You better," he grunted threateningly. "Aw right, I'm givin' you until Wednesday, but if you ain't come across with it by then, I'll saunter out to that swell place I hear you're livin' in--and collect."