第36章

"Moulton, Whitie Burns, and Marty Dean," confided Jimmie Dale softly to himself."And I don't know of any worse, except--the Cap.And gun fighters, every one of them, too--nice odds, to say nothing of--""Here's the Cap now!" announced one of the three."Hello, Cap, where'd you raise the mustache?"Jimmie Dale's eyes shifted to the trapdoor, and into them crept a contemptuous and sardonic smile--the man who was coming up now and hoisting himself to the floor was the man who, half an hour before, had threatened young Sammy Matthews with arrest.

The Cap, alias Bert Malone, alias a score of other names, closed the trapdoor after him, pulled off his mustache and gray wig, tucked them in his pocket, and faced his companions brusquely.

"Never mind about the mustache," he said curtly."Get busy, the lot of you.Stir around and get the works out!""What for?" inquired Whitie Burns, a sharp, ferret-faced little man.

"We got enough of the old stuff on hand now, and that bum break Gregor made when he pinched the cracked plate put the finish on that.Say, Cap--""Close your face, Whitie, and get the works out!" Malone cut in shortly."We've only got the whole night ahead of us--but we'll need it all.We're going to run the queer off that cracked plate."One of the others, Marty Dean this time, a certain brutal aggressiveness in both features and physique, edged forward.

"Say, what's the lay?" he demanded."A joke? We printed one fiver off that plate--and then we knew enough to quit.With that crack along the corner, you couldn't pass 'em on a blind man! And Gregor saying he thought we could patch the plate up enough to get by with gives me a pain--he's got jingles in his dome factory! Run them fivers eh--say, are you cracked, too?""Aw, forget it!" observed Malone caustically."Who's running this gang?" Then, with a malicious grin: "I got a customer for those fivers--fifteen thousand dollars for all we can turn out to-night.

See?"

The others stared at him for a moment, incredulity and greed mingling in a curious half-hesitant, half-expectant look on their faces.

Then Whitie Burns spoke, circling his lips with the tip of his tongue:

"D'ye mean it, Cap--honest? What's the lay? How'd you work it?"Malone, unbending with the sensation he had created, grinned again.

"Easy enough," he said offhandedly.It was like falling off a log.

Gregor said, didn't he, that the only way he had been able to get his claws on that plate was on account of young Matthews going away sick--eh? Well, the old Matthews woman, his mother, has got money--about fifteen thousand.I guess she ain't got any more than that, or I'd have raised the ante.Aw, it was easy.She threw it at me.

I framed one up on them, that's all.I'm Kline, of the secret service--see? I don't suppose they'd ever seen him, though they'd know his name fast enough, but I made up something like him.Ishowed them where I had a case against Sammy for pinching the plate that was strong enough to put a hundred innocent men behind the bars.Of course, he knew well enough he was innocent, but he could see the twenty years I showed him with both eyes.Say, he mussed all over the place, and went and fainted like a girl.And then the old woman came across with an offer of fifteen thousand for the plate, and corrupted me." Malone's cunning, vicious face, now that the softening effects of the gray hair and mustache were gone, seemed accentuated diabolically by the grin broadening into a laugh, as he guffawed.

Marty Dean's hand swung with a bang to Malone's shoulder.

"Say, Cap--say, you're all right!" he exclaimed excitedly.You're the boy! But what's the good of running anything off the plate before turning it over to 'em--the stuff's no good to us.""You got a wooden nut, with sawdust for brains," said Malone sarcastically."If he'd thought the gang of counterfeiters that was supposed to have bought the plate from him had run off only one fiver and then stopped because they say it wouldn't get by, and weren't going to run any more, and just destroy the plate like it was supposed to have been destroyed to begin with, and it all end up with no one the wiser, where d'ye think we'd have banked that fifteen thousand! I told him I had the whole run confiscated, and that the queer went with the plate, so we'll just make that little run to-night--that's why I sent word around to you this morning.""By the jumping!" ejaculated Whitie Burns, heavy with admiration.

"You got a head on you, Cap!"

"It's a good thing for some of you that I have," returned Malone complacently."But don't stand jawing all night.Go on, now--get busy!"There was no surprise in Jimmie Dale's face--he had chosen his position behind a pile of cases that he had been extremely careful, as a man is careful when his life hangs in the balance, to assure himself were empty.None of the four came near or touched the pile behind which he stood; but, here and there about the room, they pulled this one and that one out from various stacks.In scarcely more than a moment, the room was completely transformed.It was no longer a storeroom for surplus stock, for the storage of bulky and empty packing cases! From the cases the men had picked out, like a touch of magic, appeared a veritable printing plant, an elaborate engraver's outfit--a highly efficient foot-power press, rapidly being assembled by Whitie Burns; an electric dryer, inks, a pile of white, silk-threaded bank-note paper, a cutter, and a score of other appurtenances.

"Yes," said Jimmie Dale very gently to himself."Yes, quite so--but the plate? Ah!" Malone was taking it out from the middle of a bundle of old newspapers, loosely tied together, that he had lifted from one of the cases.

Jimmie Dale's eyes fastened on it--and from that instant never left it.A minute passed, two, three of them--the four men were silently busy about the room--Malone was carefully cleaning the plate.