Gypsy Joe removed the cigarette from his mouth, watched the blue spiral of smoke from its tip curl upward for a moment, and pursed his lips in a ruminative pucker.
“I wonder wot de Rat had it in fer her fer as hard as dat?” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “She must have——”
The—_Rat!_ She—the _girl_ they were talking about! The room seemed suddenly to swirl before Billy Kane’s eyes, the figures inside to become but blurred, jerky objects—and then it was black around him. Automatically he was stepping backward with a catlike tread; automatically he was feeling his way along the black hallway. And then the cool evening air fanned his face, and he was in the street.
Billy Kane put his hand to his forehead, and brought it away wringing wet with great drops of sweat. It had come like a blow without warning upon him, staggering him for an instant with horror—and then his brain had cleared as if by magic. It was cruelly clear now.
The girl that they meant to murder was—the Woman in Black. He had had no thought of that while they talked in there, not until Gypsy Joe had mentioned the Rat. And then it had seemed as though the pieces of a puzzle had been suddenly fitted together as by some unseen hand, and bare to his brain, naked, an ugly picture stood out in hideous perspective. He knew too well that the Rat had an incentive for getting rid of her. And he knew why. And it was _she_ who had telephoned him, Billy Kane, to watch Gypsy Joe and Clarkie Munn to-night. Who else would know of anything afoot concerning those two except the “she” to whom Shaky Liz had told her damnable Judas story?
And he saw now why, and understood her instructions to him to watch Clarkie and Gypsy Joe. If she failed in her efforts through moral persuasion to prevent the Cherub from committing what she believed was to be a robbery, she still, through him, Billy Kane, could look for the recovery of the cash, and still keep the young hound, that she believed in and was trying to save, out of the hands of the police, and do it with a clear conscience since she would be in a position to return the proceeds of the theft. And then, too, perhaps, there had entered into her calculations the element of self-protection. She expected the Cherub to go alone, but if by any chance his pals went too, those pals were Clarkie Munn and Gypsy Joe—and he, Billy Kane, in that case, would be on their heels. And he understood, too, why she had not been more explicit over the telephone. She had not actually anticipated trouble, and she had respected her promise to the old hag to keep the Cherub’s name out of it.