Billy Kane shook his head. It was a curious chain of coincidence, but it could be only coincidence. And there was a limit to that. To-night, for instance, it would put a pretty severe strain upon the imagination to conceive of any connection between the Wop and the Man With The Crutch! And yet——
He shrugged his shoulders. He would have said the same thing two nights ago, wouldn’t he? It was very strange! It was all strange! He seemed to be existing in a sphere of unreality. There was the Man With The Crutch, whom neither police nor underworld could find since that raid on the man’s room; there was the constant, ominous swirl and eddy of hidden and unseen things on every hand; there was the Rat—and there was the Woman in Black!
His face softened suddenly. He had not seen _her_ since yesterday morning when she had entered the Rat’s den through the secret door, and he had returned to her Dayler’s letter. She had not been in a pleasant mood at what she believed had been his trickery; and, failing to have restored that letter to her, she would have turned him, whom she, like every one else, believed to be the Rat, incontinently over to the police. What was the hold she had upon the Rat? Where was she to-night? How was it that her hand had not already showed in this attempt upon the Wop, since she seemed to have always in her possession the details of the Rat’s schemes?
He shrugged his shoulders again. What was the use! To-night, at least, she could harbor no delusion that he was acting under any spur of hers! No, that wasn’t it—that wasn’t what was troubling him. What troubled him was that she should think him what he was, or, rather, all that he was not! Strange that her opinion of him, even when his back was against the wall and his life was literally in jeopardy at every turn, should make any difference! Strange that the loathing and contempt in those brown eyes, that were fearless and deep and steady, should haunt him, and add to his own abhorrence of the rôle he played because he must let her think him the Rat! Well, what did it matter? What was she to him? What was she becoming to him? He laughed a little uncertainly. There was no need to answer that question, was there—even if he could? What did anything matter unless he could clear his own name, which was now mired deeper than the Rat’s!