Tangled Trails: A Western Detective Story Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  LIGHTS OUT

  It was five minutes to ten by his watch when Kirby entered the ParadoxApartments. The bulletin board told him that his uncle's apartment was12. He did not take the self-serve elevator, but the stairs. The hallon the second floor was dark. Since he did not know whether the roomshe wanted were on this floor or the next he knocked at a door.

  Kirby thought he heard the whisper of voices and he knocked again. Hehad to rap a third time before the door was opened.

  "What is it? What do you want?"

  If ever Lane had seen stark, naked fear in a human face, it stared athim out of that of the woman in front of him. She was a tall, angularwoman of a harsh, forbidding countenance, flat-breasted andmiddle-aged. Behind her, farther back in the room, the roughridercaught a glimpse of a fat, gross, ashen-faced man fleeing toward theinner door of a bedroom to escape being seen. He was thrusting intohis coat pocket what looked to the man in the hall like a revolver.

  "Can you tell me where James Cunningham's apartment is?" asked Kirby.

  The woman gasped. The hand on the doorknob was trembling violently.Something clicked in her throat when the dry lips tried to frame ananswer.

  "Head o' the stairs--right hand," she managed to get out, then shut thedoor swiftly in the face of the man whose simple question had soshocked her.

  Kirby heard the latch released from its catch. The key in the lockbelow also turned.

  "She's takin' no chances," he murmured. "Now I wonder why both her an'my fat friend are so darned worried. Who were they lookin' for whenthey opened the door an' saw me? An' why did it get her goat when Iasked where Uncle James lived?"

  As he took the treads that brought him to the next landing thecattleman had an impression of a light being flashed off somewhere. Heturned to the right as the woman below had directed.

  The first door had on the panel a card with his uncle's name. Heknocked, and at the same instant noticed that the door was ajar. Noanswer came. His finger found the electric push button. He could hearit buzzing inside. Twice he pushed it.

  "Nobody at home, looks like," he said to himself. "Well, I reckon I'llstep in an' leave a note. Or maybe I'll wait. If the door's open he'sliable to be right back."

  He stepped into the room. It was dark. His fingers groped along thewall for the button to throw on the light. Before he found it a soundstartled him.

  It was the soft faint panting of some one breathing.

  He was a man whose nerves were under the best of control, but the coldfeet of mice pattered up and down his spine. Something was wrong. Thesixth sense of danger that comes to some men who live constantly inperil was warning him.

  "Who's there?" he asked sharply.

  No voice replied, but there was a faint rustle of some one or something stirring.

  He waited, crouched in the darkness.

  There came another vague rustle of movement. And presently another,this time closer. Every sense in him was alert, keyed up to closestattention. He knew that some one, for some sinister purpose, had comeinto this apartment and been trapped here by him.

  The moments flew. He thought he could hear his hammering heart. Astifled gasp, a dozen feet from him, was just audible.

  He leaped for the sound. His outflung hand struck an arm and slid downit, caught at a small wrist, and fastened there. In the fraction of asecond left him he realized, beyond question, that it was a woman hehad assaulted.

  The hand was wrenched from him. There came a zigzag flash of lightningsearing his brain, a crash that filled the world for him--and hefloated into unconsciousness.