Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Pink mouthed something. The oath broke the silence startlingly. The gun came up—

And the door of Smith’s bedroom opened.

“Drop that!” It was a feminine voice, clear, steady, commanding.

Pink and Smith turned, the former with his mouth agape, the latter with his hands dropped to the arms of his chair, his body leaned forward, as though to leap to his feet.

He saw the girl uncertainly — very beautiful — just an impression of her. She was talking again to Pink.

“Drop that gun!”

Pink’s pistol fell to the floor. He sat back in his chair, huddled up, his tongue seeking his lips.

The strange girl took command of the situation. She stepped forward and picked up Pink’s pistol, swinging it in her left hand. To Smith she said: “He’d better go, hadn’t he? One can’t fight in a big hotel. It isn’t done.”

Smith nodded. Events had been rather swift.

The girl tossed her head back. “Get out!”

Pink slid past her to the door, muttering, his red-rimmed eyes shooting from her to Smith and back again. At the door he stopped, angry of a sudden.

“All right — Smith — you and your side-kick — I—”

He went out, slamming the door.

On that, Smith found his tongue. “Who the hell are you?”

His rescuer smiled. “I’m Kitty Willis, and I’m supposed to be employed by Lord Bordington to rob you.”

Chapter VIII

As One Thief to Another

Smith got to his feet and, walking to the sideboard, helped himself to a neat whisky. He felt he needed something. He had tricked Bordington, met a man back from the grave, stared into the eyes of death, and listened to a naive confession — all in the space of half an hour; and it was a fairly full program even for Bill Smith.

Also, he wanted a moment in which to collect his thoughts. Danger from Pink was temporarily past, but there was sure to be some reaction. Smith was older than he had been in Africa, and his nervous system was not quite so elastic. Smith, after all, was only a very clever and scoundrelly human being, and not the superman type unencountered outside the pages of fiction.

Kitty watched him with an air of indifferent interest which concealed a swift summing up of his capabilities so far as she was able to judge them in the first few moments of this first encounter. She had listened to his conversation with Pink, and that alone had been a trumpeted warning for her. Few men could have faced Pink as Smith had faced him.

Smith swallowed his whisky and turned round. He was altogether composed. He twisted the tip of a cigar between his finger and thumb, breaking the outer leaf.

“That’s an amazing statement,” he said. “I’d like to hear it all. Sit down.”

Kitty dropped into her chair. Her little pistol was back in her pocket. She laid Pink’s gun carelessly on the table and left it there.

“It about covers all the ground,” she said. “Lord Bordington has offered me fifty thousand pounds to recover a paper which, I understand, he has just handed you.”

Smith’s eyes narrowed. Bordington was not quite so “easy” as he seemed. It had been a cute idea to employ this nonchalant young woman to steal back the document after he had seen his own incriminating note burned. Smith’s quick brain summed it all up at once. If anything had gone wrong Bordington would not have been implicated.

“Why have you split?” he asked.

Kitty shrugged her shoulders. “Bordington’s no use to me. You might be. Directly he told me that Fellowship of Strangers stuff I knew what I intended to do.”

“He told you that, did he?” asked Smith, and was conscious of error. He had been so confident that Bordington was too afraid to mention their connection to anybody, that he had seen no harm in talking of his past in order further to frighten Bordington. Now he found that Bordington had babbled to a woman thief.

“He did,” agreed Kitty. “Of course, I’d heard of you. And I was anxious to meet you. So I pretended to fall in with his wishes.”

“How did you get into touch with him?”

“Oh — I decided to break into his place — Bordington Manor. I was shown over it by... by somebody who didn’t know who I was, and I got a good idea of its interior layout, and where was the safest place to get in. Unfortunately, Bordington was suffering from insomnia, and he came down for a walk, and caught me. He seemed worried. Had you on the brain, I expect. Then he told me a lot of things about you, put up this proposition — that I should steal the paper and get fifty thousand as payment for doing so — and here I am.”

“Who showed you over the place?”

Kitty’s momentary hesitation was not lost on Smith. “Bordington’s secretary. A young fellow named Jim Lansdale.”

“Hm. Friend of yours?” Smith watched her closely.

“No. I — met him.”

“Ah! Flirtation, eh?”

“Perhaps.”