Читать книгу The False Rider - Макс Брэнд - Страница 8

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Christian got to the window in a stride and pulled down the shade. He picked up the hat he had thrown down and drew it well over his eyes, saying, in the meantime: "Kick off your boots, throw off your coat, pull off your trousers, pile into that bed."

Gregor obeyed with speed, merely asking:

"What's the main line of Taxi?"

"He can fade through any lock that was ever made," answered Barry Christian. "He can read the mind of nearly any safe, but if he can't read its mind, he can crack it just as easily as he can crack his fingers."

He caught up a pillow and wedged it in close beside the head of Gregor to cast a darker shadow over his face.

"Tell Taxi," said Christian, "that you're in a big job. You want him, but not right away. Tell him to get out of town and wait till you send for him."

"Will he do that?"

"He'll do anything except jump off a cliff for you, so long as he thinks you're Jim Silver."

Christian added: "Don't look him in the eyes. He can see in the dark, like a cat. Keep looking down. Play you're dead tired. He can tell you by a touch. He's got eyes in his fingers. No, we can't risk him even shaking hands with you. Here—here are your gloves. Pull them on and—"

Before he could get any further in his warnings and his preparations, there was a tap at the door. It was a light, quick rap of two soft beats, a pause, and a harder blow.

The eye of Barry Christian flashed as he recognized a Signal that must have some meaning to the great Jim Silver.

He went to the door and opened it. Before him stood a slender man of hardly a shade more than middle height, and dressed in a dapper blue suit, with a soft gray hat, and a pair of chamois gloves in his hand. His black hair was sleeked until it glistened. If he had been leaning on a walking stick, he would have served as a fashion advertisement out of a magazine. But Barry Christian had no illusions about the character under that dude exterior.

He held out his hand and pressed the lean, nervous fingers of "Taxi."

"Hello, Taxi," he said in a voice raised only a little above a whisper. "The old man has told me all about you. Silver's knocked out. Listen—don't stay long with him. He's all shot to pieces. Tired, I mean. Come on in."

He backed away, and as he backed up, the slender fellow came with a soundless step through the doorway, and lifting his eyes, which were kept constantly lowered, he gave Christian one pale, bright gleam of inspection. Then he walked on toward the bed, smiling, and holding out his hand.

"Jim, old boy!" he said.

Gregor held out a hand that had a big riding glove on it.

"Covered with rash," he explained, coughing as he spoke. "How are you, Taxi?"

"I'm always on top of the world when I hear that you're anywhere near," said Taxi, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "What's knocked you out?"

Gregor pressed his head all the deeper among the pillows and let his arm fall at his side.

"Been through a lot," he said, in a muffled, groaning voice, "and more trouble ahead."

Taxi stood up.

"I'm on deck," he offered.

"Later," said Gregor, carefully maintaining that same groaning voice. "How many people saw you come?"

"About three—outside the hotel. You know I don't walk the main streets when I can possibly help it, Jim."

"Good," muttered Gregor. "If the rats know that you're with me, they may run for cover before I get my teeth in them."

"What rats?" asked Taxi.

"Tell you later. Taxi, will you help?"

"Don't ask. You know."

"Good! Get out of town. Five or ten miles out, and stay put. Wait for me. I'll send you word when I want you. Tell me where you'll be."

Taxi hesitated. Then he said: "There's a broken road that runs straight west of Crow's Nest. Never used. Out there, four or five miles, between a pair of steep hills that bear to the south, there's a little shack. I'll go there and wait, and nobody shall see me leave Crow's Nest, only the people in the hotel here. Can they be trusted?"

"Nobody," said Gregor, shaking his head slowly. "Trust nobody."

Taxi held out his hand. Gregor took it and let his arm fall wearily away again.

"So long," said Gregor.

"I wish I could stay here through the pinch," said Taxi, "but you always know best. I'll be out there waiting. I'll have fast horses with me and I'll be ready to jump."

He turned to Christian.

"I don't know you, but I've seen you somewhere," said Taxi.

"I'm Thomas Bennett," said Christian, nodding. "I've been around, all right. Maybe you have seen me."

Taxi went to the door, turned there as though he were about to speak once more, and then bent his pale, bright glance on Christian for another moment. After that, he left the room, and the door made no sound as he shut it behind him.

"Well—" began Duff Gregor.

A frantic signal came from Barry Christian, cutting him short. Another signal made him relax once more in bed. Christian stood transfixed. Even in that dim light, Gregor could see that the face of his famous companion was shining with sweat.

"That's one step behind us, and maybe the longest step of the lot," said Christian in a whisper.

He went to the door and listened for a moment. Then he opened the door and looked into the hall. Turning back, he mopped his face and slumped down into a chair.

"The wildcat!" said Christian. "Did you ever see such a pair of eyes? You can get up now."

"Bored right into me through the shadows," said Gregor.

He sat up and began to pull on his clothes. He, also, had need to wipe his forehead.

"You did it well," said Christian, after a moment of thought. "You couldn't have done it much better. But he suspected something."

"He sure gave you a look, brother," agreed the other.

"There was a ghost walking through his brain just then," answered Christian. "He couldn't put his finger on the right spot in his memory and he probably never will. He can't think of Barry Christian and Jim Silver being together in the same room. The two ideas won't fit. He's in some sort of doubt, but not enough to keep him from doing what you told him to do. That's the way that Silver would act—short sentences and let the other fellow do the guessing. You did it well, Duff, and you didn't slip on your English, either."

"Aw, I can talk as good as anybody, when I get my mind fixed on it," said Duff Gregor. "Don't you worry about me, brother, when it comes to being slick. Slick enough to skate over the thinnest ice you ever seen."

Christian considered him gravely for a moment and said nothing. He went back to the door, opened it, peered up and down the hall, and returned.

"Walks like a cat too," he said. "He is a cat."

"That's how he hit me," said Gregor.

"All the luck in the world," groaned Christian, "couldn't have hitched a more dangerous man to Jim Silver."

"Why can't you buy him off? Give him a big split if he throws in with us?" asked Gregor.

Christian stared at him, but then he nodded.

"I understand what you mean," he said. "I used to think the same thing, in the old days. I used to think that every man has his price, but that was before I met Jim Silver. Money's dirt to him. Money's dirt to this handsome young rat of a Taxi. I couldn't buy him if I offered him a diamond as big as my fist."

"It looks to me," said Gregor, "as though we'd better drift out of this town pretty pronto."

The big man nodded. "We have to work fast," he said. "There's that suspicion in the back of Taxi's brain, and he may come back to investigate."

"Suppose," said Gregor, "that he hears how I came prancing into town with the crowd cheering. That won't mate up very well with the way he found me stretched out here."

"That doesn't matter," said Christian. "Taxi knows that Silver could bluff out the devil himself, when it comes to a showdown. Gregor, we have to work fast. But if things go well, before Jim Silver learns of his double here in Crow's Nest, we'll have a fortune in our pockets. And leaving town, we'll drop in at a little shack between a pair of hills four or five miles out of Crow's Nest, and there I'll settle an old score. There'll be one less man in the world when I get through with this job—and Taxi!"