The Adventures of Jimmie Dale
by Frank L. Packard · English · Gutenberg #1218 · 904,392 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Adventures of Jimmie Dale
Author: Frank L. Packard
Release date: May 3, 2006 [eBook #1218]
Most recently updated: October 29, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1218
Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE ***
THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE
by Frank L. Packard
CONTENTS
PART ONE: THE MAN IN THE CASE
I. THE GRAY SEAL
II. BY PROXY
III. THE MOTHER LODE
IV. THE COUNTERFEIT FIVE
V. THE AFFAIR OF THE PUSHCART MAN
VI. DEVIL'S WORK
VII. THE THIEF
VIII. THE MAN HIGHER UP
IX. TWO CROOKS AND A KNAVE
X. THE ALIBI
XI. THE STOOL-PIGEON
PART TWO: THE WOMAN IN THE CASE
I. BELOW THE DEAD LINE
II. THE CALL TO ARMS
III. THE CRIME CLUB
IV. THE INNOCENT BYSTANDER
V. ON GUARD
VI. THE TRAP
VII. THE “HOUR”
VIII. THE TOCSIN
IX. THE TOCSIN'S STORY
X. SILVER MAG
XI. THE MAGPIE
XII. JOHN JOHANSSON--FOUR-TWO-EIGHT
XIII. THE ONLY WAY
XIV. OUT OF THE DARKNESS
XV. RETRIBUTION
XVI. “DEATH TO THE GRAY SEAL!”
PART ONE: THE MAN IN THE CASE
CHAPTER I
THE GRAY SEAL
Among New York's fashionable and ultra-exclusive clubs, the St. James
stood an acknowledged leader--more men, perhaps, cast an envious eye at
its portals, of modest and unassuming taste, as they passed by on Fifth
Avenue, than they did at any other club upon the long list that the city
boasts. True, there were more expensive clubs upon whose membership roll
scintillated more stars of New York's social set, but the St. James was
distinctive. It guaranteed a man, so to speak--that is, it guaranteed a
man to be innately a gentleman. It required money, it is true, to keep
up one's membership, but there were many members who were not wealthy,
as wealth is measured nowadays--there were many, even, who were pressed
sometimes to meet their dues and their house accounts, but the accounts
were invariably promptly paid. No man, once in, could ever afford, or
ever had the desire, to resign from the St. James Club. Its membership
was cosmopolitan; men of every walk in life passed in and out of
its doors, professional men and business men, physicians, artists,
merchants, authors, engineers, each stamped with the “hall mark” of
the St. James, an innate gentleman. To receive a two weeks' out-of-town
visitor's card to the St. James was something to speak about, and men
from Chicago, St. Louis, or San Francisco spoke of it with a sort of
holier-than-thou air to fellow members of their own exclusive clubs, at
home again.
Is there any doubt that Jimmie Dale was a gentleman--an INNATE
gentleman? Jimmie Dale's father had been a member of the St. James
Club, and one of the largest safe manufacturers of the United States, a
prosperous, wealthy man, and at Jimmie Dale's birth he had proposed his
son's name for membership. It took some time to get into the St. James;
there was a long waiting list that neither money, influence, nor pull
could alter by so much as one iota. Men proposed their sons' names for
membership when they were born as religiously as they entered them upon
the city's birth register. At twenty-one Jimmie Dale was elected to
membership; and, incidentally, that same year, graduated from Harvard.
It was Mr. Dale's desire that his son should enter the business and
learn it from the ground up, and Jimmie Dale, for four years thereafter,
had followed his father's wishes. Then his father died. Jimmie Dale had
leanings toward more artistic pursuits than business. He was credited
with sketching a little, writing a little; and he was credited with
having received a very snug amount from the combine to which he sold out
his safe-manufacturing interests. He lived a bachelor life--his mother
had been dead many years--in the house that his father had left him on
Riverside Drive, kept a car or two and enough servants to run his
menage smoothly, and serve a dinner exquisitely when he felt hospitably
inclined.
Could there be any doubt that Jimmie Dale was innately a gentleman?
It was evening, and Jimmie Dale sat at a small table in the corner of
the St. James Club dining room. Opposite him sat Herman Carruthers,
a young man of his own age, about twenty-six, a leading figure in the
newspaper world, whose rise from reporter to managing editor of the
morning NEWS-ARGUS within the short space of a few years had been almost
meteoric.
They were at coffee and cigars, and Jimmie Dale was leaning back in his
chair, his dark eyes fixed interestedly on his guest.
Carruthers, intently engaged in trimming his cigar ash on the edge of
the Limoges china saucer of his coffee set, looked up with an abrupt
laugh.
“No; I wouldn't care to go on record as being an advocate of crime,” he
said whimsically; “that would never do. But I don't mind admitting quite
privately that it's been a positive regret to me that he has gone.”
“Made too good 'copy' to lose, I suppose?” suggested Jimmie Dale
quizzically. “Too bad, too, after working up a theatrical name like that
for him--the Gray Seal--rather unique! Who stuck that on him--you?”
Carruthers laughed--then, grown serious, leaned toward Jimmie Dale.
“You don't mean to say, Jimmie, that you don't know about that, do you?”
he asked incredulously. “Why, up to a year ago the papers were full of
him.”
“I never read your beastly agony columns,” said Jimmie Dale, with a
cheery grin.
“Well,” said Carruthers, “you must have skipped everything but the stock
reports then.”
“Granted,” said Jimmie Dale. “So go on, Carruthers, and tell me about
him--I dare say I may have heard of him, since you are so distressed
about it, but my memory isn't good enough to contradict anything you may
have to say about the estimable gentleman, so you're safe.”
Carruthers reverted to the Limoges saucer and the tip of his cigar.
“He was the most puzzling, bewildering, delightful crook in the annals
of crime,” said Carruthers reminiscently, after a moment's silence.
“Jimmie, he was the king-pin of them all. Clever isn't the word for him,
or dare-devil isn't either. I used to think sometimes his motive was
more than half for the pure deviltry of it, to laugh at the police and
pull the noses of the rest of us that were after him. I used to dream
nights about those confounded gray seals of his--that's where he got
his name; he left every job he ever did with a little gray paper affair,
fashioned diamond-shaped, stuck somewhere where it would be the first
thing your eyes would light upon when you reached the scene, and--”
“Don't go so fast,” smiled Jimmie Dale. “I don't quite get the
connection. What did you have to do with this--er--Gray Seal fellow?
Where do you come in?”
“I? I had a good deal to do with him,” said Carruthers grimly. “I was a
reporter when he first broke loose, and the ambition of my life, after
I began really to appreciate what he was, was to get him--and I nearly
did, half a dozen times, only--”
“Only you never quite did, eh?” cut in Jimmie Dale slyly. “How near did
you get, old man? Come on, now, no bluffing; did the Gray Seal ever even
recognise you as a factor in the hare-and-hound game?”
“You're flicking on the raw, Jimmie,” Carruthers answered, with a wry
grimace. “He knew me, all right, confound him! He favoured me with
several sarcastic notes--I'll show 'em to you some day--explaining
how I'd fallen down and how I could have got him if I'd done something
else.” Carruthers' fist came suddenly down on the table. “And I would
have got him, too, if he had lived.”
“Lived!” ejaculated Jimmie Dale. “He's dead, then?”
“Yes,” averted Carruthers; “he's dead.”
“H'm!” said Jimmie Dale facetiously. “I hope the size of the wreath you
sent was an adequate tribute of your appreciation.”
“I never sent any wreath,” returned Carruthers, “for the very simple
reason that I didn't know where to send it, or when he died. I said he
was dead because for over a year now he hasn't lifted a finger.”
“Rotten poor evidence, even for a newspaper,” commented Jimmie Dale.
“Why not give him credit for having, say--reformed?”
Carruthers shook his head. “You don't get it at all, Jimmie,” he said
earnestly. “The Gray Seal wasn't an ordinary crook--he was a classic.
He was an artist, and the art of the thing was in his blood. A man like
that could no more stop than he could stop breathing--and live. He's
dead; there's nothing to it but that--he's dead. I'd bet a year's salary
on it.”
“Another good man gone wrong, then,” said Jimmie Dale capriciously. “I
suppose, though, that at least you discovered the 'woman in the case'?”
Carruthers looked up quickly, a little startled; then laughed shortly.
“What's the matter?” inquired Jimmie Dale.
“Nothing,” said Carruthers. “You kind of got me for a moment, that's
all. That's the way those infernal notes from the Gray Seal used to
end up: 'Find the lady, old chap; and you'll get me.' He had a damned
patronising familiarity that would make you squirm.”
“Poor old Carruthers!” grinned Jimmie Dale. “You did take it to heart,
didn't you?”
“I'd have sold my soul to get him--and so would you, if you had been in
my boots,” said Carruthers, biting nervously at the end of his cigar.
“And been sorry for it afterward,” supplied Jimmie Dale.
“Yes, by Jove, you're right!” admitted Carruthers, “I suppose I should.
I actually got to love the fellow--it was the GAME, really, that I
wanted to beat.”
“Well, and how about this woman? Keep on the straight and narrow path,
old man,” prodded Jimmie Dale.
“The woman?” Carruthers smiled. “Nothing doing! I don't believe there
was one--he wouldn't have been likely to egg the police and reporters on
to finding her if there had been, would he? It was a blind, of course.
He worked alone, absolutely alone. That's the secret of his success,
according to my way of thinking. There was never so much as an
indication that he had had an accomplice in anything he ever did.”
Jimmie Dale's eyes travelled around the club's homelike, perfectly
appointed room. He nodded to a fellow member here and there, then his
eyes rested musingly on his guest again.
Carruthers was staring thoughtfully at his coffee cup.
“He was the prince of crooks and the father of originality,” announced
Carruthers abruptly, following the pause that had ensued. “Half the time
there wasn't any more getting at the motive for the curious things he
did, than there was getting at the Gray Seal himself.”
“Carruthers,” said Jimmy Dale, with a quick little nod of approval,
“you're positively interesting to-night. But, so far, you've been kind
of scouting around the outside edges without getting into the thick of
it. Let's have some of your experiences with the Gray Seal in detail;
they ought to make ripping fine yarns.”
“Not to-night, Jimmie,” said Carruthers; “it would take too long.” He
pulled out his watch mechanically as he spoke, glanced at it--and pushed
back his chair. “Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “It's nearly half-past
nine. I'd no idea we had lingered so long over dinner. I'll have to
hurry; we're a morning paper, you know, Jimmie.”
“What! Really! Is it as late as that.” Jimmie Dale rose from his chair
as Carruthers stood up. “Well, if you must--”
“I must,” said Carruthers, with a laugh.
“All right, O slave.” Jimmie Dale laughed back--and slipped his hand,
a trick of their old college days together, through Carruthers' arm as
they left the room.
He accompanied Carruthers downstairs to the door of the club, and saw
his guest into a taxi; then he returned inside, sauntered through the
billiard room, and from there into one of the cardrooms, where, pressed
into a game, he played several rubbers of bridge before going home.
It was, therefore, well on toward midnight when Jimmie Dale arrived at
his house on Riverside Drive, and was admitted by an elderly manservant.
“Hello, Jason,” said Jimmie Dale pleasantly. “You still up!”
“Yes, sir,” replied Jason, who had been valet to Jimmie Dale's father
before him. “I was going to bed, sir, at about ten o'clock, when a
messenger came with a letter. Begging your pardon, sir, a young lady,
and--”
“Jason”--Jimmie Dale flung out the interruption, sudden, quick,
imperative--“what did she look like?”
“Why--why, I don't exactly know as I could describe her, sir,” stammered
Jason, taken aback. “Very ladylike, sir, in her dress and appearance,
and what I would call, sir, a beautiful face.”
“Hair and eyes--what color?” demanded Jimmie Dale crisply. “Nose, lips,
chin--what shape?”
“Why, sir,” gasped Jason, staring at his master, “I--I don't rightly
know. I wouldn't call her fair or dark, something between. I didn't take
particular notice, and it wasn't overlight outside the door.”
“It's too bad you weren't a younger man, Jason,” commented Jimmie Dale,
with a curious tinge of bitterness in his voice. “I'd have given a
year's income for your opportunity to-night, Jason.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jason helplessly.
“Well, go on,” prompted Jimmie Dale. “You told her I wasn't home, and
she said she knew it, didn't she? And she left the letter that I was on
no account to miss receiving when I got back, though there was no need
of telephoning me to the club--when I returned would do, but it was
imperative that I should have it then--eh?”
“Good Lord, sir!” ejaculated Jason, his jaw dropped, “that's exactly what
she did say.”
“Jason,” said Jimmie Dale grimly, “listen to me. If ever she comes here
again, inveigle her in. If you can't inveigle her, use force; capture
her, pull her in, do anything--do anything, do you hear? Only don't let
her get away from you until I've come.”
Jason gazed at his master as though the other had lost his reason.
“Use force, sir?” he repeated weakly--and shook his head. “You--you
can't mean that, sir.”
“Can't I?” inquired Jimmie Dale, with a mirthless smile. “I mean every
word of it, Jason--and if I thought there was the slightest chance of
her giving you the opportunity, I'd be more imperative still. As it
is--where's the letter?”
“On the table in your studio, sir,” said Jason, mechanically.
Jimmie Dale started toward the stairs--then turned and came back to
where Jason, still shaking his head heavily, had been gazing anxiously
after his master. Jimmie Dale laid his hand on the old man's shoulder.
“Jason,” he said kindly, with a swift change of mood, “you've been a
long time in the family--first with father, and now with me. You'd do a
good deal for me, wouldn't you?”
“I'd do anything in the world for you, Master Jim,” said the old man
earnestly.
“Well, then, remember this,” said Jimmie Dale slowly, looking into the
other's eyes, “remember this--keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.
It's my fault. I should have warned you long ago, but I never dreamed
that she would ever come here herself. There have been times when it was
practically a matter of life and death to me to know who that woman is
that you saw to-night. That's all, Jason. Now go to bed.”
“Master Jim,” said the old man simply, “thank you, sir, thank you for
trusting me. I've dandled you on my knee when you were a baby, Master
Jim. I don't know what it's about, and it isn't for me to ask. I
thought, sir, that maybe you were having a little fun with me. But I
know now, and you can trust me, Master Jim, if she ever comes again.”
“Thank you, Jason,” said Jimmie Dale, his hand closing with an
appreciative pressure on the other's shoulder “Good-night, Jason.”
Upstairs on the first landing, Jimmie Dale opened a door, closed and
locked it behind him--and the electric switch clicked under his fingers.
A glow fell softly from a cluster of shaded ceiling lights. It was a
large room, a very large room, running the entire depth of the
house, and the effect of apparent disorder in the arrangement of its
appointments seemed to breathe a sense of charm. There were great
cozy, deep, leather-covered lounging chairs, a huge, leather-covered
davenport, and an easel or two with half-finished sketches upon them;
the walls were panelled, the panels of exquisite grain and matching; in
the centre of the room stood a flat-topped rosewood desk; upon the floor
was a dark, heavy velvet rug; and, perhaps most inviting of all, there
was a great, old-fashioned fireplace at one side of the room.
For an instant Jimmie Dale remained quietly by the door, as though
listening. Six feet he stood, muscular in every line of his body, like
a well-trained athlete with no single ounce of superfluous fat about
him--the grace and ease of power in his poise. His strong, clean-shaven
face, as the light fell upon it now, was serious--a mood that became him
well--the firm lips closed, the dark, reliant eyes a little narrowed, a
frown on the broad forehead, the square jaw clamped.
Then abruptly he walked across the room to the desk, picked up an
envelope that lay upon it, and, turning again, dropped into the nearest
lounging chair.
There had been no doubt in his mind, none to dispel. It was precisely
what he had expected from almost the first word Jason had spoken. It was
the same handwriting, the same texture of paper, and there was the same
old haunting, rare, indefinable fragrance about it. Jimmie Dale's
hands turned the envelope now this way, now that, as he looked at it.
Wonderful hands were Jimmie Dale's, with long, slim, tapering fingers
whose sensitive tips seemed now as though they were striving to decipher
the message within.
He laughed suddenly, a little harshly, and tore open the envelope.
Five closely written sheets fell into his hand. He read them slowly,
critically, read them over again; and then, his eyes on the rug at his
feet, he began to tear the paper into minute pieces between his fingers,
depositing the pieces, as he tore them, upon the arm of his chair. The
five sheets demolished, his fingers dipped into the heap of shreds on
the arm of the chair and tore them over and over again, tore them until
they were scarcely larger than bits of confetti, tore at them absently
and mechanically, his eyes never shifting from the rug at his feet.
Then with a shrug of his shoulders, as though rousing himself to present
reality, a curious smile flickering on his lips, he brushed the pieces
of paper into one hand, carried them to the empty fireplace, laid them
down in a little pile, and set them afire. Lighting a cigarette, he
watched them burn until the last glow had gone from the last charred
scrap; then he crunched and scattered them with the brass-handled fender
brush, and, retracing his steps across the room, flung back a portiere
from where it hung before a little alcove, and dropped on his knees in
front of a round, squat, barrel-shaped safe--one of his own design and
planning in the years when he had been with his father.
His slim, sensitive fingers played for an instant among the knobs and
dials that studded the door, guided, it seemed by the sense of touch
alone--and the door swung open. Within was another door, with locks and
bolts as intricate and massive as the outer one. This, too, he opened;
and then from the interior took out a short, thick, rolled-up leather
bundle tied together with thongs. He rose from his knees, closed the
safe, and drew the portiere across the alcove again. With the bundle
under his arm, he glanced sharply around the room, listened intently,
then, unlocking the door that gave on the hall, he switched off the
lights and went to his dressing room, that was on the same floor. Here,
divesting himself quickly of his dinner clothes, he selected a dark
tweed suit with loose-fitting, sack coat from his wardrobe, and began to
put it on.
Dressed, all but his coat and vest, he turned to the leather bundle that
he had placed on a table, untied the thongs, and carefully opened it
out to its full length--and again that curious, cryptic smile tinged his
lips. Rolled the opposite away from that in which it had been tied
up, the leather strip made a wide belt that went on somewhat after
the fashion of a life preserver, the thongs being used for shoulder
straps--a belt that, once on, the vest would hide completely, and,
fitting close, left no telltale bulge in the outer garments. It was not
an ordinary belt; it was full of stout-sewn, up-right little pockets
all the way around, and in the pockets grimly lay an array of fine,
blued-steel, highly tempered instruments--a compact, powerful burglar's
kit.
The slim, sensitive fingers passed with almost a caressing touch over
the vicious little implements, and from one of the pockets extracted
a thin, flat metal case. This Jimmie Dale opened, and glanced
inside--between sheets of oil paper lay little rows of GRAY, ADHESIVE,
DIAMOND-SHAPED SEALS.
Jimmie Dale snapped the case shut, returned it to its recess, and from
another took out a black silk mask. He held it up to the light for
examination.
“Pretty good shape after a year,” muttered Jimmie Dale, replacing it.
He put on the belt, then his vest and coat. From the drawer of his
dresser he took an automatic revolver and an electric flashlight,
slipped them into his pocket, and went softly downstairs. From the hat
stand he chose a black slouch hat, pulled it well over his eyes--and
left the house.
Jimmie Dale walked down a block, then hailed a bus and mounted to the
top. It was late, and he found himself the only passenger. He inserted
his dime in the conductor's little resonant-belled cash receiver, and
then settled back on the uncomfortable, bumping, cushionless seat.
On rattled the bus; it turned across town, passed the Circle, and
headed for Fifth Avenue--but Jimmie Dale, to all appearances, was quite
oblivious of its movements.
It was a year since she had written him. SHE! Jimmie Dale did not smile,
his lips were pressed hard together. Not a very intimate or personal
appellation, that--but he knew her by no other. It WAS a woman,
surely--the hand-writing was feminine, the diction eminently so--and had
SHE not come herself that night to Jason! He remembered the last letter,
apart from the one to-night, that he had received from her. It was
a year ago now--and the letter had been hardly more than a note. The
police had worked themselves into a frenzy over the Gray Seal, the
papers had grown absolutely maudlin--and she had written, in her
characteristic way:
Things are a little too warm, aren't they, Jimmie? Let's let them cool
for a year.
Since then until to-night he had heard nothing from her. It was a
strange compact that he had entered into--so strange that it could never
have known, could never know a parallel--unique, dangerous, bizarre, it
was all that and more. It had begun really through his connection with
his father's business--the business of manufacturing safes that should
defy the cleverest criminals--when his brains, turned into that channel,
had been pitted against the underworld, against the methods of a
thousand different crooks from Maine to California, the report of whose
every operation had reached him in the natural course of business,
and every one of which he had studied in minutest detail. It had begun
through that--but at the bottom of it was his own restless, adventurous
spirit.
He had meant to set the police by the ears, using his gray-seal device
both as an added barb and that no innocent bystander of the underworld,
innocent for once, might be involved--he had meant to laugh at them and
puzzle them to the verge of madness, for in the last analysis they would
find only an abortive attempt at crime--and he had succeeded. And then
he had gone too far--and he had been caught--by HER. That string of
pearls, which, to study whose effect facetiously, he had so idiotically
wrapped around his wrist, and which, so ironically, he had been unable
to loosen in time and had been forced to carry with him in his sudden,
desperate dash to escape from Marx's the big jeweler's, in Maiden Lane,
whose strong room he had toyed with one night, had been the lever which,
AT FIRST, she had held over him.
The bus was on Fifth Avenue now, and speeding rapidly down the deserted
thoroughfare. Jimmie Dale looked up at the lighted windows of the St.
James Club as they went by, smiled whimsically, and shifted in his seat,
seeking a more comfortable position.
She had caught him--how he did not know--he had never seen her--did not
know who she was, though time and again he had devoted all his energies
for months at a stretch to a solution of the mystery. The morning
following the Maiden Lane affair, indeed, before he had breakfasted,
Jason had brought him the first letter from her. It had started by
detailing his every move of the night before--and it had ended with an
ultimatum: “The cleverness, the originality of the Gray Seal as a crook
lacked but one thing,” she had naively written, “and that one thing was
that his crookedness required a leading string to guide it into channels
that were worthy of his genius.” In a word, SHE would plan the coups,
and he would act at her dictation and execute them--or else how did
twenty years in Sing Sing for that little Maiden Lane affair appeal to
him? He was to answer by the next morning, a simple “yes” or “no” in the
personal column of the morning NEWS-ARGUS.
A threat to a man like Jimmie Dale was like flaunting a red rag at a
bull, and a rage ungovernable had surged upon him. Then cold reason had
come. He was caught--there was no question about that--she had taken
pains to show him that he need make no mistake there. Innocent enough in
his own conscience, as far as actual theft went, for the pearls would in
due course be restored in some way to the possession of their owner, he
would have been unable to make even his own father, who was alive then,
believe in his innocence, let alone a jury of his peers. Dishonour,
shame, ignominy, a long prison sentence, stared him in the face,
and there was but one alternative--to link hands with this unseen,
mysterious accomplice. Well, he could at least temporise, he could
always “queer” a game in some specious manner, if he were pushed too
far. And so, in the next morning's NEWS-ARGUS, Jimmie Dale had answered
“yes.” And then had followed those years in which there had been NO
temporising, in which every plan was carried out to the last detail,
those years of curious, unaccountable, bewildering affairs that
Carruthers had spoken of, one on top of another, that had shaken the old
headquarters on Mulberry Street to its foundations, until the Gray Seal
had become a name to conjure with. And, yes, it was quite true, he
had entered into it all, gone the limit, with an eagerness that was
insatiable.
The bus had reached the lower end of Fifth Avenue, passed through
Washington Square, and stopped at the end of its run. Jimmie Dale
clambered down from the top, threw a pleasant “good-night” to the
conductor, and headed briskly down the street before him. A little
later he crossed into West Broadway, and his pace slowed to a leisurely
stroll.
Here, at the upper end of the street, was a conglomerate business
section of rather inferior class, catering doubtless to the poor,
foreign element that congregated west of Broadway proper, and to the
south of Washington Square. The street was, at first glance, deserted;
it was dark and dreary, with stores and lofts on either side. An
elevated train roared by overhead, with a thunderous, deafening clamour.
Jimmie Dale, on the right-hand side of the street, glanced interestedly
at the dark store windows as he went by. And then, a block ahead, on the
other side, his eyes rested on an approaching form. As the other reached
the corner and paused, and the light from the street lamp glinted on
brass buttons, Jimmie Dale's eyes narrowed a little under his slouch
hat. The policeman, although nonchalantly swinging a nightstick,
appeared to be watching him.
Jimmie Dale went on half a block farther, stooped to the sidewalk to
tie his shoe, glanced back over his shoulder--the policeman was not in
sight--and slipped like a shadow into the alleyway beside which he had
stopped.
It was another Jimmie Dale now--the professional Jimmie Dale. Quick as
a cat, active, lithe, he was over a six foot fence in the rear of a
building in a flash, and crouched a black shape, against the back door
of an unpretentious, unkempt, dirty, secondhand shop that fronted
on West Broadway--the last place certainly in all New York that the
managing editor of the NEWS-ARGUS, or any one else, for that matter,
would have picked out as the setting for the second debut of the Gray
Seal.
From the belt around his waist, Jimmie Dale took the black silk mask,
and slipped it on; and from the belt, too, came a little instrument
that his deft fingers manipulated in the lock. A curious snipping sound
followed. Jimmie Dale put his weight gradually against the door. The
door held fast.
“Bolted,” said Jimmie Dale to himself.
The sensitive fingers travelled slowly up and down the side of the door,
seeming to press and feel for the position of the bolt through an inch
of plank--then from the belt came a tiny saw, thin and pointed at the
end, that fitted into the little handle drawn from another receptacle in
the leather girdle beneath the unbuttoned vest.
Hardly a sound it made as it bit into the door. Half a minute
passed--there was the faint fall of a small piece of wood--into the
aperture crept the delicate, tapering fingers--came a slight rasping of
metal--then the door swung back, the dark shadow that had been Jimmie
Dale vanished and the door closed again.
A round, white beam of light glowed for an instant--and disappeared. A
miscellaneous, lumbering collection of junk and odds and ends
blocked the entry, leaving no more space than was sufficient for bare
passageway. Jimmie Dale moved cautiously--and once more the flashlight
in his hand showed the way for an instant--then darkness again.
The cluttered accumulation of secondhand stuff in the rear gave place to
a little more orderly arrangement as he advanced toward the front of the
store. Like a huge firefly, the flashlight twinkled, went out, twinkled
again, and went out. He passed a sort of crude, partitioned-off
apartment that did duty for the establishment's office, a sort of little
boxed-in place it was, about in the middle of the floor. Jimmie Dale's
light played on it for a moment, but he kept on toward the front door
without any pause.
Every movement was quick, sure, accurate, with not a wasted second. It
had been barely a minute since he had vaulted the back fence. It was
hardly a quarter of a minute more before the cumbersome lock of the
front door was unfastened, and the door itself pulled imperceptibly
ajar.
He went swiftly back to the office now--and found it even more of a
shaky, cheap affair than it had at first appeared; more like a box stall
with windows around the top than anything else, the windows doubtless to
permit the occupant to overlook the store from the vantage point of the
high stool that stood before a long, battered, wobbly desk. There was
a door to the place, too, but the door was open and the key was in
the lock. The ray of Jimmie Dale's flashlight swept once around the
interior--and rested on an antique, ponderous safe.
Under the mask Jimmie Dale's lips parted in a smile that seemed almost
apologetic, as he viewed the helpless iron monstrosity that was little
more than an insult to a trained cracksman. Then from the belt came the
thin metal case and a pair of tweezers. He opened the case, and with
the tweezers lifted out one of the gray-coloured, diamond-shaped seals.
Holding the seal with the tweezers, he moistened the gummed side with
his lips, then laid it on a handkerchief which he took from his pocket,
and clapped the handkerchief against the front of the safe, sticking
the seal conspicuously into place. Jimmie Dale's insignia bore no finger
prints. The microscopes and magnifying glasses at headquarters had many
a time regretfully assured the police of that fact.
And now his hands and fingers seemed to work like lightning. Into the
soft iron bit a drill--bit in and through--bit in and through again.
It was dark, pitch black--and silent. Not a sound, save the quick, dull
rasp of the ratchet--like the distant gnawing of a mouse! Jimmie Dale
worked fast--another hole went through the face of the old-fashioned
safe--and then suddenly he straightened up to listen, every faculty
tense, alert, and strained, his body thrown a little forward. WHAT WAS
THAT!
From the alleyway leading from the street without, through which he
himself had come, sounded the stealthy crunch of feet. Motionless in the
utter darkness, Jimmie Dale listened--there was a scraping noise in the
rear--someone was climbing the fence that he had climbed!
In an instant the tools in Jimmie Dale's hands disappeared into their
respective pockets beneath his vest--and the sensitive fingers shot to
the dial on the safe.
“Too bad,” muttered Jimmie Dale plaintively to himself. “I could have
made such an artistic job of it--I swear I could have cut Carruthers'
profile in the hole in less than no time--to open it like this is really
taking the poor old thing at a disadvantage.”
He was on his knees now, one ear close to the dial, listening as the
tumblers fell, while the delicate fingers spun the knob unerringly--the
other ear strained toward the rear of the premises.
Came a footstep--a ray of light--a stumble--nearer--the newcomer was
inside the place now, and must have found out that the back door had
been tampered with. Nearer came the steps--still nearer--and then the
safe door swung open under Jimmie Dale's hand, and Jimmie Dale, that he
might not be caught like a rat in a trap, darted from the office--but he
had delayed a little too long.
From around the cluttered piles of junk and miscellany swept the
light--full on Jimmie Dale. Hesitation for the smallest fraction of a
second would have been fatal, but hesitation was something that in all
his life Jimmie Dale had never known. Quick as a panther in its spring,
he leaped full at the light and the man behind it. The rough voice, in
surprised exclamation at the sudden discovery of the quarry, died in a
gasp.
There was a crash as the two men met--and the other reeled back before
the impact. Onto him Jimmie Dale sprang, and his hands flew for the
other's throat. It was an officer in uniform! Jimmie Dale had felt the
brass buttons as they locked. In the darkness there was a queer smile on
Jimmie Dale's tight lips. It was no doubt THE officer whom he had passed
on the other side of the street.
The other was a smaller man than Jimmie Dale, but powerful for his
build--and he fought now with all his strength. This way and that the
two men reeled, staggered, swayed, panting and gasping; and then--they
had lurched back close to the office door--with a sudden swing, every
muscle brought into play for a supreme effort, Jimmie Dale hurled the
other from him, sending the man sprawling back to the floor of the
office, and in the winking of an eye had slammed shut the door and
turned the key.
There was a bull-like roar, the shrill CHEEP-CHEEP-CHEEP of the
patrolman's whistle, and a shattering crash as the officer flung his
body against the partition--then the bark of a revolver shot, the tinkle
of breaking glass, as the man fired through the office window--and past
Jimmie Dale, speeding now for the front door, a bullet hummed viciously.
Out on the street dashed Jimmie Dale, whipping the mask from his
face--and glanced like a hawk around him. For all the racket, the
neighbourhood had not yet been aroused--no one was in sight. From just
overhead came the rattle of a downtown elevated train. In a hundred-yard
sprint, Jimmie Dale raced it a half block to the station, tore up the
steps--and a moment later dropped nonchalantly into a seat and pulled an
evening newspaper from his pocket.
Jimmie Dale got off at the second station down, crossed the street,
mounted the steps of the elevated again, and took the next train uptown.
His movements appeared to be somewhat erratic--he alighted at the
station next above the one by which he had made his escape. Looking down
the street it was too dark to see much of anything, but a confused noise
as of a gathering crowd reached him from what was about the location of
the secondhand store. He listened appreciatively for a moment.
“Isn't it a perfectly lovely night?” said Jimmie Dale amiably to
himself. “And to think of that cop running away with the idea that I
didn't see him when he hid in a doorway after I passed the corner! Well,
well, strange--isn't it?”
With another glance down the street, a whimsical lift of his shoulders,
he headed west into the dilapidated tenement quarter that huddled for
a handful of blocks near by, just south of Washington Square. It was
a little after one o'clock in the morning now and the pedestrians were
casual. Jimmie Dale read the street signs on the corners as he went
along, turned abruptly into an intersecting street, counted the
tenements from the corner as he passed, and--for the eye of any one who
might be watching--opened the street door of one of them quite as though
he were accustomed and had a perfect right to do so, and went inside.
It was murky and dark within; hot, unhealthy, with lingering smells of
garlic and stale cooking. He groped for the stairs and started up.
He climbed one flight, then another--and one more to the top. Here,
treading softly, he made an examination of the landing with a view,
evidently, to obtaining an idea of the location and the number of doors
that opened off from it.
His selection fell on the third door from the head of the stairs--there
were four all told, two apartments of two rooms each. He paused for an
instant to adjust the black silk mask, tried the door quietly, found it
unlocked, opened it with a sudden, quick, brisk movement--and, stepping
in side, leaned with his back against it.
“Good-morning,” said Jimmie Dale pleasantly.
It was a squalid place, a miserable hole, in which a single flickering,
yellow gas jet gave light. It was almost bare of furniture; there was
nothing but a couple of cheap chairs, a rickety table--unpawnable. A
boy, he was hardly more than that, perhaps twenty-two, from a posture
in which he was huddled across the table with head buried in out-flung
arms, sprang with a startled cry to his feet.
“Good-morning,” said Jimmie Dale again. “Your name's Hagan, Bert
Hagan--isn't it? And you work for Isaac Brolsky in the secondhand shop
over on West Broadway--don't you?”
The boy's lips quivered, and the gaunt, hollow, half-starved face,
white, ashen-white now, was pitiful.
“I--I guess you got me,” he faltered “I--I suppose you're a
plain-clothes man, though I never knew dicks wore masks.”
“They don't generally,” said Jimmie Dale coolly. “It's a fad of
mine--Bert Hagan.”
The lad, hanging to the table, turned his head away for a moment--and
there was silence.
Presently Hagan spoke again. “I'll go,” he said numbly. “I won't make any
trouble. Would--would you mind not speaking loud? I--I wouldn't like her
to know.”
“Her?” said Jimmie Dale softly.
The boy tiptoed across the room, opened a connecting door a little,
peered inside, opened it a little wider--and looked over his shoulder at
Jimmie Dale.
Jimmie Dale crossed to the boy, looked inside the other room--and his
lip twitched queerly, as the sight sent a quick, hurt throb through his
heart. A young woman, younger than the boy, lay on a tumble-down bed, a
rag of clothing over her--her face with a deathlike pallor upon it, as
she lay in what appeared to be a stupor. She was ill, critically ill;
it needed no trained eye to discern a fact all too apparent to the most
casual observer. The squalor, the glaring poverty here, was even more
pitifully in evidence than in the other room--only here upon a chair
beside the bed was a cluster of medicine bottles and a little heap of
fruit.
Jimmie Dale drew back silently as the boy closed the door.
Hagan walked to the table and picked up his hat.
“I'm--I'm ready,” he said brokenly. “Let's go.”
“Just a minute,” said Jimmie Dale. “Tell us about it.”
“Twon't take long,” said Hagan, trying to smile. “She's my wife. The
sickness took all we had. I--I kinder got behind in the rent and things.
They were going to fire us out of here--to-morrow. And there wasn't any
money for the medicine, and--and the things she had to have. Maybe you
wouldn't have done it--but I did. I couldn't see her dying there for the
want of something a little money'd buy--and--and I couldn't”--he caught
his voice in a little sob--“I couldn't see her thrown out on the street
like that.”
“And so,” said Jimmie Dale, “instead of putting old Isaac's cash in
the safe this evening when you locked up, you put it in your pocket
instead--eh? Didn't you know you'd get caught?”
“What did it matter?” said the boy. He was twirling his misshappen hat
between his fingers. “I knew they'd know it was me in the morning when
old Isaac found it gone, because there wasn't anybody else to do it.
But I paid the rent for four months ahead to-night, and I fixed it so's
she'd have medicine and things to eat. I was going to beat it before
daylight myself--I”--he brushed his hand hurriedly across his cheek--“I
didn't want to go--to leave her till I had to.”
“Well, say”--there was wonderment in Jimmie Dale's tones, and his
English lapsed into ungrammatical, reassuring vernacular--“ain't that
queer! Say, I'm no detective. Gee, kid, did you think I was? Say, listen
to this! I cracked old Isaac's safe half an hour ago--and I guess there
won't be any idea going around that you got the money and I pulled a
lemon. Say, I ain't superstitious, but it looks like luck meant you to
have another chance, don't it?”
The hat dropped from Hagan's hands to the floor, and he swayed a little.
“You--you ain't a dick!” he stammered. “Then how'd you know about me and
my name when you found the safe empty? Who told you?”
A wry grimace spread suddenly over Jimmie Dale's face beneath the mask,
and he swallowed hard. Jimmie Dale would have given a good deal to have
been able to answer that question himself.
“Oh, that!” said Jimmie Dale. “That's easy--I knew you worked there.
Say, it's the limit, ain't it? Talk about your luck being in, why all
you've got to do is to sit tight and keep your mouth shut, and you're
safe as a church. Only say, what are you going to do about the money,
now you've got a four months' start and are kind of landed on your feet?
“Do?” said the boy. “I'll pay it back, little by little. I meant to. I
ain't no--” He stopped abruptly.
“Crook,” supplied Jimmie Dale pleasantly. “Spit it right out, kid; you
won't hurt my feelings none. Well, I'll tell you--you're talking the way
I like to hear you--you pay that back, slide it in without his knowing
it, a bit at a time, whenever you can, and you'll never hear a yip out
of me; but if you don't, why it kind of looks as though I have a right
to come down your street and get my share or know the reason why--eh?”
“Then you never get any share,” said Hagan, with a catch in his voice.
“I pay it back as fast as I can.”
“Sure,” said Jimmie Dale. “That's right--that's what I said. Well, so
long--Hagan.” And Jimmie Dale had opened the door and slipped outside.
An hour later, in his dressing room in his house on Riverside Drive,
Jimmie Dale was removing his coat as the telephone, a hand instrument on
the table, rang. Jimmie Dale glanced at it--and leisurely proceeded
to remove his vest. Again the telephone rang. Jimmie Dale took off his
curious, pocketed leather belt--as the telephone repeated its summons.
He picked out the little drill he had used a short while before, and
inspected it critically--feeling its point with his thumb, as one might
feel a razor's blade. Again the telephone rang insistently. He reached
languidly for the receiver, took it off its hook, and held it to his
ear.
“Hello!” said Jimmie Dale, with a sleepy yawn. “Hello! Hello! Why the
deuce don't you yank a man out of bed at two o'clock in the morning and
have done with it, and--eh? Oh, that you, Carruthers?”
“Yes,” came Carruthers' voice excitedly. “Jimmie, listen--listen! The
Gray Seal's come to life! He's just pulled a break on West Broadway!”
“Good Lord!” gasped Jimmie Dale. “You don't say!”
CHAPTER II
BY PROXY
“The most puzzling bewildering, delightful crook in the annals of crime,”
Herman Carruthers, the editor of the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS, had called the
Gray Seal; and Jimmie Dale smiled a little grimly now as he recalled
the occasion of a week ago at the St. James Club over their after-dinner
coffee. That was before his second debut, with Isaac Brolsky's
poverty-stricken premises over on West Broadway as a setting for the
break.
SHE had written: “Things are a little too warm, aren't they, Jimmie?
Let's let them cool for a year.” Well, they had cooled for a year, and
Carruthers as a result had been complacently satisfied in his own mind
that the Gray Seal was dead--until that break at Isaac Brolsky's over on
West Broadway!
Jimmie Dale's smile was tinged with whimsicality now. The only effect
of the year's inaction had been to usher in his renewed activity with
a furor compared to which all that had gone before was insignificant.
Where the newspapers had been maudlin, they now raved--raved in
editorials and raved in headlines. It was an impossible, untenable,
unbelievable condition of affairs that this Gray Seal, for all his
incomparable cleverness, should flaunt his crimes in the faces of the
citizens of New York. One could actually see the editors writhing in
their swivel chairs as their fiery denunciations dripped from their
pens! What was the matter with the police? Were the police children;
or, worse still, imbeciles--or, still worse again, was there some one
“higher up” who was profiting by this rogue's work? New York would not
stand for it--New York would most decidedly not--and the sooner the
police realised that fact the better! If the police were helpless, or
tools, the citizens of New York were not, and it was time the citizens
were thoroughly aroused.
There was a way, too, to arouse the citizens, that was both good
business from the newspaper standpoint, and efficacious as a method.
Carruthers, of the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS, had initiated it. The MORNING
NEWS-ARGUS offered twenty-five thousand dollars' reward for the capture
of the Gray Seal! Other papers immediately followed suit in varying
amounts. The authorities, State and municipal, goaded to desperation,
did likewise, and the five million men, women, and children of New York
were automatically metamorphosed into embryonic sleuths. New York was
aroused.
Jimmie Dale, alias the Gray Seal, member of the ultra-exclusive St.
James Club, the latter fact sufficient in itself to guarantee his
social standing, graduate of Harvard, inheritor of his deceased father's
immense wealth amassed in the manufacture of burglar-proof safes, some
of the most ingenious patents on which were due to Jimmie Dale himself,
figured with a pencil on the margin of the newspaper he had been
reading, using the arm of the big, luxurious, leather-upholstered
lounging chair as a support for the paper. The result of his
calculations was eighty-five thousand dollars.
He brushed the paper onto the Turkish rug, dove into the pocket of his
dinner jacket for his cigarettes, and began to smoke as his eyes strayed
around the room, his own particular den in his fashionable Riverside
Drive residence.
Eighty-five thousand dollars' reward! Jimmie Dale blew meditative rings
of cigarette smoke at the fireplace. What would she say to that? Would
she decide it was “too hot” again, and call it off? It added quite a
little hazard to the game--QUITE a little! If he only knew who “she”
was! It was a strange partnership--the strangest partnership that had
ever existed between two human beings.
He turned a little in his chair as a step sounded in the hallway
without--that is, Jimmie Dale caught the sound, muffled though it was by
the heavy carpet. Came then a knock upon the door.
“Come in,” invited Jimmie Dale.
It was old Jason, the butler. The old man was visibly excited, as he
extended a silver tray on which lay a letter.
Jimmie Dale's hand reached quickly out, the long, slim tapering fingers
closed upon the envelope--but his eyes were on Jason significantly,
questioningly.
“Yes, Master Jim,” said the old man, “I recognised it on the instant,
sir. After what you said, sir, last week, honouring me, I might say, to
a certain extent with your confidence, though I'm sure I don't know what
it all means, I--”
“Who brought it this time, Jason?” inquired Jimmie Dale quietly.
“Not the young person, begging your pardon, not the young lady, sir. A
shuffer in a big automobile. 'Your master at once,' he says, and shoves
the letter into my hand, and was off.”
“Very good, Jason,” said Jimmie Dale. “You may go.”
The door closed. Yes, it was from HER--it was the same texture of paper,
there was the same rare, haunting fragrance clinging to it.
He tore the envelope open, and extracted a folded sheet of paper. What
was it this time? To call the partnership off again until the present
furor should have subsided once more--or the skilfully sketched outline
of a new adventure? Which? He glanced at the few lines written on the
sheet, and lunged forward from his chair to his feet. It was neither one
nor the other. It was--
Jimmie Dale's face was set, and an angry red surge swept his cheeks. His
lips moved, muttering audibly fragments of the letter, as he stared at
it.
“--incredible that you--a heinous thing--act instantly--this is ruin--”
For an instant--a rare occurrence in Jimmie Dale's life--he stood like a
man stricken, still staring at the sheet in his hand. Then mechanically
his fingers tore the paper into little pieces, and the little pieces
into tiny shreds. Anger fled, and a sickening sense of impotent dismay
took its place; the red left his cheeks, and in its stead a grayness
came.
“Act instantly!” The words seemed to leap at him, drum at his ears with
constant repetition. Act instantly! But how? How? Then his brain--that
keen, clear, master brain--sprang from stunned inaction into virility
again. Of course--Carruthers! It was in Carruthers' line.
He stepped to the desk--and paused with his hand extended to pick up the
telephone. How explain to Carruthers that he, Jimmie Dale, already knew
what Carruthers might not yet have heard of, even though Carruthers
would naturally be among the first to be in touch with such affairs! No;
that would never do. Better get there himself at once and trust to--
The telephone rang.
Jimmie Dale waited until it rang again, then he lifted the receiver from
the hook.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hello! Hello! Jimmie!” came a voice. “This is Carruthers. That you,
Jimmie?”
“Yes,” said Jimmie Dale and sat down limply in the desk chair.
“It's the Gray Seal again. I promised you I'd let you in on the ground
floor next time anything happened, so come on down here quick if you
want to see some of his work at firsthand.”
Jimmie Dale flirted a bead of sweat from his forehead.
“Carruthers,” said Jimmie languidly, “you newspaper chaps make me tired
with your Gray Seal. I'm just going to bed.”
“Bed nothing!” spluttered Carruthers, from the other end of the wire.
“Come down, I tell you. It's worth your while--half the population of
New York would give the toes off their feet for the chance. Come down,
you blast idiot! The Gray Seal has gone the limit this time--it's
MURDER.”
Jimmie Dale's face was haggard.
“Oh!” he said peevishly. “Sounds interesting. Where are you? I guess
maybe I'll jog along.”
“I should think you would!” snapped Carruthers. “You know the Palace on
the Bowery? Yes? Well, meet me on the corner there as soon as you can.
Hustle! Good--”
“Oh, I say, Carruthers!” interposed Jimmie Dale.
“Yes?” demanded Carruthers.
“Thanks awfully for letting me know, old man.”
“Don't mention it!” returned Carruthers sarcastically. “You always were
a grateful beast, Jimmie. Hurry up!”
Jimmie Dale hung up the receiver of the city 'phone, and took down the
receiver of another, a private-house installation, and rang twice for
the garage.
“The light car at once, Benson,” he ordered curtly. “At once!”
Jimmie Dale worked quickly then. In his dressing room, he changed from
dinner clothes to tweeds; spent a second or so over the contents of a
locked drawer in the dresser, from which he selected a very small but
serviceable automatic, and a very small but highly powerful magnifying
glass whose combination of little round lenses worked on a pivot, and,
closed over one another, were of about the compass of a quarter of a
dollar.
In three minutes he was outside the house and stepping into the car,
just as it drew up at the curb.
“Benson,” he said tersely to his chauffeur, “drop me one block this
side of the Palace on the Bowery--and forget there was ever a speed law
enacted. Understand?”
“Very good, sir,” said Benson, touching his cap. “I'll do my best, sir.”
Jimmie Dale, in the tonneau, stretched out his legs under the front
seat, and dug his hands into his pockets--and inside the pockets his
hands were clenched and knotted fists.
Murder! At times it had occurred to him that there was a possibility
that some crook of the underworld would attempt to cover his tracks and
take refuge from pursuit by foisting himself on the authorities as the
Gray Seal. That was a possibility, a risk always to be run. But that
MURDER should be laid to the Gray Seal's door! Anger, merciless and
unrestrained, surged over Jimmie Dale.
There was peril here, live and imminent. Suppose that some day he should
be caught in some little affair, recognised and identified as the Gray
Seal, there would be the charge of murder hanging over him--and the
electric chair to face!
But the peril was not the only thing. Even worse to Jimmie Dale's
artistic and sensitive temperament was the vilification, the holding up
to loathing, contumely, and abhorrence of the name, the stainless name,
of the Gray Seal. It WAS stainless! He had guarded it jealously--as a
man guards the woman's name he loves.
Affairs that had mystified and driven the police distracted with
impotence there had been, many of them; and on the face of them--crimes.
But no act ever committed had been in reality a crime--none without
the highest of motives, the righting of some outrageous wrong, the
protection of some poor stumbling fellow human.
That had been his partnership with her. How, by what amazing means, by
what power that smacked almost of the miraculous she came in touch with
all these things and supplied him with the data on which to work he
did not know--only that, thanks to her, there were happier hearts and
happier homes since the Gray Seal had begun to work. “Dear Philanthropic
Crook,” she often called him in her letters. And now--it was MURDER!
Take Carruthers, for instance. For years, as a reporter before he had
risen to the editorial desk, he had been one of the keenest on the scent
of the Gray Seal, but always for the sake of the game--always filled
with admiration, as he said himself, for the daring, the originality of
the most puzzling, bewildering, delightful crook in the annals of crime.
Carruthers was but an example. Carruthers now would hunt the Gray Seal
like a mad dog. The Gray Seal, to Carruthers and every one else, would
be the vilest name in the land--a synonym for murder.
On the car flew--and upon Jimmie Dale's face, as though chiselled in
marble, was a look that was not good to see. And a mirthless smile set,
frozen, on his lips.
“I'll get the man that did this,” gritted Jimmie Dale between his teeth.
“I'll GET him! And, when I get him, I'll wring a confession from him if
I have to swing for it!”
The car swept from Broadway into Astor Place, on down the Bowery, and
presently stopped.
Jimmie Dale stepped out. “I shall not want you any more, Benson,” he
said. “You may return home.”
Jimmie Dale started down the block--a nonchalant Jimmie Dale now, if
anything, bored a little. Near the corner, a figure, back turned, was
lounging at the edge of the sidewalk. Jimmie Dale touched the man on the
arm.
“Hello, Carruthers!” he drawled.
“Ah, Jimmie!” Carruthers turned with an excited smile. “That's the boy!
You've made mighty quick time.”
“Well, you told me to hurry,” grumbled Jimmie Dale. “I'm doing my best
to please you to-night. Came down in my car, and got summoned for three
fines to-morrow.”
Carruthers laughed. “Come on,” he said; and, linking his arm in Jimmie
Dale's, turned the corner, and headed west along the cross street. “This
is going to make a noise,” he continued, a grim note creeping into his
voice. “The biggest noise the city has ever heard. I take back all I
said about the Gray Seal. I'd always pictured his cleverness as being
inseparable with at least a decent sort of man, even if he was a rogue
and a criminal, but I'm through with that. He's a rotter and a hound
of the rankest sort! I didn't think there was anything more vulgar or
brutal than murder, but he's shown me that there is. A guttersnipe's got
more decency! To murder a man and then boastfully label the corpse is--”
“Say, Carruthers,” said Jimmie Dale plaintively, suddenly hanging back,
“I say, you know, it's--it's all right for you to mess up in this sort
of thing, it's your beastly business, and I'm awfully damned thankful to
you for giving me a look-in, but isn't it--er--rather INFRA DIG for me?
A bit morbid, you know, and all that sort of thing. I'd never hear the
end of it at the club--you know what the St. James is. Couldn't I be
Merideth Stanley Annstruther, or something like that, one of your new
reporters, or something like that, you know?”
Carruthers chuckled. “Sure, Jimmie,” he said. “You're the latest
addition to the staff of the NEWS-ARGUS. Don't worry; the incomparable
Jimmie Dale won't figure publicly in this.”
“It's awfully good of you,” said Jimmie gratefully. “I have to have a
notebook or something, don't I?”
Carruthers, from his pocket, handed him one. “Thanks,” said Jimmie Dale.
A little way ahead, a crowd had collected on the sidewalk before a
doorway, and Carruthers pointed with a jerk of his hand.
“It's in Moriarty's place--a gambling hell,” he explained. “I haven't
got the story myself yet, though I've been inside, and had a look
around. Inspector Clayton discovered the crime, and reported it at
headquarters. I was at my desk in the office when the news came, and, as
you know the interest I've taken in the Gray Seal, I decided to 'cover'
it myself. When I got here, Clayton hadn't returned from headquarters,
so, as you seemed so keenly interested last week, I telephoned you. If
Clayton's back now we'll get the details. Clayton's a good fellow with
the 'press,' and he won't hold anything out on us. Now, here we are.
Keep close to me, and I'll pass you in.”
They shouldered through the crowd and up to an officer at the door.
The officer nodded, stepped aside, and Carruthers, with Jimmie Dale
following, entered the house.
They climbed one flight, and then another. The card-rooms, the faro,
stud, and roulette layouts were deserted, save for policemen here and
there on guard. Carruthers led the way to a room at the back of the
hall, whose door was open and from which issued a hubbub of voices--one
voice rose above the others, heavy and gratingly complacent.
“Clayton's back,” observed Carruthers.
They stepped over the threshold, and the heavy voice greeted them.
“Ah, here's Carruthers now! H'are you, Carruthers? They told me you'd
been here, and were coming back, so I've been keeping the boys waiting
before handing out the dope. You've had a look at that--eh?” He flung
out a fat hand toward the bed.
The voices rose again, all directed at Carruthers now.
“Bubble's burst, eh, Carruthers? What about the 'Prince of Crooks'?
Artistry in crime, wasn't it, you said?” They were quoting from his
editorials of bygone days, a half dozen reporters of rival papers,
grinning and joshing him good-naturedly, seemingly quite unaffected by
what lay within arm's reach of them upon the bed.
Carruthers smiled a little wryly, shrugged his shoulders--and presented
Jimmie Dale to Inspector Clayton.
“Mr. Matthewson, a new man of ours--inspector.”
“Glad to know you, Mr. Matthewson,” said the inspector.
Jimmie Dale found his hand grasped by another that was flabby and
unpleasantly moist; and found himself looking into a face that was red,
with heavy rolls of unhealthy fat terminating in a double chin and a
thick, apoplectic neck--a huge, round face, with rat's eyes.
Clayton dropped Jimmie Dale's hand, and waved his own in the air. Jimmie
Dale remained modestly on the outside of the circle as the reporters
gathered around the police inspector.
“Now, then,” said Clayton coarsely, “the guy that's croaked there is
Metzer, Jake Metzer. Get that?”
Jimmie Dale, scribbling hurriedly in his notebook like all the rest,
turned a little toward the bed, and his lower jaw crept out the fraction
of an inch. Both gas jets in the room were turned on full, giving ample
light. A man fully dressed, a man of perhaps forty, lay upon his back on
the bed, one arm outflung across the bedspread, the other dangling,
with fingers just touching the floor, the head at an angle and off the
pillow. It was as though he had been carried to the bed and flung upon
it after the deed had been committed. Jimmie Dale's eyes shifted and
swept the room. Yes, everything was in disorder, as though there had
been a struggle--a chair upturned, a table canted against the wall,
broken pieces of crockery from the washstand on the carpet, and--
“Metzer was a stool pigeon, see?” went on Clayton, “and he lived here.
Moriarty wasn't on to him. Metzer stood in thick with a wider circle of
crooks than any other snitch in New York.”
Jimmie Dale, still scribbling as Clayton talked, stepped to the bed and
leaned over the murdered man. The murder had been done with a blackjack
evidently--a couple of blows. The left side of the temple was crushed
in. Right in the middle of the forehead, pasted there, a gray-colored,
diamond shaped paper seal flaunted itself--the device of the Gray Seal.
In Jimmie Dale' hand, hidden as he turned his back, the tiny combination
of powerful lenses was focused on the seal.
Clayton guffawed. “That's right!” he called out. “Take a good look.
That's a bright young man you've got, Carruthers.”
Jimmie Dale looked up a little sheepishly--and got a grin from the
assembled reporters, and a scowl from Carruthers.
“Now, then,” continued Clayton, “here's the facts--as much of 'em as I
can let you boys print at present. You know I'm stretching a point
to let you in here--don't forget that when you come to write up the
case--honour where's honour's due, you know. Well, me and Metzer there
was getting ready to close down on a big piece of game, and I was over
here in this room talking to him about it early this afternoon. We had
it framed to get our man to-night--see? I left Metzer, say, about three
o'clock, and he was to show up over at headquarters with another little
bit of evidence we wanted at eight o'clock to-night.”
Jimmie Dale was listening--to every word. But he stooped now again over
the murdered man's head deliberately, though he felt the inspector's
rat's eyes upon him--stooped, and, with his finger nail, lifted back the
right-hand point of the diamond-shaped seal where it bordered a faint
thread of blood on the man's forehead.
There was a bull-like roar from the inspector, and he burst through the
ring of reporters, and grabbed Jimmie Dale by the shoulder.
“Here you, what in hell are you doing!” he spluttered angrily.
Embarrassed and confused, Jimmie Dale drew back, glanced around, and
smiled again a little sheepishly as his eyes rested on the red-flushed
jowl of the inspector.
“I--I wanted to see how it was stuck on,” he explained inanely.
“Stuck on!” bellowed Clayton. “I'll show you how it's STUCK on, if you
monkey around here! Don't you know any better than that! Where were you
dragged up anyway? The coroner hasn't been here yet. You're a hot cub
of a reporter, you are!” He turned to Carruthers. “Y'ought to get out
printed instructions for 'em before you turn 'em loose!” he snapped.
Carruthers' face was red with mortification. There was a grin, expanded,
on the faces of the others.
“Stand away from that bed!” roared Clayton at Jimmie Dale. “And if you
go near it again, I'll throw you out of here bodily!”
Jimmie Dale edged away, and, eyes lowered, fumbled nervously with the
leaves of his notebook.
Clayton grunted, glared at Jimmie Dale for an instant viciously--and
resumed his story.
“I was saying,” he said, “that Metzer was to come to headquarters at
eight o'clock this evening. Well, he didn't show up. That looked queer.
It was mighty important business. We was after one of the biggest hauls
we'd ever pulled off. I waited till nine o'clock, an hour ago, and I
was getting nervous. Then I started over here to find out what was the
matter. When I got here I asked Moriarty if he'd seen Metzer. Moriarty
said he hadn't since I was here before. He was a little suspicious that
I had something on Metzer--see? Well, by pumping Moriarty, he admitted
that Metzer had had a visitor about an hour after I left.”
“Who was it? Know what his name is, inspector?” asked one of the
reporters quickly.
Inspector Clayton winked heavily. “Don't be greedy boys,” he grinned.
“You mean you've got him?” burst out another one of the men excitedly.
“Sure! Sure, I've got him.” Inspector Clayton waved his fat hand airily.
“Or I will have before morning--but I ain't saying anything more till
it's over.” He smiled significantly. “Well, that's about all. You've
got the details right around you. I left Moriarty downstairs and came up
here, and found just what you see--Metzer laying on the bed there, and
the gray seal stuck on his forehead--and”--he ended abruptly--“I'll have
the Gray Seal himself behind the bars by morning.”
A chorus of ejaculations rose from the reporters, while their pencils
worked furiously.
Then Jimmie Dale appeared to have an inspiration. Jimmie Dale turned a
leaf in his notebook and began to sketch rapidly, cocking his head now
on one side now on the other. With a few deft strokes he had outlined
the figure of Inspector Clayton. The reporter beside Jimmie Dale leaned
over to inspect the work, and another did likewise. Jimmie Dale drew
in Clayton's face most excellently, if somewhat flatteringly; and then,
with a little flourish of pride, wrote under the drawing: “The Man Who
Captured the Gray Seal.”
“That's a cracking good sketch!” pronounced the reporter at his side.
“Let the inspector see it.”
“What is it?” demanded Clayton, scowling.
Jimmie Dale handed him the notebook modestly.
Inspector Clayton took it, looked at it, looked at Jimmie Dale; then his
scowl relaxed into a self-sufficient and pleased smile, and he grunted
approvingly.
“That's the stuff to put over,” he said. “Mabbe you're not much of
a reporter, but you can draw. Y're all right, sport--y're all right.
Forget what I said to you a while ago.”
Jimmie Dale smiled too--deprecatingly. And put the notebook in his
pocket.
An officer entered the room hurriedly, and, drawing Clayton aside, spoke
in an undertone. A triumphant and malicious grin settled on Clayton's
features, and he started with a rush for the door.
“Come around to headquarters in two hours, boys,” he called as he went
out, “and I'll have something more for you.”
The room cleared, the reporters tumbling downstairs to make for the
nearest telephones to get their “copy” into their respective offices.
On the street, a few doors up from the house where they were free from
the crowd, Carruthers halted Jimmie Dale.
“Jimmie,” he said reproachfully, “you certainly made a mark of us both.
There wasn't any need to play the 'cub' so egregiously. However, I'll
forgive you for the sake of the sketch--hand it over, Jimmie; I'm going
to reproduce it in the first edition.”
“It wasn't drawn for reproduction, Carruthers--at least not yet,” said
Jimmie Dale quietly.
Carruthers stared at him. “Eh?” he asked blankly.
“I've taken a dislike to Clayton,” said Jimmie Dale whimsically. “He's
too patently after free advertising, and I'm not going to help along his
boost. You can't have it, old man, so let's think about something
else. What'll they do with that bit of paper that's on the poor devil's
forehead up there, for instance.”
“Say,” said Carruthers, “does it strike you that you're acting queer?
You haven't been drinking, have you, Jimmie?”
“What'll they do with it?” persisted Jimmie Dale.
“Well,” said Carruthers, smiling a little tolerantly, “they'll
photograph it and enlarge the photograph, and label it 'Exhibit A' or
'Exhibit B' or something like that--and file it away in the archives
with the fifty or more just like it that are already in their
collection.”
“That's what I thought,” observed Jimmie Dale. He took Carruthers by the
lapel of the coat. “I'd like a photograph of that. I'd like it so much
that I've got to have it. Know the chap that does that work for the
police?”
“Yes,” admitted Carruthers.
“Very good!” said Jimmie Dale crisply, “Get an extra print of the
enlargement from him then--for a consideration--whatever he asks--I'll
pay for it.”
“But what for?” demanded Carruthers. “I don't understand.”
“Because,” said Jimmie Dale very seriously, “put it down to imagination
or whatever you like, I think I smell something fishy here.”
“You WHAT!” exclaimed Carruthers in amazement. “You're not joking, are
you, Jimmie?”
Jimmie Dale laughed shortly. “It's so far from a joke,” he said, in
a low tone, “that I want your word you'll get that photograph into my
hands by to-morrow afternoon, no matter what transpires in the meantime.
And look here, Carruthers, don't think I'm playing the silly thickhead,
and trying to mystify you. I'm no detective or anything like that. I've
just got an idea that apparently hasn't occurred to any one else--and,
of course, I may be all wrong. If I am, I'm not going to say a word even
to you, because it wouldn't be playing fair with some one else; if I'm
right the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS gets the biggest scoop of the century. Will
you go in on that basis?”
Carruthers put out his hand impulsively. “If you're in earnest,
Jimmie--you bet!”
“Good!” returned Jimmie Dale. “The photograph by to-morrow afternoon
then. And now--”
“And now,” said Caruthers, “I've got to hurry over to the office and get
a write-up man at work. Will you come along, or meet me at headquarters
later? Clayton said in two hours he'd--”
“Neither,” said Jimmie Dale. “I'm not interested in headquarters. I'm
going home.”
“Well, all right then,” Carruthers returned. “You can bank on me for
to-morrow. Good-night, Jimmie.”
“Good-night, old man,” said Jimmie Dale, and, turning, walked briskly
toward the Bowery.
But Jimmie Dale did not go home. He walked down the Bowery for three
blocks, crossed to the east side, and turned down a cross street. Two
blocks more he walked in this direction, and halfway down the next.
Here he paused an instant--the street was dimly lighted, almost dark,
deserted. Jimmie Dale edged close to the houses until his shadow blended
with the shadows of the walls--and slipped suddenly into a pitch-black
areaway.
He opened a door, stepped into an unlighted hallway where the air was
close and evil smelling, mounted a stairway, and halted before another
door on the first landing. There was the low clicking of a lock, three
times repeated, and he entered a room, closing and fastening the door
behind him.
Jimmie Dale called it his “Sanctuary.” In one of the worst
neighbourhoods of New York, where no questions were asked as long as the
rent was paid, it had the further advantage of three separate exits--one
by the areaway where he had entered; one from the street itself; and
another through a back yard with an entry into a saloon that fronted on
the next street. It was not often that Jimmie Dale used his Sanctuary,
but there had been times when it was no more nor less than exactly what
he called it--a sanctuary!
He stepped to the window, assured himself that the shade was down--and
lighted the gas, blinking a little as the yellow flame illuminated the
room.
It was a rough place, dirty, uninviting; a bedroom, furnished in the
most scanty fashion. Neither, apparently, was there anything suspicious
about it to reward one curious enough to break in during the owner's
absence--some rather disreputable clothes hanging on the wall, and flung
untidily across the bed--that was all.
Alone now, Jimmie Dale's face was strained and anxious and,
occasionally, as he undressed himself, his hands clenched until his
knuckles grew white. The gray seal on the murdered man's forehead was
a GENUINE GRAY SEAL--one of Jimmie Dale's own. There was no doubt of
that--he had satisfied himself on that point.
Where had it come from? How had it been obtained? Jimmie Dale carefully
placed the clothes he had taken off under the mattress, pulled a
disreputable collarless flannel shirt over his head, and pulled on a
disreputable pair of boots. There were only two sources of supply. His
own--and the collection that the police had made, which Carruthers had
referred to.
Jimmie Dale lifted a corner of the oilcloth in a corner of the room,
lifted a piece of the flooring, lifted out a little box which he placed
upon the rickety table, and sat down before a cracked mirror. Who was
it that would have access to the gray seals in the possession of the
police, since, obviously, it was one of those that was on the dead man's
forehead? The answer came quick enough--came with the sudden out-thrust
of Jimmie Dale's lower jaw. ONE OF THE POLICE THEMSELVES--no one else.
Clayton's heavy, cunning face, Clayton's shifty eyes, Clayton's sudden
rush when he had touched the dead man's forehead, pictured themselves
in a red flash of fury before Jimmie Dale. There was no mask now, no
facetiousness, no acted part--only a merciless rage, and the muscles of
Jimmie Dale's face quivered and twitched. MURDER, foisted, shifted upon
another, upon the Gray Seal--making of that name a calumny--ruining
forever the work that she and he might do!
And then Jimmie Dale smiled mirthlessly, with thinning lips. The box
before him was open. His fingers worked quickly--a little wax behind the
ears, in the nostrils, under the upper lip, deftly placed-hands, wrists,
neck, throat, and face received their quota of stain, applied with an
artist's touch--and then the spruce, muscular Jimmie Dale, transformed
into a slouching, vicious-featured denizen of the underworld, replaced
the box under the flooring, pulled a slouch hat over his eyes,
extinguished the gas, and went out.
Jimmie Dale's range of acquaintanceship was wide--from the upper strata
of the St. James Club to the elite of New York's gangland. And, adored
by the one, he was trusted implicitly by the other--not understood,
perhaps, by the latter, for he had never allied himself with any of
their nefarious schemes, but trusted implicitly through long years of
personal contact. It had stood Jimmie Dale in good stead before, this
association, where, in a sort of strange, carefully guarded exchange,
the news of the underworld was common property to those without the law.
To New York in its millions, the murder of Metzer, the stool pigeon,
would be unknown until the city rose in the morning to read the
sensational details over the breakfast table; here, it would already be
the topic of whispered conversations, here it had probably been known
long before the police had discovered the crime. Especially would it be
expected to be known to Pete Lazanis, commonly called the Runt, who
was a power below the dead line and, more pertinent still, one in whose
confidence Jimmie Dale had rejoiced for years.
Jimmie Dale, as Larry the Bat--a euphonious “monaker” bestowed possibly
because this particular world knew him only by night--began a search for
the Runt. From one resort to another he hurried, talking in the accepted
style through one corner of his mouth to hard-visaged individuals behind
dirty, reeking bars that were reared on equally dirty and foul-smelling
sawdust-strewn floors; visiting dance halls, secretive back rooms, and
certain Chinese pipe joints.
But the Runt was decidedly elusive. There had been no news of him, no
one had seen him--and this after fully an hour had passed since Jimmie
Dale had left Carruthers in front of Moriarty's. The possibilities
however were still legion--numbered only by the numberless dives and
dens sheltered by that quarter of the city.
Jimmie Dale turned into Chatham Square, heading for the Pagoda Dance
Hall. A man loitering at the curb shot a swift, searching glance at him
as he slouched by. Jimmie Dale paused in the doorway of the Pagoda and
looked up and down the street. The man he had passed had drawn a little
closer; another man in an apparently aimless fashion lounged a few yards
away.
“Something up,” muttered Jimmie Dale to himself. “Lansing, of
headquarters, and the other looks like Milrae.”
Jimmie Dale pushed in through the door of the Pagoda. A bedlam of noise
surged out at him--a tin-pan piano and a mandolin were going furiously
from a little raised platform at the rear; in the centre of the room a
dozen couples were in the throes of the tango and the bunny-hug; around
the sides, at little tables, men and women laughed and applauded and
thumped time on the tabletops with their beer mugs; while waiters, with
beer-stained aprons and unshaven faces, juggled marvelous handfuls of
glasses and mugs from the bar beside the platform to the patrons at the
tables.
Jimmie Dale's eyes swept the room in a swift, comprehensive glance,
fixed on a little fellow, loudly dressed, who shared a table halfway
down the room with a woman in a picture hat, and a smile of relief
touched his lips. The Runt at last!
He walked down the room, caught the Runt's eyes significantly as he
passed the table, kept on to a door between the platform and the bar,
opened it, and went out into a lighted hallway, at one end of which a
door opened onto the street, and at the other a stairway led above.
The Runt joined him. “Wot's de row, Larry?” inquired the Runt.
“Nuthin' much,” said Jimmie Dale. “Only I t'ought I'd let youse know.
I was passin' Moriarty's an' got de tip. Say, some guy's croaked Jake
Metzer dere.”
“Aw, ferget it!” observed the Runt airily. “Dat's stale. Was wise to dat
hours ago.”
Jimmie Dale's face fell. “But I just come from dere,” he insisted; “an'
de harness bulls only just found it out.”
“Mabbe,” grunted the Runt. “But Metzer got his early in de
afternoon--see?”
Jimmie Dale looked quickly around him--and then leaned toward the Runt.
“Wot's de lay, Runt?” he whispered.
The Runt pulled down one eyelid, and, with his knowing grin, the
cigarette, clinging to his upper lip, sagged down in the opposite corner
of his mouth.
Jimmie Dale grinned, too--in a flash inspiration had come to Jimmie
Dale.
“Say, Runt”--he jerked his head toward the street door--“wot's de fly
cops doin' out dere?”
The grin vanished from the Runt's lips. He stared for a second wildly at
Jimmie Dale, and then clutched at Jimmie Dale's arm.
“De WOT?” he said hoarsely.
“De fly cops,” Jimmie Dale repeated in well-simulated surprise. “Dey was
dere when I come in--Lansing an' Milrae, an--”
The Runt shot a hurried glance at the stairway, and licked his lips as
though they had gone suddenly dry.
“My Gawd, I--” He gasped, and shrank hastily back against the wall
beside Jimmie Dale.
The door from the street had opened noiselessly, instantly. Black forms
bulked there--then a rush of feet--and at the head of half a dozen men,
the face of Inspector Clayton loomed up before Jimmie Dale. There was
a second's pause in the rush; and, in the pause, Clayton's voice, in a
vicious undertone:
“You two ginks open your traps, and I'll run you both in!”
And then the rush passed, and swept on up the stairs.
Jimmie Dale looked at the Runt. The cigarette dangled limply; the Runt's
eyes were like a hunted beast's.
“Dey got him!” he mumbled. “It's Stace--Stace Morse. He come to me after
croakin' Metzer, an' he's been hidin' up dere all afternoon.”
Stace Morse--known in gangland as a man with every crime in the calendar
to his credit, and prominent because of it! Something seemed to go
suddenly queer inside of Jimmie Dale. Stace Morse! Was he wrong, after
all? Jimmie Dale drew closer to the Runt.
“Yer givin' me a steer, ain't youse?” He spoke again from the corner
of his mouth, almost inaudibly. “Are youse sure it was Stace croaked
Metzer? Wot fer? How'd yer know?”
The Runt was listening, his eyes strained toward the stairs. The hall
door to the street was closed, but both were quite well aware that there
was an officer on guard outside.
“He told me,” whispered the Runt. “Metzer was fixin' ter snitch on him
ter-night. Dey've got de goods on Stace, too. He made a bum job of it.”
“Why didn't he get out of de country den when he had de chanst, instead
of hangin' around here all afternoon?” demanded Jimmie Dale.
“He was broke,” the Runt answered. “We was gettin' de coin fer him ter
fade away wid ter-night, an'--”
A revolver shot from above cut short his words. Came then the sound of a
struggle, oaths, the shuffling tread of feet--but in the dance hall the
piano still rattled on, the mandolin twanged, voices sang and applauded,
and beer mugs thumped time.
They were on the stairs now, the officers, half carrying, half dragging
some one between them--and the man they dragged cursed them with utter
abandon. As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Jimmie Dale
caught sight of the prisoner's face--not a prepossessing
one--villainous,--low-browed, contorted with a mixture of fear and rage.
“It's a lie! A lie! A lie!” the man shrieked. “I never seen him in me
life--blast you!--curse you!--d'ye hear!”
Inspector Clayton caught Jimmie Dale and the Runt by the collars.
“There's nothing to interest you around here!” he snapped maliciously.
“Go on, now--beat it!” And he pushed them toward the door.
They had heard the disturbance in the dance hall now and the occupants
were swarming to the sidewalk. A patrol wagon came around the corner. In
the crowd Jimmie Dale slipped away from the Runt.
Was he wrong, after all? A fierce passion seized him. It was Stace Morse
who had murdered Metzer, the Runt had said. In Jimmie Dale's brain the
words began to reiterate themselves in a singsong fashion: “It was Stace
Morse. It was Stace Morse.” Then his lips drew tight together. WAS it
Stace Morse? He would have given a good deal for a chance to talk to the
man--even for a minute. But there was no possibility of that now. Later,
to-morrow perhaps, if he was wrong, after all!
Jimmie Dale returned to the Sanctuary, removed from his person all
evidences of Larry the Bat--and from the Sanctuary went home to
Riverside Drive.
In his den there, in the morning after breakfast, Jason, the butler,
brought him the papers. Three-inch headlines in red ink screamed,
exulted, and shrieked out the news that the Gray Seal, in the person of
Stace Morse, fence, yeggman and murderer, had been captured. The public,
if it had held any private admiration for the one-time mysterious crook
could now once and forever disillusion itself. The Gray Seal was Stace
Morse--and Stace Morse was of the dregs of the city's scum, a pariah,
an outcast, with no single redeeming trait to lift him from the ruck
of mire and slime that had strewn his life from infancy. The face of
Inspector Clayton, blandly self-complacent, leaped out from the paper
to meet Jimmie Dale's eyes--and with it a column and a half of perfervid
eulogy.
Something at first like dismay, the dismay of impotency, filled Jimmie
Dale--and then, cold, leaving him unnaturally calm, the old merciless
rage took its place. There was nothing to do now but wait--wait until
Carruthers should send that photograph. Then if, after all, he were
wrong--then he must find some other way. But was he wrong! The notebook
that Carruthers had given him, open at the sketch he had made of
Clayton, lay upon the desk. Jimmie Dale picked it up--he had already
spent quite a little time over it before breakfast--and examined it
again minutely, even resorting to his magnifying glass. He put it down
as a knock sounded at the door, and Jason entered with a silver card
tray. From Carruthers already! Jimmie Dale stepped quickly forward--and
then Jimmie Dale met the old man's eyes. It wasn't from Carruthers--it
was from HER!
“The same shuffer brought it, Master Jim,” said Jason.
Jimmie Dale snatched the envelope from the tray, and waved the other
from the room. As the door closed, he tore open the letter. There was
just a single line:
Jimmie--Jimmie, you haven't failed, have you?
Jimmie Dale stared at it. Failed! Failed--HER! The haggard look was in
his face again. It was the bond between them that was at stake--the Gray
Seal--the bond that had come, he knew for all time in that instant, to
mean his life.
“God knows!” he muttered hoarsely, and flung himself into a lounging
chair, still staring at the note.
The hours dragged by. Luncheon time arrived and passed--and then by
special messenger the little package from Carruthers came.
Jimmie Dale started to undo the string, then laid the package down,
and held out his hands before him for inspection. They were trembling
visibly. It was a strange condition for Jimmie Dale either to witness or
experience, unlike him, foreign to him.
“This won't do, Jimmie,” he said grimly, shaking his head.
He picked up the package again, opened it, and from between two pieces
of cardboard took out a large photographic print. A moment, two, Jimmie
Dale examined it, used the magnifying glass again; and then a strange
gleam came into the dark eyes, and his lips moved.
“I've won,” said Jimmie Dale, with ominous softness. “I've WON!”
He was standing beside the rosewood desk, and he reached for the phone.
Carruthers would be at home now--he called Carruthers there. After a
moment or two he got the connection.
“This is Jimmie, Carruthers,” he said. “Yes, I got it. Thanks. . . .
Yes. . . . Listen. I want you to get Inspector Clayton, and bring him up
here at once. . . . What? No, no--no! . . . How? . . . Why--er--tell him
you're going to run a full page of him in the Sunday edition, and you
want him to sit for a sketch. He'd go anywhere for that. . . . Yes. . . .
Half an hour. . . . YES. . . . Good-bye.”
Jimmie Dale hung up the receiver; and, hastily now, began to write upon
a pad that lay before him on the desk. The minutes passed. As he wrote,
he scored out words and lines here and there, substituting others. At
the end he had covered three large pages with, to any one but himself,
an indecipherable scrawl. These he shoved aside now, and, very
carefully, very legibly, made a copy on fresh sheets. As he finished, he
heard a car draw up in front of the house. Jimmie Dale folded the copied
sheets neatly, tucked them in his pocket, lighted a cigarette, and was
lolling lazily in his chair as Jason announced: “Mr. Carruthers, sir,
and another gentleman to see you.”
“Show them up, Jason,” instructed Jimmie Dale.
Jimmie Dale rose from his chair as they came in. Jason, well-trained
servant, closed the door behind them.
“Hello, Carruthers; hello, inspector,” said Jimmie Dale pleasantly, and
waved them to seats. “Take this chair, Carruthers.” He motioned to one
at his elbow. “Glad to see you, inspector--try that one in front of the
desk, you'll find it comfortable.”
Carruthers, trying to catch Jimmie Dale's eye for some sort of a cue,
and, failing, sat down. Inspector Clayton stared at Jimmie Dale.
“Oh, it's YOU, eh?” His eyes roved around the room, fastened for an
instant on some of Jimmie Dale's work on an easel, came back finally
to Jimmie Dale--and he plumped himself down in the chair indicated.
“Thought you was more'n a cub reporter,” he remarked, with a grin.
“You were too slick with your pencil. Pretty fine studio you got here.
Carruthers says you're going to draw me.”
Jimmie Dale smiled--not pleasantly--and leaned suddenly over the desk.
“Yes,” he said slowly, a grim intonation in his voice, “going to draw
you--TRUE TO LIFE.”
With an exclamation, Clayton slued around in his chair, half rose, and
his shifty eyes, small and cunning, bored into Jimmie Dale's face.
“What d'ye mean by that?” he snapped out
“Just exactly what I say,” replied Jimmie Dale curtly. “No more,
no less. But first, not to be too abrupt, I want to join with the
newspapers in congratulating you on the remarkable--shall I call it
celerity, or acumen?--with which you solved the mystery of Metzer's
death, and placed the murderer behind the bars. It is really remarkable,
inspector, so remarkable, in fact, that it's almost--SUSPICIOUS. Don't
you think so? No? Well, that's what Mr. Carruthers was good enough to
bring you up here to talk over--in an intimate and confidential way, you
know.”
Inspector Clayton surged up from his chair to his feet, his fists
clenched, the red sweeping over his face--and then he shook one fist at
Carruthers.
“So that's your game, is it!” he stormed. “Trying to crawl out of that
twenty-five thousand reward, eh? And as for you”--he turned on Jimmie
Dale--“you've rigged up a nice little plant between you, eh? Well, it
won't work--and I'll make you squirm for this, both of you, damn you,
before I'm through!” He glared from one to the other for a moment--then
swung on his heel. “Good-afternoon, gentlemen,” he sneered, as he
started for the door.
He was halfway across the room before Jimmie Dale spoke.
“Clayton!”
Clayton turned. Jimmie Dale was still leaning over the desk, but now one
elbow was propped upon it, and in the most casual way a revolver covered
Inspector Clayton.
“If you attempt to leave this room,” said Jimmie Dale, without raising
his voice, “I assure you that I shall fire with as little compunction as
though I were aiming at a mad dog--and I apologise to all mad dogs for
coupling your name with them.” His voice rang suddenly cold. “Come back
here, and sit down in that chair!”
The colour ebbed slowly from Clayton's face. He hesitated--then sullenly
retraced his steps; hesitated again as he reached the chair, and finally
sat down.
“What--what d'ye mean by this?” he stammered, trying to bluster.
“Just this,” said Jimmie Dale. “That I accuse you of the murder of Jake
Metzer--IT WAS YOU WHO MURDERED METZER.”
“Good God!” burst suddenly from Carruthers.
“You lie!” yelled Clayton--and again he surged up from his chair.
“That is what Stace Morse said,” said Jimmie Dale coolly. “Sit down!”
Then Clayton tried to laugh. “You're--you're having a joke, ain't you?
It was Stace--I can prove it. Come down to headquarters, and I can prove
it. I got the goods on him all the way. I tell you”--his voice rose
shrilly--“it was Stace Morse.”
“You are a despicable hound,” said Jimmie Dale, through set lips.
“Here”--he handed the revolver over to Carruthers--“keep him covered,
Carruthers. You're going to the CHAIR for this, Clayton,” he said, in
a fierce monotone. “The chair! You can't send another there in your
place--this time. Shall I draw you now--true to life? You've been
grafting for years on every disreputable den in your district. Metzer
was going to show you up; and so, Metzer being in the road, you removed
him. And you seized on the fact of Stace Morse having paid a visit to
him this afternoon to fix the crime on--Stace Morse. Proofs? Oh, yes, I
know you've manufactured proofs enough to convict him--if there weren't
stronger proofs to convict YOU.”
“Convict ME!” Clayton's lower jaw hung loosely; but still he made
an effort at bluster. “You haven't a thing on me--not a thing--not a
thing.”
Jimmie Dale smiled again--unpleasantly.
“You are quite wrong, Clayton. See--here.” He took a sheet of paper from
the drawer of his desk.
Clayton reached for it quickly. “What is it?” he demanded.
Jimmie Dale drew it back out of reach.
“Just a minute,” he said softly. “You remember, don't you, that in the
presence of Carruthers here, of myself, and of half a dozen reporters,
you stated that you had been alone with Metzer in his room at three
o'clock yesterday, and that it was you--alone--who found the body later
on at nine o'clock? Yes? I mention this simply to show that from your
own lips the evidence is complete that you had an OPPORTUNITY to commit
the crime. Now you may look at this, Clayton.” He handed over the sheet
of paper.
Clayton took it, stared at it, turning it over from first one side to
the other. Then a sort of relief seemed to come to him and he gulped.
“Nothing but a damned piece of blank paper!” he mumbled.
Jimmie Dale reached over and took back the sheet.
“You're wrong again, Clayton,” he said calmly. “It WAS quite blank
before I handed it to you--but not now. I noticed yesterday that your
hands were generally moist. I am sure they are more so now--excitement,
you know. Carruthers, see that he doesn't interrupt.”
From a drawer, Jimmie Dale took out a little black bottle, the notebook
he had used the day before, and the photograph Carruthers had sent him.
On the sheet of paper Clayton had just handled, Jimmie Dale sprinkled a
little powder from the bottle.
“Lampblack,” explained Jimmie Dale. He shook the paper carefully,
allowing the loose powder to fall on the desk blotter--and held out the
sheet toward Clayton. “Rather neat, isn't it? A very good impression,
too. Your thumb print, Clayton. Now don't move. You may look--not
touch.” He laid the paper down on the desk in front of Clayton. Beside
it he placed the notebook, open at the sketch--a black thumb print now
upon it. “You recall handling this yesterday, I'm sure, Clayton. I tried
the same experiment with the lampblack on it this morning, you see. And
this”--beside the notebook he placed the police photograph; that,
too, in its enlargement, showed, sharply defined, a thumb print on
a diamond-shaped background. “You will no doubt recognise it as an
official photograph, enlarged, taken of the gray seal on Metzer's
forehead--AND THE THUMB PRINT OF METZER'S MURDERER. You have only to
glance at the little scar at the edge of the centre loop to satisfy
yourself that the three are identical. Of course, there are a dozen
other points of similarity equally indisputable, but--”
Jimmie Dale stopped. Clayton was on his feet--rocking on his feet. His
face was deathlike in its pallor. Moisture was oozing from his forehead.
“I didn't do it! I didn't do it!” he cried out wildly. “My God, I tell
you, I DIDN'T do it--and--and--that would send me to the chair.”
“Yes,” said Jimmie Dale coldly, “and that's precisely where you're
going--to the chair.”
The man was beside himself now--racked to the soul by a paroxysm of
fear.
“I'm innocent--innocent!” he screamed out. “Oh, for God's sake, don't
send an innocent man to his death. It WAS Stace Morse. Listen! Listen!
I'll tell the truth.” He was clawing with his hands, piteously, over the
desk at Jimmie Dale. “When the big rewards came out last week I stole
one of the gray seals from the bunch at headquarters to--to use it the
first time any crime was committed when I was sure I could lay my hands
on the man who did it. Don't you see? Of course he'd deny he was the
Gray Seal, just as he'd deny that he was guilty--but I'd have the
proof both ways and--and I'd collect the rewards, and--and--” The man
collapsed into the chair.
Carruthers was up from his seat, his hands gripping tight on the edge of
the desk as he leaned over it.
“Jimmie--Jimmie--what does this mean?” he gasped out.
Jimmie Dale smiled--pleasantly now.
“That he has told the truth,” said Jimmie Dale quietly. “It is quite
true that Stace Morse committed the murder. Shows up the value of
circumstantial evidence though, doesn't it? This would certainly have
got him off, and convicted Clayton here before any jury in the land. But
the point is, Carruthers, that Stace Morse ISN'T the Gray Seal--and that
the Gray Seal is NOT a murderer.”
Clayton looked up. “You--you believe me?” he stammered eagerly.
Jimmie Dale whirled on him in a sudden sweep of passion.
“NO, you cur!” he flashed. “It's not you I believe. I simply wanted your
confession before witnesses.” He whipped the three written sheets from
his pocket. “Here, substantially, is that confession written out.” He
passed it to Carruthers. “Read it to him, Carruthers.”
Carruthers read it aloud.
“Now,” said Jimmie Dale grimly, “this spells ruin for you, Clayton. You
don't deserve a chance to escape prison bars, but I'm going to give you
one, for you're going to get it pretty stiff, anyhow. If you refuse to
sign this, I'll hand you over to the district attorney in half an hour,
and Carruthers and I will swear to your confession; on the other hand,
if you sign it, Carruthers will not be able to print it until to-morrow
morning, and that gives you something like fourteen hours to put
distance between yourself and New York. Here is a pen--if you are quick
enough to take us by surprise once you have signed, you might succeed in
making a dash for that door and effecting your escape--without forcing
us to compound a felony--understand?”
Clayton's hand trembled violently as he seized the pen. He scrawled
his name--looked from one to the other--wet his lips--and then, taking
Jimmie Dale at his word, rushed for the door--and the door slammed
behind him.
Carruthers' face was hard. “What did you let him go for, Jimmie?” he
said uncompromisingly.
“Selfishness. Pure selfishness,” said Jimmie Dale softly. “They'd guy me
unmercifully if they ever heard of it at the St. James Club. The
honour is all yours, Carruthers. I don't appear on the stage. That's
understood? Yes? Well, then”--he handed over the signed confession--“is
the 'scoop' big enough?”
Carruthers fingered the sheets, but his eyes in a bewildered way
searched Jimmie Dale's face.
“Big enough!” he echoed, as though invoking the universe. “It's the
biggest thing the newspaper game has ever known. But how did you come to
do it? What started you? Where did you get your lead?”
“Why, from you, I guess, Carruthers,” Jimmie Dale answered thoughtfully,
with artfully puckered brow. “I remembered that you had said last week
that the Gray Seal never left finger marks on his work--and I saw one on
the seal on Metzer's forehead. Then, you know, I lifted one corner where
the seal overlapped a thread of blood, and, underneath, the thread of
blood wasn't in the slightest disturbed; so, of course, I knew the seal
had been put on quite a long time after the man was dead--not until the
blood had dried thoroughly, to a crust, you know, so that even the damp
surface of the sticky side of the seal hadn't affected it. And then,
I took a dislike to Clayton somehow--and put two and two together,
and took a flyer in getting him to handle the notebook. I guess that's
all--no other reason on earth. Jolly lucky, don't you think?”
Carruthers didn't say anything for a moment. When he spoke, it was
irrelevantly.
“You saved me twenty-five thousand dollars on that reward, Jimmie.”
“That's the only thing I regret,” said Jimmie Dale brightly. “It wasn't
nice of you, Carruthers, to turn on the Gray Seal that way. And
it strikes me you owe the chap, whoever he is, a pretty emphatic
exoneration after what you said in this morning's edition.”
“Jimmie,” said Carruthers earnestly. “You know what I thought of him
before. It's like a new lease of life to get back one's faith in him.
You leave it to me. I'll put the Gray Seal on a pedestal to-morrow that
will be worthy of the immortals--you leave it to me.”
And Carruthers kept his word. Also, before the paper had been an hour
off the press, Carruthers received a letter. It thanked Carruthers
quite genuinely, even if couched in somewhat facetious terms, for his
“sweeping vindication,” twitted him gently for his “backsliding,”
begged to remain “his gratefully,” and in lieu of signature there was a
gray-coloured piece of paper shaped like this:
[Picture]
Only there were no fingerprints on it.
CHAPTER III
THE MOTHER LODE
It was the following evening, and they had dined together again at the
St. James Club--Jimmie Dale, and Carruthers of the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS.
From Clayton and a discussion of the Metzer murder, the conversation had
turned, not illogically, upon the physiognomy of criminals in general.
Jimmie Dale, lazily ensconced now in a lounging chair in one of the
club's private library rooms, flicked a minute speck of cigar ash from
the sleeve of his dinner jacket, and smiled whimsically across the table
at his friend.
“Oh, I dare say there's a lot in physiognomy, Carruthers,” he drawled.
“Never studied the thing, you know--that is, from the standpoint
of crime. Personally, I've only got one prejudice: I distrust, on
principle, the man who wears a perennial and pompous smirk--which isn't,
of course, strictly speaking, physiognomy at all. You see, a man can't
help his eyes being beady or his nose pronounced, but pomposity and a
smirk, now--” Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders.
Carruthers laughed--and then glanced ludicrously at Jimmie Dale, as the
door, ajar, was pushed open, and a man entered.
“Speaking of angels,” murmured Jimmie Dale--and sat up in his chair.
“Hello, Markel!” he observed casually, “You've met Carruthers, of the
NEWS-ARGUS, haven't you?”
Markel was fat and important; he had beady black eyes, fastidiously
trimmed whiskers--and a pronounced smirk.
Markel blew his nose vigorously, coughed asthmatically, and held out his
hand.
“Of course, certainly,” said he effusively. “I've met Carruthers several
times--used his sheet more than once to advertise a new bond flotation.”
The dominant note in Markel's voice was an ingratiating and unpleasant
whine, and Carruthers nodded, not very cordially--and shook hands.
Markel went back to the door, closed it carefully, and returned to the
table.
“Fact is,” he smiled confidentially, “I saw you two come in here a few
minutes ago, and I've got something that I thought Carruthers might be
glad to have for his society column--say, in the Sunday edition.”
He dove into the inside pocket of his coat, produced a large morocco
leather jeweller's case, and, holding it out over the table between
Carruthers and Jimmie Dale, suddenly snapped the cover open--and then,
with a complacent little chuckle that terminated in another fit of
coughing, spilled the contents on the table under the electric reading
lamp.
Like a thing of living, pulsing fire it rolled before their eyes--a
magnificent diamond necklace, of wondrous beauty, gleaming and
scintillating as the light rays shot back from a thousand facets.
For a moment, both men gazed at it without a word.
“Little surprise for my wife,” volunteered Markel, with a debonair wave
of his pudgy hand, and trying to make his voice sound careless.
The case lay open--patently displaying the name of the most famous
jewelry house in America. Jimmie Dale's eyes fixed on Markel's whiskers
where they were brushed outward in an ornate and fastidious gray-black
sweep.
“By Jove!” he commented. “You don't do things by halves, do you,
Markel?”
“Two hundred and ten thousand dollars I paid for that little bunch of
gewgaws,” said Markel, waving his hand again. Then he clapped Carruthers
heartily on the shoulder. “What do you think of it, Carruthers--eh?
Say, a photograph of it, and one of Mrs. Markel--eh? Please her, you
know--she's crazy on this society stunt--all flubdub to me of course.
How's it strike you, Carruthers?”
Carruthers, very evidently, liked neither the man nor his manners, but
Carruthers, above everything else, was a gentleman.
“To be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Markel,” he said a little frigidly,
“I don't believe in this sort of thing. It's all right from a newspaper
standpoint, and we do it; but it's just in this way that owners of
valuable jewelry lay themselves open to theft. It simply amounts to
advising every crook in the country that you have a quarter of a million
at his disposal, which he can carry away in his vest pocket, once he can
get his hands on it--and you invite him to try.”
Jimmie Dale laughed. “What Carruthers means, Markel, is that you'll have
the Gray Seal down your street. Carruthers talks of crooks generally,
but he thinks in terms of only one. He can't help it. He's been
trying so long to catch the chap that it's become an obsession. Eh,
Carruthers?”
Carruthers smiled seriously. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “I hope, though,
for Mr. Markel's sake, that the Gray Seal won't take a fancy to it--if
he does, Mr. Markel can say good-bye to his necklace.”
“Pouf!” coughed Markel arrogantly. “Overrated! His cleverness is all
in the newspaper columns. If he knows what's good for him, he'll know
enough to leave this alone.”
Jimmie Dale was leaning over the table poking gingerly with the tip of
his forefinger at the centre stone in the setting, revolving it gently
to and fro in the light--a very large stone, whose weight would hardly
be less than fifteen carats. Jimmie Dale lowered his head for a closer
examination--and to hide a curious, mocking little gleam that crept into
his dark eyes.
“Yes, I should say you're right, Markel,” he agreed judicially. “He
ought to know better than to touch this. It--it would be too hard to
dispose of.”
“I'm not worrying,” declared Markel importantly.
“No,” said Jimmie Dale. “Two hundred and ten thousand, you said.
Any special--er--significance to the occasion, if the question's not
impertinent? Birthday, wedding anniversary--or something like that?”
“No, nothing like that!” Markel grinned, winked secretively, and rubbed
his hands together. “I'm feeling good, that's all--I'm going to make the
killing of my life to-morrow.”
“Oh!” said Jimmie Dale.
Markel turned to Carruthers. “I'll let you in on that, too, Carruthers,
in a day or two, if you'll send a reporter around--financial man, you
know. It'll be worth your while. And now, how about this? What do you
say to a little article and the photos next Sunday?”
There was a slight hint of rising colour in Carruthers' face.
“If you'll send them to the society editor, I've no doubt he'll be able
to use them,” he said brusquely.
“Right!” said Markel, and coughed, and patted Carruthers' shoulder
patronisingly again. “I'll just do that little thing.” He picked up the
necklace, dangled it till it flashed and flashed again under the light,
then restored it very ostentatiously to its case, and the case to his
pocket. “Thanks awfully, Carruthers,” he said, as he rose from his
chair. “See you again, Dale. Good-night!”
Carruthers glared at the door as it closed behind the man.
“Say it!” prodded Jimmie Dale sweetly. “Don't feel restrained because
you are a guest--I absolve you in advance.”
“Rotter!” said Carruthers.
“Well,” said Jimmie Dale softly. “You see--Carruthers?”
Carruthers' match crackled savagely as he lighted a cigar.
“Yes, I see,” he growled. “But I don't see--you'll pardon my saying
so--how vulgarity like that ever acquired membership in the St. James
Club.”
“Carruthers,” said Jimmie Dale plaintively, “you ought to know better
than that. You know, to begin with, since it seems he has advertised
with you, that he runs some sort of brokerage business in Boston. He's
taken a summer home up here on Long Island, and some misguided chap put
him on the club's visitor's list. His card will NOT be renewed. Sleek
customer, isn't he? Trifle familiar--I was only introduced to him last
night.”
Carruthers grunted, broke his burned match into pieces, and began to
toss the pieces into an ash tray.
Jimmie Dale became absorbed in an inspection of his hands--those
wonderful hands with long, slim, tapering fingers, whose clean, pink
flesh masked a strength and power that was like to a steel vise.
Jimmie Dale looked up. “Going to print a nice little story for him about
the 'costliest and most beautiful necklace in America'?” he inquired
innocently.
Carruthers scowled. “No,” he said bluntly. “I am not. He'll read the
NEWS-ARGUS a long time before he reads anything about that, Jimmie.”
But therein Carruthers was wrong--the NEWS-ARGUS carried the “story” of
Markel's diamond necklace in three-inch “caps” in red ink on the front
page in the next morning's edition--and Carruthers gloated over it
because the morning NEWS-ARGUS was the ONLY paper in New York that did.
Carruthers was to hear more of Markel and Markel's necklace than he
thought, though for the time being the subject dropped between the two
men.
It was still early, barely ten o'clock, when Carruthers left the club,
and, preferring to walk to the newspaper offices, refused Jimmie Dale's
offer of his limousine. It was but five minutes later when Jimmie Dale,
after chatting for a moment or two with those about in the lobby, in
turn sought the coat room, where Markel was being assisted into his
coat.
“Getting home early, aren't you, Markel?” remarked Jimmie Dale
pleasantly.
“Yes,” said Markel, and ran his fingers fussily, comb fashion, through
his whiskers. “Quite a little run out to my place, you know--and with,
you know what, I don't care to be out too late.”
“No, of course,” concurred Jimmie Dale, getting into his own coat.
They walked out of the club together, and Markel climbed importantly
into the tonneau of a big gray touring car.
“Ah--home, Peters,” he sniffed at his chauffeur; and then, with a
grandiloquent wave of his hand to Jimmie Dale: “'Night, Dale.”
Jimmie Dale smiled with his eyes--which were hidden by the brim of his
hat.
“Good-night, Markel,” he replied, and the smile crept curiously to
the corners of his mouth as he watched the gray car disappear down the
street.
A limousine drew up, and Benson, Jimmie Dale's chauffeur, opened the
door.
“Home, Mr. Dale?” he asked cheerily, touching his cap. “Yes,
Benson--home,” said Jimmie Dale absently, and stepped into the car.
It was a luxurious car, as everything that belonged to Jimmie Dale was
luxurious--and he leaned back luxuriously on the cushions, extended
his legs luxuriously to their full length, plunged his hands into his
overcoat pockets--and then a change stole strangely, slowly over Jimmie
Dale.
The sensitive fingers of his right hand in the pocket had touched, and
now played delicately over a sealed envelope that they had found there,
played over it as though indeed by the sense of touch alone they could
read the contents--and he drew his body gradually erect.
It was another of those mysterious missives from--HER. The texture of
the paper was invariably the same--like this one. How had it come there?
Collusion with the coat boy at the club? That was hardly probable.
Perhaps it had been there before he had entered the club for dinner--he
remembered, now, that there had been several people passing, and that he
had been jostled slightly in crossing the sidewalk. What, however, did
it matter? It was there mysteriously, as scores of others had come to
him mysteriously, with never a clew to her identity, to the identity of
his--he smiled a little grimly--accomplice in crime.
He took the envelope from his pocket and stared at it. His fingers had
not been at fault--it was one of hers. The faint, elusive, exquisite
fragrance of some rare perfume came to him as he held it.
“I'd give,” said Jimmie Dale wistfully to himself--“I'd give everything
I own to know who you are--and some day, please God, I will know.”
Jimmie Dale tore the envelope very gently, as though the tearing almost
were an act of desecration--and extracted the letter from within. He
began to read aloud hurriedly and in snatches:
“DEAR PHILANTHROPIC CROOK: Charleton Park Manor--Markel's house is the
second one from the gates on the right-hand side--library leads off
reception hall on left, door opposite staircase--telephone in reception
hall near vestibule entrance, left-hand side--safe is one of your
father's make, No. 14,321--clothes closet behind the desk--probably will
be kept in cash box--five servants; two men, three maids--quarters on
top story--Markel and wife occupy room over library--French windows to
dining room on opposite side of the house--opening on the lawn--get
it TO-NIGHT, Jimmie--TO-MORROW WOULD BE TOO LATE--dispose of it--see
fit--Henry Wilbur, Marshall Building, Broadway--fifth story--”
Through the glass-panelled front of the car, Jimmie Dale could see his
chauffeur's back, and the hand that held the letter dropped now to his
side, and Jimmie Dale stared--at his chauffeur's back. Then, presently,
he read the letter again, as though committing it to memory now; and
then, tearing the paper into tiny shreds, as he did with every one of
her communications, he reached out of the window and allowed the little
pieces to filter gradually from his hand.
The Gray Seal! He smiled in his whimsical way. If it were ever known!
He, Jimmie Dale, with his social standing, his wealth, his position--the
Gray Seal! Not a police official, not a secret-service bureau probably
in the civilised world, but knew the name--not a man, woman, or child
certainly in this great city around him but to whom it was as
familiar as their own! Danger? Yes. A battle of wits? Yes. His against
everybody's--even against Carruthers', his old college chum! For, even
as a reporter, before he had risen to the editorial desk, and even now
that he had, Carruthers had been one of the keenest on the scent of the
Gray Seal.
Danger? Yes. But it was worth it! Worth it a thousand times for the very
lure of the danger itself; but worth it most of all for his association
with her who, by some amazing means, verging indeed on the miraculous,
came into touch with all these things, and supplied him with the data on
which to work--that always some wrong might be righted, or gladness
come where there had been gloom before, or hope where there had been
despair--that into some fellow human's heart should come a gleam
of sunshine. Yes, in spite of the howls of the police, the virulent
diatribes of the press, an angry public screaming for his arrest,
conviction, and punishment, there were those perhaps who even on their
bended knees at night asked God's blessing on--the Gray Seal!
Was it strange, then, after all, that the police, seeking a clew through
motive, should have been driven to frenzy on every occasion in finding
themselves forever confronted with what, from every angle they were able
to view it, was quite a purposeless crime! On one point only they
were right, the old dogma, the old, old cry, old as the institution of
police, older than that, old since time immemorial--CHERCHEZ LA FEMME!
Quite right--but also quite purposeless! Jimmie Dale's eyes grew
wistful. He had been “hunting for the woman in the case” himself,
now, for months and years indefatigably, using every resource at his
command--quite purposelessly.
Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders. Why go over all this to-night--there
were other things to do. She had come to him again--and this time with
a matter that entailed more than ordinary difficulty, more than usual
danger, that would tax his wits and his skill to the utmost, not only
to succeed, but to get out of it himself with a whole skin. Markel--eh?
Jimmie Dale leaned back in his seat, clasped his hands behind his
head--and his eyes, half closed now, were studying Benson's back again
through the plate-glass front.
He was still sitting in that position as the car approached his
residence on Riverside Drive--but, as it came to a stop, and Benson
opened the door, it was a very alert Jimmie Dale that stepped to the
sidewalk.
“Benson,” he said crisply, “I am going downtown again later on, but I
shall drive myself. Bring the touring car around and leave it in front
of the house. I'll run it into the garage when I get back--you need not
wait up.”
“Very good, sir,” said Benson.
In the hallway, Jason, the butler, who had been butler to Jimmie Dale's
father before him, took Jimmie Dale's hat and coat.
“It's a fine evening, Master Jim,” said the privileged old man
affectionately.
Jimmie Dale took out his silver cigarette case, selected a cigarette,
tapped it daintily on the cover of the case--and accepted the match the
old man hastily produced.
“Yes, Jason.” said Jimmie Dale, pleasantly facetious, “it a fine night,
a glorious night, moon and stars and a balmy breeze--quite too fine,
indeed, to remain indoors. In fact, you might lay out my gray ulster; I
think I will go for a spin presently, when I have changed.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jason. “Anything else, Master Jim?”
“No; that's all, Jason. Don't sit up for me--you may go to bed now.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the old man.
Jimmie Dale went upstairs, opened the door of his own particular den on
the right of the landing, stepped inside, closed the door, switched on
the light--and Jimmie Dale's debonair nonchalance dropped from him as a
mask instantly--and it was another Jimmie Dale--the professional Jimmie
Dale.
Quick now in every action, he swung aside the portiere that curtained
off the squat, barrel-shaped safe in the little alcove, opened the safe,
took out that curious leather girdle with its kit of burglar's tools,
added to it a flashlight and an automatic revolver, closed the safe--and
passed into his dressing room. Here, he proceeded to divest himself
rapidly of his evening clothes, selecting in their stead a suit of dark
tweed. He heard Jason come up the stairs, pass along the hall, and mount
the second flight to his own quarters; and presently came the sound of
an automobile without. The dressing room fronted on the Drive--Jimmie
Dale looked out. Benson was just getting out of the touring car.
Slipping the leather girdle, then, around his waist, Jimmie Dale put on
his vest, then his coat--and walked briskly downstairs.
Jason had laid out a gray ulster on the hall stand. Jimmie Dale put it
on, selected a leather cap with motor-goggle attachment that pulled down
almost to the tip of his nose, tucked a slouch hat into the pocket of
the ulster, and, leaving the house, climbed into his car.
He glanced at his watch as he started--it was a quarter of eleven.
Jimmie Dale's lips pursed a little.
“I guess it'll make a night of it, and a tight squeeze, at that, to get
back under cover before daylight,” he muttered. “I'll have to do some
tall speeding.”
But at first, across the city and through Brooklyn, for all his
impatience, it was necessarily slow--after that, Jimmie Dale took
chances, and, once on the country roads of Long Island, the big,
powerful car tore through the night like a greyhound whose leash is
slipped.
A half hour passed--Jimmie Dale's eyes shifting occasionally from the
gray thread of road ahead of him under the glare of the dancing lamps,
to the road map spread out at his feet, upon which, from time to time,
he focused his pocket flashlight. And then, finally, he slowed the car
to a snail's pace--he should be very near his destination--that very
ultra-exclusive subdivision of Charleton Park Manor.
On either side of the road now was quite a thickly set stretch of wooded
land, rising slightly on the right--and this Jimmie Dale scrutinised
sharply. In fact, he stopped for an instant as he came opposite to a
wagon track--it seemed to be little more than that--that led in through
the trees.
“If it's not too far from the seat of war,” commented Jimmie Dale to
himself, as he went on again, “it will do admirably.”
And then, a hundred yards farther on, Jimmie Dale nodded his head in
satisfaction--he was passing the rather ornate stone pillars that marked
the entrance to Charleton Park Manor, and on which the initial promoters
of the subdivision, the real-estate people, had evidently deemed it good
advertising policy to expend a small fortune.
Another hundred yards farther on, Jimmie Dale turned his car around
and returned past the gates to the wagon track again. The road was
deserted--not a car nor a vehicle of any description was in sight.
Jimmie Dale made sure of that--and in another instant Jimmie Dale's own
car, every light extinguished, had vanished--he had backed it up the
wagon track, just far enough in for the trees to screen it thoroughly
from the main road.
Nor did Jimmie Dale himself appear again on the main road--until just as
he emerged close to the gates of Charleton Park Manor from a short cut
through the woods. Also, he was without his ulster now, and the slouch
hat had replaced the motor cap.
Jimmie Dale, in the moonlight, took stock of his surroundings, as he
passed in at a businesslike walk through the gates. It was a large park,
if that name could properly be applied to it at all, and the houses--he
caught sight of one set back from the driveway on the right--were quite
far apart, each in its own rather spacious grounds among the trees.
“The second house on the right,” her letter had said. Jimmie Dale had
already passed the first one--the next would be Markel's then--and it
loomed ahead of him now, black and shadowy and unlighted.
Jimmie Dale shot a glance around him--there was stillness, quiet
everywhere--no sign of life--no sound.
Jimmie Dale's face became tense, his lips tight--and he stepped suddenly
from the sidewalk in among the trees. They were not thick here, of
course, the trees, and the turf beneath his feet was well kept--and,
therefore, soundless. He moved quickly now, but cautiously, from tree to
tree, for the moonlight, flooding the lawn and house, threw all objects
into bold relief.
A minute, two, three went by--and a shadow flitted here and there across
the light-green sward, like the moving of the trees swaying in the
breeze--and then Jimmie Dale was standing close up against one side of
the house, hidden by the protecting black shadows of the walls.
But here, for a moment, Jimmie Dale seemed little occupied with the
house itself--he was staring down past its length to where the woods
made a heavy, dark background at the rear. Then he turned his head,
to face directly to the main road, then back again slowly, as though
measuring an angle. Jimmie Dale had no intention of making his escape by
the roundabout way in which he had been forced to come in order to make
certain of locating the right house, the second one from the gates--and
he was getting the bearings of his car and the wagon track now.
“I guess that'll be about right,” Jimmie Dale muttered finally. “And now
for--”
He slipped along the side of the house and halted where, almost on a
level with the ground, the French windows of the dining room opened on
the lawn. Jimmie Dale tried them gently. They were locked.
An indulgent smile crept to Jimmie Dale's lips--and his hand crept in
under his vest. It came out again--not empty--and Jimmie Dale leaned
close against the window. There was a faint, almost inaudible,
scratching sound, then a slight, brittle crack--and Jimmie Dale laid a
neat little four-inch square of glass on the ground at his feet. Through
the aperture he reached in his hand, turned the key that was in the
lock, turned the bolt-rod handle, pushed the doors silently open--wide
open--left them open--and stepped into the room.
He could see quite well within, thanks to the moonlight. Jimmie Dale
produced a black silk mask from one of the little leather pockets,
adjusted it carefully over his face, and crossed the room to the hall
door. He opened this--wide open--left it open--and entered the hall.
Here it was dark--a pitch blackness. He stood for a moment,
listening--utter silence. And then--alert, strained, tense in an
instant, Jimmie Dale crouched against the wall--and then he smiled a
little grimly. It was only some one coughing upstairs--Markel--in his
sleep, perhaps, or, perhaps--in wakefulness.
“I'm a fool!” confided Jimmie Dale to himself, as he recognised the
cough that he had heard at the club. “And yet--I don't know. One's
nerves get sort of taut. Pretty stiff business. If I'm ever caught, the
penitentiary sentence I get will be the smallest part of what's to pay.”
A round button of light played along the wall from the flashlight in
his hand--just for an instant--and all was blackness again. But in that
instant Jimmie Dale was across the hall, and his fingers were tracing
the telephone connection from the instrument to where the wires
disappeared in the baseboard of the floor. Another instant, and he had
severed the wires with a pair of nippers.
Again the quick, firefly gleam of light to locate the stair case and the
library door opposite to it--and, moving without the slightest noise,
Jimmie Dale's hand was on the door itself. Again he paused to listen.
All was silence now.
The door swung under his hand, and, left open behind him, he was in
the room. The flashlight winked once--suspiciously. Then he snapped its
little switch, keeping the current on, and the ray dodged impudently
here and there all over the apartment.
The safe was set in a sort of clothes closet behind the desk, she had
said. Yes, there it was--the door, at least. Jimmie Dale moved toward
it--and paused as his light swept the top of the intervening desk. A
mass of papers, books, and correspondence littered it untidily. The
yellow sheet of a telegram caught Jimmie Dale's eye.
He picked it up and glanced at it. It read:
“Vein uncovered to-day. Undoubtedly mother lode. Enormously rich. Put
the screws on at once. THURL.”
Under the mask, Jimmie Dale's lips twitched.
“I think, Markel, you miserable hound,” said he softly, “that God will
forgive me for depriving you of a share of the profits. Two hundred and
ten thousand, I think it was, you said the sparklers cost.” A curious
little sound came from Jimmie Dale's lips--like a chuckle.
Jimmie Dale tossed the telegram back on the desk, moved on behind the
desk, opened the door of the closet that had been metamorphosed into
a vault--and the white light travelled slowly, searchingly, critically
over the shining black-enamelled steel, the nickelled knobs, and dials
of a safe that confronted him.
Jimmie Dale nodded at it--familiarly, grimly.
“It's number one-four-three-two-one, all right,” he murmured. “And one
of the best we ever made. Pretty tough. But I've done it before. Say,
half an hour of gentle persuasion. It would be too bad to crack it with
'soup'--besides, that's crude--Carruthers would never forgive the Gray
Seal for that!”
The light went out--blackness fell. Jimmie Dale's slim, sensitive
fingers closed on the dial's knob, his head touched the steel front of
the safe as he pressed his ear against it for the tumblers' fall.
And then silence. It seemed to grow heavier, that silence, with
each second--to palpitate through the quiet house--to grow pregnant,
premonitory of dread, of fear--it seemed to throb in long undulations,
and the stillness grew LOUD. A moonbeam filtered in between the edge
of the drawn shade and the edge of the window. It struggled across the
floor in a wavering path, strayed over the desk, and died away, shadowy
and formless, against the blackness of the opened recess door, against
the blackness of the great steel safe, the blackness of a huddled
form crouched against it. Only now and then, in a strange, projected,
wraithlike effect, the moon ray glinted timidly on the tip of a nickel
dial, and, ghostlike, disclosed a human hand.
Upstairs, Markel coughed again. Then from the safe a whisper,
heavy-breathed as from great exertion:
“MISSED IT!”
The dial whirled with faint, musical, little metallic clicks; then
began to move slowly again, very, very slowly. The moonbeam, as though
petulant at its own abortive attempt to satisfy its curiosity, retreated
back across the floor, and faded away.
Blackness!
Time passed. Then from the safe again, but now in a low gasp, a pant of
relief:
“Ah!”
The ear might barely catch the sound--it was as of metal sliding in
well-oiled grooves, of metal meeting metal in a padded thud. The massive
door swung outward. Jimmie Dale stood up, easing his cramped muscles,
and flirted the sweat beads from his forehead.
After a moment, he knelt again. There was still the inner door--but that
was a minor matter to Jimmie Dale compared with what had gone before.
Stillness once more--a long period of it. And then again that cough from
above--a prolonged paroxysm of it this time that went racketing through
the house.
Jimmie Dale, in the act of swinging back the inner door of the safe,
paused to listen, and little furrows under his mask gathered on his
forehead. The coughing stopped. Jimmie Dale waited a moment, still
listening--then his flashlight bored into the interior of the safe.
“The cash box, probably,” quoted Jimmie Dale, beneath his breath--and
picked it up from where it lay in the bottom compartment of the safe.
The lock snipped under the insistent probe of a delicate little
blued-steel instrument, and Jimmie Dale lifted the cover. There was
a package of papers and documents on top, held together with elastic
bands. Jimmie Dale spent a moment or two examining these, then
his fingers dived down underneath, and the next minute, under the
flashlight, the morocco leather case open, the diamond necklace was
sparkling and flashing on its white satin bed.
“A tempting little thing, isn't it?” said Jimmie Dale gently. “It was
really thoughtful of you, Markel, to buy that this afternoon!”
Jimmie Dale replaced the necklace in the cash box, set the cash box on
the floor, closed the inner door of the safe, and swung the outer door
a little inward--but left it flauntingly ajar. Then from a pocket of the
leather girdle beneath his vest he produced his small, thin, flat, metal
case. From this, from between sheets of oil paper, with the aid of a
pair of tweezers, he lifted out a gray, diamond-shaped seal. Jimmie
Dale was apparently fastidious. He held the seal with the tweezers as
he moistened the adhesive side with his tongue, laid the seal on his
handkerchief, and pressed the handkerchief firmly against the safe--as
usual, Jimmie Dale's insignia bore no finger prints as it lay neatly
capping the knob of the dial.
He reached down, picked up the cash box--and then, for the second time
that night, held suddenly tense, alert, listening, his every muscle
taut. A door opened upstairs. There came a murmur of voices. Then a
momentary lull.
Jimmie Dale listened. Like a statue he stood there in the black,
absolutely motionless--his head a little forward and to one side.
Nothing--not a sound. Then a very low, curious, swishing noise, and a
faint creak. SOMEBODY WAS COMING DOWN THE STAIRS!
Jimmie Dale moved stealthily from the recess, and noiselessly to the
desk. Very faintly, but distinctly now, came a pad of either slippered
or bare feet on the stairway carpet. Like a cat, soundless in his
movements, Jimmie Dale crept toward the door of the room. Down the
stairs came that pad of feet; occasionally came that swishing sound.
Nearer the door crept Jimmie Dale, and his lips were thinned now, his
jaws clamped. How near were they together, he and this night prowler? At
times he could not hear the other at all, and, besides, the heavy carpet
made the judgment of distance an impossibility. If he could gain the
hall, and, in the darkness, elude the other, the way of escape through
the dining room was open. And then, within a few feet of the door,
Jimmie Dale halted abruptly, as a woman's voice rose querulously from
the hallway above:
“You are making a perfect fool of yourself, Theodore Markel! Come back
here to bed!”
Jimmie Dale's face hardened like stone--the answer came almost from the
very threshold in front of him:
“I can't sleep, I tell you”--it was Markel's voice, in a disgruntled
snarl. “I was a fool to bring the confounded thing home. I'm going to
take the library couch for the rest of the night.”
It happened quick, then--quick as the winking of an eye. Two sharp,
almost simultaneous, clicks of the electric-light buttons pressed by
Markel, and the hall and library were a flood of light--and Jimmie Dale
leaped forward to where, in dressing gown and pajamas, blankets and
bedding over one arm, a revolver dangling in the other hand, Markel
stood full before the door in the hallway without.
There was a wild yell of terror and surprise from Markel, then a
deafening roar and a spit of flame from his revolver--a bitter,
smothered exclamation from Jimmie Dale as the cash box crashed to the
floor from his left hand, and he was upon the other like a tiger.
With the impact, both men went to the floor, grappled, and rolled over
and over. Half mad with fear, shock, and surprise, Markel fought like a
maniac, and his voice, in gasping shouts, rang through the house.
A minute, two passed--and the men rolled about the hall floor. Markel,
over middle age and unheathily fat, against Jimmie Dale's six feet of
muscle--only Jimmie Dale's left hand, dripping a red stream now, was
almost useless.
From above came wild confusion--women's voices in little shrieks; men's
voices shouting in excitement; doors opening, running feet. And then
Jimmie Dale had snatched the revolver from the floor where Markel
had dropped it in the scuffle, and was pressing it against Markel's
forehead--and Markel, terror-stricken, had collapsed in a flabby, pliant
heap.
Jimmie Dale, still covering Markel with the weapon, stood up. The
frightened faces of women protruded over the banisters above. The two
men-servants, at best none too enthusiastically on the way down, stopped
as though stunned as Jimmie Dale swung the revolver upon them.
Then Jimmie Dale spoke--to Markel--pointing the weapon at Markel again.
“I don't like you, Markel,” he said, with cold impudence. “The only
decent thing you'll ever do will be to die--and if those men of yours
on the stairs move another step it will be your death warrant. Do you
understand? I would suggest that you request them to stay where they
are.”
Cold sweat was on Markel's face as he stared into the muzzle of the
revolver, and his teeth chattered.
“Go back!” he screamed hysterically at the servants. “Go back! Sit down!
Don't move! Do what he tells you!”
“Thank you!” said Jimmie Dale grimly. “Now, get up yourself!”
Markel got up.
Jimmie Dale backed to the library door, picked up the cash box, tucked
it under his left armpit, and faced those on the stairs.
“Mr. Markel and I are going out for a little walk,” he announced coolly.
“If one of you make a move or raise an alarm before your master comes
back, I shall be obliged, in self-defence, to shoot--Mr. Markel. Mr.
Markel quite understands that--I am sure. Do you not, Mr. Markel?”
“Helen,” screamed Markel to his wife, “don't let 'em move! For God's
sake, do as he says!”
Jimmie Dale's lips, just showing beneath the edge of his mask, broadened
in a pleasant little smile.
“Will you lead the way, Mr. Markel?” he requested, with ironic
deference. “Through the dining room, please. Yes, that's right!”
Markel walked weakly into the dining room, and Jimmie Dale followed. A
prod in the back from the revolver muzzle, and Markel stepped through
the French windows and out on the lawn. Jimmie Dale faced the other
toward the woods at the rear of the house.
“Go on!” Jimmie Dale's voice was curt now, uncompromising. “And step
lively!”
They passed on along the side of the house and in among the trees. Fifty
yards or so more, and Jimmie Dale halted. He backed Markel up against a
large tree--not over gently.
“I--I say”--Markel's teeth were going like castanets. “I--”
“You'll oblige me by keeping your mouth shut,” observed Jimmie Dale
politely--and he whipped the cord of Markel's dressing gown loose
and began to tie the man to the tree. “You have many unpleasant
characteristics, Markel--your voice is one of them. Shall I repeat that
I do not like you?” He stepped to the back of the tree. “Pardon me if I
draw this uncomfortably tight. I don't think you can reach around to the
knot. No? The trunk is too large? Quite so!” He stepped around to face
Markel again--the man was thoroughly frightened, his face was livid, his
jaw sagged weakly, and his eyes followed every movement of the revolver
in Jimmie Dale's hand in a sort of miserable fascination. Jimmie Dale
smiled unhappily. “I am going to do something, Markel, that I should
advise no other man to do--I am going to put you on your honour! For the
next fifteen minutes you are not to utter a sound. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes,” said Markel hoarsely.
“No,” said Jimmie Dale sadly, “I don' think you do. Let me be painfully
explicit. If you break your vow of silence by so much as a second, then
to-morrow, or the next day, or the day after, at my convenience, Markel,
you and I will meet again--for the LAST time. There can be no possible
misapprehension on your part now--Markel?”
“N-no,”--Markel could scarcely chatter out the word.
“Quite so,” said Jimmie Dale, in velvet tones. He stood for an
instant looking at the other with cool insolence; then: “Good-night,
Markel”--and five minutes later a great touring car was tearing New
Yorkward over the Long Island roads at express speed.
It was one o'clock in the morning as Jimmie Dale swung the car into a
cross street off lower Broadway, and drew up at the curb beside a large
office building. He got out, snuggled the cash box under his ulster,
went around to the Broadway entrance, glanced up to note that a light
burned in a fifth-story window, and entered the building.
The hallway was practically in darkness, one or two incandescents only
threw a dim light about. Jimmie Dale stopped for a moment at the foot
of the stairs, beside the elevator well, to listen--if the watchman was
making rounds, it was in another part of the building Jimmie Dale began
to climb.
He reached the fifth floor, turned down the corridor, and halted in
front of a door, through the ground-glass panel of which a light glowed
faintly--as though coming from an inner office beyond. Jimmie Dale drew
the black silk mask from his pocket, adjusted it, tried the door, found
it unlocked, opened it noiselessly, and stepped inside. Across the
room, through another door, half open, the light streamed into the outer
office, where Jimmie Dale stood.
Jimmie Dale stole across the room, crouched by the door to look into the
inner office--and his face went suddenly rigid.
“Good God!” he whispered. “As bad as that!”--but it was a nonchalant
Jimmie Dale to all outward appearances that, on the instant, stepped
unconcernedly over the threshold.
An elderly man, white-haired, kindly-faced, kindly-eyed, save now that
the face was drawn and haggard, the eyes full of weariness, was standing
behind a flat-topped desk, his fingers twitching nervously on a revolver
in his hand. He whirled, with a startled cry, at Jimmie Dale's entrance,
and the revolver clattered from his fingers to the floor.
“I am afraid,” said Jimmie Dale, smiling pleasantly, “that you were
going to shoot yourself. Your name is Wilbur, Henry Wilbur, isn't it?”
Unmanned, trembling, the other stood--and nodded mechanically.
“It's really not a nice thing to do,” said Jimmie Dale confidentially.
“Makes a mess, you see, too”--he was pulling off his motor gauntlet,
his ulster, his jacket, and, having set the cash box on the desk, was
rolling back his sleeve as he spoke. “Had a little experience myself
this evening.” He held out his hand that, with the forearm, was covered
with blood. “A little above the wrist--fortunately only a flesh wound--a
little memento from a chap named Markel, and--”
“MARKEL!” The word burst, quivering, from the other's lips.
“Yes,” said Jimmie Dale imperturbably. “Do you mind if I wash a bit--and
could you oblige me with a towel, or something that would do for a
bandage?”
The man seemed dazed. In a subconscious way, he walked from the desk to
a little cupboard, and took out two towels.
Jimmie Dale stooped, while the other's back was turned, picked up the
revolver from the floor, and slipped it into his trousers pocket.
“Markel?” said Wilbur again, the same trembling anxiety in his voice, as
he handed Jimmie Dale the towels and motioned toward a washstand in the
corner of the room. “Did you say Markel--Theodore Markel?”
“Yes,” said Jimmie Dale, examining his wound critically.
“You had trouble--a fight with him? Is he--he--dead?”
“No,” said Jimmie Dale, smiling a little grimly. “He's pretty badly
hurt, though, I imagine--but not in a physical way.”
“Strange!” whispered Wilbur, in a numbed tone to himself; and he went
back and sank down in his desk chair. “Strange that you should speak of
Markel--strange that you should have come here to-night!”
Jimmie Dale did not answer. He glanced now and then at the other, as he
deftly dressed his wrist--the man seemed on the verge of collapse, on
the verge of a nervous breakdown. Jimmie Dale swore softly to himself.
Wilbur was too old a man to be called upon to stand against the trouble
and anxiety that was mirrored in the misery in his face, that had
brought him to the point of taking his own life.
Jimmie Dale put on his coat again, walked over to the desk, and picked
up the 'phone.
“If I may?” he inquired courteously--and confided a number to the
mouthpiece of the instrument.
There was a moment's wait, during which Wilbur, in a desperate sort of
way, seemed to be trying to rally himself, to piece together a puzzle,
as it were; and for the first time he appeared to take a personal
interest in the masked figure that leaned against his desk. He kept
passing his hands across his eyes, staring at Jimmie Dale.
Then Jimmie Dale spoke--into the 'phone.
“MORNING NEWS-ARGUS office? Mr. Carruthers, please. Thank you.”
Another wait--then Jimmie Dale's voice changed its pitch and register to
a pleasant and natural, though quite unrecognisable bass.
“Mr. Carruthers? Yes. I thought it might interest you to know that
Mr. Theodore Markel purchased a very valuable diamond necklace this
afternoon. . . . Oh, you knew that, did you? Well, so much the better;
you'll be all the more keenly interested to know that it is no longer in
his possession. . . . I beg pardon? Oh, yes, I quite forgot--this is the
Gray Seal speaking. . . . Yes. . . . The Gray Seal. . . . I have just
come from Mr. Markel's country house, and if you hurry a man out there
you ought to be able to give the public an exclusive bit of news,
a scoop, I believe you call it--you see, Mr. Carruthers, I am not
ungrateful for, I might say, the eulogistic manner in which the MORNING
NEWS-ARGUS treated me in that last affair, and I trust I shall be able
to do you many more favours--I am deeply in your debt. And, oh, yes,
tell your reporter not to overlook the detail of Mr. Markel in his
pajamas and dressing gown tied to a tree in his park--Mr. Markel might
be inclined to be reticent on that point, and it would be a pity to
deprive the public of any--er--'atmosphere' in the story, you know. . . .
What? . . . No; I am afraid Mr. Markel's 'phone is--er--out of order.
. . . Yes. . . . And, by the way, speaking of 'phones, Mr. Carruthers,
between gentlemen, I know you will make no effort under the
circumstances to discover the number I am calling from. Good-night, Mr.
Carruthers.” Jimmie Dale hung the receiver abruptly on the hook.
“You see,” said Jimmie Dale, turning to Wilbur--and then he stopped. The
man was on his feet, swaying there, his face positively gray.
“My God!” Wilbur burst out. “What have you done? A thousand times better
if I had shot myself, as I would have done in another moment if you had
not come in. I was only ruined then--I am disgraced now. You have robbed
Markel's safe--I am the one man in the world who would have a reason
above all others for doing that--and Markel knows it. He will accuse
me of it. He can prove I had a motive. I have not been home to-night.
Nobody knows I am here. I cannot prove an alibi. What have you done!”
“Really,” said Jimmie Dale, almost plaintively, swinging himself up on
the corner of the desk and taking the cash box on his knee, “really, you
are alarming yourself unnecessarily. I--”
But Wilbur stopped him. “You don't know what you are talking about!”
Wilbur cried out, in a choked way; then, his voice steadying, he rushed
on: “Listen! I am a ruined man, absolutely ruined. And Markel has ruined
me--I did not see through his trick until too late. Listen! For years,
as a mining engineer, I made a good salary--and I saved it. Two years
ago I had nearly seventy thousand dollars--it represented my life work.
I bought an abandoned mine in Alaska for next to nothing--I was certain
it was rich. A man by the name of Thurl, Jason T. Thurl, another mining
engineer, a steamer acquaintance, was out there at the time--he was a
partner of Markel's, though I didn't know it then. I started to work the
mine. It didn't pan out. I dropped nearly every cent. Then I struck
a small vein that temporarily recouped me, and supplied the necessary
funds with which to go ahead for a while. Thurl, who had tried to buy
the mine out from under my option in the first place, repeatedly then
tried to buy it from me at a ridiculous figure. I refused. He persisted.
I refused--I was confident, I KNEW I had one of the richest properties
in Alaska.”
Wilbur paused. A little row of glistening drops had gathered on his
forehead. Jimmie Dale, balancing Markel's cash box on one knee, drummed
softly with his finger tips on the cover.
“The vein petered out,” Wilbur went on. “But I was still confident.
I sank all the proceeds of the first strike--and sank them fast, for
unaccountable accidents that crippled me both financially and in the
progress of the work began to happen.” Wilbur flung out his hands
impotently. “Oh, it's a long story--too long to tell. Thurl was at the
bottom of those accidents. He knew as well as I did that the mine was
rich--better than I did, for that matter, for we discovered before we
ran him out of Alaska that he had made secret borings on the property.
But what I did not know until a few hours ago was that he had actually
uncovered what we uncovered only yesterday--the mother lode. He was
driving me as fast as he could into the last ditch--for Markel. I
didn't know until yesterday that Markel had any thing to do with it. I
struggled on out there, hoping every day to open a new vein. I raised
money on everything I had, except my insurance and the mine--and sank
it in the mine. No one out there would advance me anything on a property
that looked like a failure, that had once already been abandoned. I
have always kept an office here, and I came back East with the idea of
raising something on my insurance. Markel, quite by haphazard as I then
thought, was introduced to me just before we left San Francisco on
our way to New York. On the run across the continent we became very
friendly. Naturally, I told him my story. He played sympathetic good
fellow, and offered to lend me fifty thousand dollars on a demand note.
I did not want to be involved for a cent more than was necessary, and,
as I said, I hoped from day to day to make another strike. I refused
to take more than ten thousand. I remember now that he seemed strangely
disappointed.”
Again Wilbur stopped. He swept the moisture from his forehead--and his
fist, clenched, came down upon the desk.
“You see the game!”--there was bitter anger in his voice now. “You see
the game! He wanted to get me in deep enough so that I couldn't wriggle
out, deeper than ten thousand that I could get at any time on my
insurance, he wanted me where I couldn't get away--and he got me. The
first ten thousand wasn't enough. I went to him for a second, a third, a
fourth, a fifth--hoping always that each would be the last. Each time a
new note, a demand note for the total amount, was made, cancelling the
former one. I didn't know his game, didn't suspect it--I blessed God for
giving me such a friend--until this, or, rather, yesterday afternoon,
when I received a telegram from my manager at the mine saying that
he had struck what looked like a very rich vein--the mother lode.
And”--Wilbur's fist curled until the knuckles were like ivory in their
whiteness--“he added in the telegram that Thurl had wired the news of
the strike to a man in New York by the name of Markel. Do you see? I
hadn't had the telegram five minutes, when a messenger brought me a
letter from Markel curtly informing me that I would have to meet my note
to-morrow morning. I can't meet it. He knew I couldn't. With wealth in
sight--I'm wiped out. A DEMAND note, a call loan, do you understand--and
with a few months in which to develop the new vein I could pay it
readily. As it is--I default the note--Markel attaches all I have left,
which is the mine. The mine is sold to satisfy my indebtedness. Markel
buys it in legally, upheld by the law--and acquires, ROBS me of it,
and--”
“And so,” said Jimmie Dale musingly, “you were going to shoot yourself?”
Wilbur straightened up, and there was something akin to pathetic
grandeur in the set of the old shoulders as they squared back.
“Yes!” he said, in a low voice. “And shall I tell you why? Even if,
which is not likely, there was something reverting to me over the
purchase price, it would be a paltry thing compared with the mine. I
have a wife and children. If I have worked for them all my life, could I
stand back now at the last and see them robbed of their inheritance by a
black-hearted scoundrel when I could still lift a hand to prevent it!
I had one way left. What is my life? I am too old a man to cling to it
where they are concerned. I have referred to my insurance several times.
I have always carried heavy insurance”--he smiled a little curious,
mirthless smile--“THAT HAS NO SUICIDE CLAUSE.” He swept his hand over
the desk, indicating the papers scattered there. “I have worked late
to-night getting my affairs in order. My total insurance is fifty-two
thousand dollars, though I couldn't BORROW anywhere near the full amount
on it--but at my death, paid in full, it would satisfy the note. My
executors, by instruction would pay the note--and no dollar from the
mine, no single grain of gold, not an ounce of quartz, would Markel ever
get his hands on, and my wife and children would be saved. That is--”
His words ended abruptly--with a little gasp. Jimmie Dale had opened
the cash box and was dangling the necklace under the light--a stream of
fiery, flashing, sparkling gems.
Then Wilbur spoke again, a hard, bitter note in his voice, pointing his
hand at the necklace.
“But now, on top of everything, you have brought me disgrace--because
you broke into his safe to-night for THAT? He would and will accuse me.
I have heard of you--the Gray Seal--you have done a pitiful night's work
in your greed for that thing there.”
“For this?” Jimmie Dale smiled ironically, holding the necklace up.
Then he shook his head. “I didn't break into Markel's safe for this--it
wouldn't have been worth while. It's only paste.”
“PASTE!” exclaimed Wilbur, in a slow way.
“Paste,” said Jimmie Dale placidly, dropping the necklace back into its
case. “Quite in keeping with Markel, isn't it--to make a sensation on
the cheap?”
“But that doesn't change matters!” Wilbur cried out sharply, after a
numbed instant's pause. “You still broke into the safe, even if you
didn't know then that the necklace was paste.”
“Ah, but, you see--I did know then,” said Jimmie Dale softly. “I am
really--you must take my word for it--a very good judge of stones, and I
had--er--seen these before.”
Wilbur stared--bewildered, confused.
“Then why--what was it that--”
“A paper,” said Jimmie Dale, with a little chuckle--and produced it from
the cash box. “It reads like this: 'On demand, I promise to pay--'”
“My note!” It came in a great, surging cry from Wilbur; and he strained
forward to read it.
“Of course,” said Jimmie Dale. “Of course--your note. Did you think that
I had just happened to drop in on you? Now, then, see here, you just
buck up, and--er--smile. There isn't even a possibility of you being
accused of the theft. In the first place, Markel saw quite enough of me
to know that it wasn't you. Secondly, neither Markel nor any one else
would ever dream that the break was made for anything else but the
necklace, with which you have no connection--the papers were in the cash
box and were just taken along with it. Don't you see? And, besides, the
police, with my very good friend, Carruthers at their elbows, will see
very thoroughly to it that the Gray Seal gets full and ample credit for
the crime. But”--Jimmie Dale pulled out his watch, and yawned under his
mask--“it's getting to be an unconscionable hour--and you've still a
letter to write.”
“A letter?” Wilbur's voice was broken, his lips quivering.
“To Markel,” said Jimmie Dale pleasantly. “Write him in reply to his
letter of the afternoon, and post it before you leave here--just as
though you had written it at once, promptly, on receipt of his. He will
still get it on the morning delivery. State that you will take up the
note immediately on presentation at whatever bank he chooses to name.
That's all. Seeing that he hasn't got it, he can't very well present
it--can he? Eventually, having--er--no use for fake diamonds, I
shall return the necklace, together with the papers in his cash box
here--including your note.”
“Eventually?” Uncomprehendingly, stumblingly, Wilbur repeated the word.
“In a month or two or three, as the case may be,” explained Jimmie
Dale brightly. “Whenever you insert a personal in the NEWS-ARGUS to
the effect that the mother lode has given you the cash to meet it.” He
replaced the note in the cash box, slipped down to his feet from the
desk--and then he choked a little. Wilbur, the tears streaming down
his face, unable to speak, was holding out his hands to Jimmie Dale.
“I--er--good-night!” said Jimmie Dale hurriedly--and stepped quickly
from the room.
Halfway down the first flight of stairs he paused. Steps, running after
him, sounded along the corridor above; and then Wilbur's voice.
“Don't go--not yet,” cried the old man. “I don't understand. How did you
know--who told you about the note?”
Jimmie Dale did not answer--he went on noiselessly down the stairs. His
mask was off now, and his lips curved into a strange little smile.
“I wish I knew,” said Jimmie Dale wistfully to himself.
CHAPTER IV
THE COUNTERFEIT FIVE
It was still early in the evening, but a little after nine o'clock.
The Fifth Avenue bus wended its way, jouncing its patrons, particularly
those on the top seats, across town, and turned into Riverside Drive. A
short distance behind the bus, a limousine rolled down the cross street
leisurely, silently.
As the lights of passing craft on the Hudson and a myriad scintillating,
luminous points dotting the west shore came into view, Jimmie Dale rose
impulsively from his seat on the top of the bus, descended the little
circular iron ladder at the rear, and dropped off into the street. It
was only a few blocks farther to his residence on the Drive, and
the night was well worth the walk; besides, restless, disturbed, and
perplexed in mind, the walk appealed to him.
He stepped across to the sidewalk and proceeded slowly along. A month
had gone by and he had not heard a word from--HER. The break on West
Broadway, the murder of Metzer in Moriarty's gambling hell, the theft
of Markel's diamond necklace had followed each other in quick
succession--and then this month of utter silence, with no sign of her,
as though indeed she had never existed.
But it was not this temporary silence on her part that troubled Jimmie
Dale now. In the years that he had worked with this unknown, mysterious
accomplice of his whom he had never seen, there had been longer
intervals than a bare month in which he had heard nothing from her--it
was not that. It was the failure, total, absolute, and complete,
that was the only result for the month of ceaseless, unremitting,
doggedly-expended effort, even as it had been the result many times
before, in an attempt to solve the enigma that was so intimate and vital
a factor in his own life.
If he might lay any claims to cleverness, his resourcefulness, at
least, he was forced to admit, was no match for hers. She came, she went
without being seen--and behind her remained, instead of clews to her
identity, only an amazing, intangible mystery, that left him at times
appalled and dismayed. How did she know about those conditions in West
Broadway, how did she know about Metzer's murder, how did she know about
Markel and Wilbur--how did she know about a hundred other affairs of the
same sort that had happened since that night, years ago now, when out of
pure adventure he had tampered with Marx's, the jeweller's strong
room in Maiden Lane, and she had, mysteriously then, too, solved HIS
identity, discovered him to be the Gray Seal?
Jimmie Dale, wrapped up in his own thoughts, entirely oblivious to his
surroundings, traversed another block. There had never been since the
world began, and there would never be again, so singular and bizarre a
partnership as this--of hers and his. He, Jimmie Dale, with his strange
double life, one of New York's young bachelor millionaires, one whose
social status was unquestioned; and she, who--who WHAT? That was just
it! Who what? What was she? What was her name? What one personal,
intimate thing did he know about her? And what was to be the end?
Not that he would have severed his association with her--not for
worlds!--though every time, that, by some new and curious method, one of
her letters found its way into his hands, outlining some fresh coup
for him to execute, his peril and danger of discovery was increased in
staggering ratio. To-day, the police hunted the Gray Seal as they hunted
a mad dog; the papers stormed and raved against him: in every detective
bureau of two continents he was catalogued as the most notorious
criminal of the age--and yet, strange paradox, no single crime had ever
been committed!
Jimmie Dale's strong, fine-featured face lighted up. Crime! Thanks to
her, there were those who blessed the name of the Gray Seal, those
into whose lives had come joy, relief from misery, escape from death
even--and their blessings were worth a thousandfold the risk and peril
of disaster that threatened him at every minute of the day.
“Thank God for her!” murmured Jimmie Dale softly. “But--but if I could
only find her, see her, know who she is, talk to her, and hear her
voice!” Then he smiled a little wanly. “It's been a pretty tough
month--and nothing to show for it!”
It had! It had been one of the hardest months through which Jimmie Dale
had ever lived. The St. James, that most exclusive club, his favourite
haunt, had seen nothing of him; the easel in his den, that was his
hobby, had been untouched; there had been days even when he had not
crossed the threshold of his home. Every resource at his command he
had called into play in an effort to solve the mystery. For nearly the
entire month, following first this lead and then that, he had lived in
the one disguise that he felt confident she knew nothing of--that was,
or, rather, had become, almost a dual personality with him. From the
Sanctuary, that miserable and disreputable room in a tenement on the
East Side, a tenement that had three separate means of entrance and
exit, he had emerged day after day as Larry the Bat, a character as well
known and as well liked in the exclusive circles of the underworld as
was Jimmie Dale in the most exclusive strata of New York's society
and fashion. And it had been useless--all useless. Through his own
endeavours, through the help of his friends of the underworld, the
lives of half a dozen men, Bert Hagan's on West Broadway, for instance,
Markel's, and others', had been laid bare to the last shred, but nowhere
could be found the one vital point that linked their lives with hers,
that would account for her intimate knowledge of them, and so furnish
him with the clew that would then with certainty lead him to a solution
of her identity.
It was baffling, puzzling, unbelievable, bordering, indeed, on the
miraculous--herself, everything about her, her acts, her methods, her
cleverness, intangible in one sense, were terrifically real in another.
Jimmie Dale shook his head. The miraculous and this practical, everyday
life were wide and far apart. There was nothing miraculous about it--it
was only that the key to it was, so far, beyond his reach.
And then suddenly Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders in consonance with
a whimsical change in both mood and thought.
“Larry the Bat, is a hard taskmaster!” he muttered facetiously. “I'm
afraid I'm not very presentable this evening--no bath this morning,
and no shave, and, after nearly a month of make-up, that beastly grease
paint gets into the skin creases in a most intimate way.” He chuckled
as the thought of old Jason, his butler, came to him. “I saw Jason,
torn between two conflicting emotions, shaking his head over the black
circles under my eyes last night--he didn't know whether to worry over
the first signs of a galloping decline, or break his heart at witnessing
the young master he had dandled on his knees going to the damnation
bowwows and turning into a confirmed roue! I guess I'll have to mind
myself, though. Even Carruthers detached his mind far enough from his
editorial desk and the hope of exclusively publishing the news of the
Gray Seal's capture in the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS, to tell me I was looking
seedy. It's wonderful the way a little paint will metamorphose a man!
Well, anyway, here's for a good hot tub to-night, and a fresh start!”
He quickened his pace. There were still three blocks to go, and here was
no hurrying, jostling crowd to impede his progress; indeed, as far as he
could see up the Drive, there was not a pedestrian in sight. And then,
as he walked, involuntarily, insistently, his mind harked back into the
old groove again.
“I've tried to picture her,” said Jimmie Dale softly to himself. “I've
tried to picture her a hundred, yes, a thousand times, and--”
A bus, rumbling cityward, went by him, squeaking, creaking, and rattling
in its uneasy joints--and out of the noise, almost at his elbow it
seemed, a voice spoke his name--and in that instant intuitively he KNEW,
and it thrilled him, stopped the beat of his heart, as, dulcet, soft,
clear as the note of a silver bell it fell--and only one word:
“Jimmie!”
He whirled around. A limousine, wheels just grazing the curb, was
gliding slowly and silently past him, and from the window a woman's
arm, white-gloved and dainty, was extended, and from the fingers to the
pavement fluttered an envelope--and the car leaped forward.
For the fraction of a second, Jimmie Dale stood dazed, immovable, a
gamut of emotions, surprise, fierce exultation, amazement, a strange
joy, a mighty uplift, swirling upon him--and then, snatching up the
envelope from the ground, he sprang out into the road after the car. It
was the one chance he had ever had, the one chance she had ever given
him, and he had seen--a white-gloved arm! He could not reach the car,
it was speeding away from him like an arrow now, but there was something
else that would do just as well, something that with all her cleverness
she had overlooked--the car's number dangling on the rear axle, the
rays of the little lamp playing on the enamelled surface of the plate!
Gasping, panting, he held his own for a yard or more, and there floated
back to him a little silvery laugh from the body of the limousine, and
then Jimmie Dale laughed, too, and stopped--it was No. 15,836!
He stood and watched the car disappear up the Drive. What delicious
irony! A month of gruelling, ceaseless toil that had been vain, futile,
useless--and the key, when he was not looking for it, unexpectedly,
through no effort of his, was thrust into his hand--No. 15,836!
Jimmie Dale, the gently ironic smile still on his lips, those slim,
supersensitive fingers of his subconsciously noting that the texture of
the envelope was the same as she always used, retraced his steps to the
sidewalk.
“Number fifteen thousand eight hundred and thirty-six,” said Jimmie Dale
aloud--and halted at the curb as though rooted to the spot. It sounded
strangely familiar, that number! He repeated it over again slowly:
“One-five-eight-three-six.” And the smile left his lips, and upon his
face came the look of a chastened child. She had used a duplicate plate!
Fifteen thousand eight hundred and thirty-six was the number of one of
his own cars--his own particular runabout!
For a moment longer he stood there, undecided whether to laugh or swear,
and then his eyes fastened mechanically on the envelope he was twirling
in his fingers. Here, at least, was something that was not elusive;
that, on the contrary, as a hundred others in the past had done,
outlined probably a grim night's work ahead for the Gray Seal! And, if
it were as those others had been, every minute from the moment of its
receipt was precious time. He stepped under the nearest street light,
and tore the envelope open.
“Dear Philanthropic Crook,” it began--and then followed two closely
written pages. Jimmie Dale read them, his lips growing gradually
tighter, a smouldering light creeping into his dark eyes, and once he
emitted a short, low whistle of consternation--that was at the end, as
he read the post-script that was heavily underscored: “Work quickly.
They will raid to-night. Be careful. Look out for Kline, he is the
sharpest man in the United States secret service.”
For a brief instant longer, Jimmie Dale stood under the street lamp,
his mind in a lightning-quick way cataloguing every point in her letter,
viewing every point from a myriad angles, constructing, devising,
mapping out a plan to dove-tail into them--and then Jimmie Dale swung on
a downtown bus. There was neither time nor occasion to go home now--that
marvellous little kit of burglar's tools that peeped from their tiny
pockets in that curious leather undervest, and that reposed now in
the safe in his den, would be useless to him to-night; besides, in the
breast pocket of his coat, neatly folded, was a black silk mask, and,
relics of his role of Larry the Bat, an automatic revolver, an
electric flashlight, a steel jimmy, and a bunch of skeleton keys, were
distributed among the other pockets of his smart tweed suit.
Jimmie Dale changed from the bus to the subway, leaving behind him,
strewn over many blocks, the tiny and minute fragments into which he had
torn her letter; at Astor Place he left the subway, walked to Broadway,
turned uptown for a block to Eighth Street, then along Eighth Street
almost to Sixth Avenue--and stopped.
A rather shabby shop, a pitiful sort of a place, displaying in its
window a heterogeneous conglomeration of cheap odds and ends, ink
bottles, candy, pencils, cigarettes, pens, toys, writing pads, marbles,
and a multitude of other small wares, confronted him. Within, a little,
old, sweet-faced, gray-haired woman stood behind the counter, pottering
over the rearrangement of some articles on the shelves.
“My word!” said Jimmie Dale softly to himself. “You wouldn't believe it,
would you! And I've always wondered how these little stores managed to
make both ends meet. Think of that old soul making fifteen or twenty
thousand dollars from a layout like this--even if it has taken her a
lifetime!”
Jimmie Dale had halted nonchalantly and unconcernedly by the curb,
not too near the window, busied apparently in an effort to light a
refractory cigarette; and then, about to enter the store, he gazed
aimlessly across the street for a moment instead. A man came briskly
around the corner from Sixth Avenue, opened the store door, and went in.
Jimmie Dale drew back a little, and turned his head again as the door
closed--and a sudden, quick, alert, and startled look spread over his
face.
The man who had entered bent over the counter and spoke to the old lady.
She seemed to listen with a dawning terror creeping over her features,
and then her hands went piteously to the thin hair behind her ears. The
man motioned toward a door at the rear of the store. She hesitated,
then came out from behind the counter, and swayed a little as though her
limbs would not support her weight.
Jimmie Dale's lips thinned.
“I'm afraid,” he muttered slowly, “I'm afraid that I'm too late even
now.” And then, as she came to the door and turned the key on the
inside: “Pray Heaven she doesn't turn the light out--or somebody might
think I was trying to break in!”
But in that respect Jimmie Dale's fears were groundless. She did not
turn out either of the gas jets that lighted the little shop; instead,
in a faltering, reluctant sort of manner, she led the way directly
through the door in the rear, and the man followed her.
The shop was empty--and Jimmie Dale was standing against the door on the
outside. His position was perfectly natural--a hundred passers-by would
have noted nothing but a most commonplace occurrence--a man in the act
of entering a store. And, if he appeared to fumble and have trouble with
the latch, what of it! Jimmie Dale, however, was not fumbling--hidden by
his back that was turned to the street, those wonderful fingers of his,
in whose tips seemed embodied and concentrated every one of the human
senses, were working quickly, surely, accurately, without so much as the
wasted movement of a single muscle.
A faint tinkle--and the key within fell from the lock to the floor. A
faint click--and the bolt of the lock slipped back. Jimmie Dale restored
the skeleton keys and a little steel instrument that accompanied them
to his pocket--and quietly opened the door. He stepped inside, picked up
the key from the floor, inserted it in the lock, closed the door behind
him, and locked it again.
“To guard against interruption,” observed Jimmie Dale, a little
quizzically.
He was, perhaps, thirty seconds behind the others. He crossed the shop
noiselessly, cautiously, and passed through the door at the rear. It
opened into a short passage that, after a few feet, gave on a sort of
corridor at right angles--and down this latter, facing him, at the end,
the door of a lighted room was open, and he could see the figure of the
man who had entered the shop, back turned, standing on the threshold.
Voices, indistinct, came to him.
The corridor itself was dark; and Jimmie Dale, satisfied that he was
fairly safe from observation, stole softly forward. He passed two
doors on his left--and the curious arrangement of the building that had
puzzled him for a moment became clear. The store made the front of an
old tenement building, with apartments above, and the rear of the store
was a sort of apartment, too--the old lady's living quarters.
Step by step, testing each one against a possible creaking of the floor,
Jimmie Dale moved forward, keeping close up against one wall. The man
passed on into the room--and now Jimmie Dale could distinguish every
word that was being spoken; and, crouched up, in the dark corridor, in
the angle of the wall and the door jamb itself, could see plainly enough
into the room beyond. Jimmie Dale's jaw crept out a little.
A young man, gaunt, pale, wrapped in blankets, half sat, half reclined
in an invalid's chair; the old lady, on her knees, the tears streaming
down her face, had her arms around the sick man's neck; while the other
man, apparently upset at the scene, tugged vigorously at long, gray
mustaches.
“Sammy! Sammy!” sobbed the woman piteously. “Say you didn't do it,
Sammy--say you didn't do it!”
“Look here, Mrs. Matthews,” said the man with the gray mustaches gently,
“now don't you go to making things any harder. I've got to do my duty
just the same, and take your son.”
The young man, a hectic flush beginning to burn on his cheeks, gazed
wildly from one to the other.
“What--what is it?” he cried out.
The man threw back his coat and displayed a badge on his vest.
“I'm Kline of the secret service,” he said gravely. “I'm sorry, Sammy,
but I want you for that little job in Washington at the bureau--before
you left on sick leave!”
Sammy Matthews struggled away from his mother's arms, pulled himself
forward in his chair--and his tongue licked dry lips.
“What--what job?” he whispered thickly.
“You know, don't you?” the other answered steadily. He took a large,
flat pocketbook from his pocket, opened it, and took out a five-dollar
bill. He held this before the sick man's eyes, but just out of reach,
one finger silently indicating the lower left-hand corner.
Matthews stared at it for a moment, and the hectic flush faded to a
grayish pallor, and a queer, impotent sound gurgled in his throat.
“I see you recognise it,” said the other quietly. “It's open and shut,
Sammy. That little imperfection in the plate's got you, my boy.”
“Sammy! Sammy!” sobbed the woman again. “Sammy, say you didn't do it!”
“It's a lie!” said Matthews hoarsely. “It's a lie! That plate was
condemned in the bureau for that imperfection--condemned and destroyed.”
“Condemned TO BE destroyed,” corrected the other, without raising his
voice. “There's a little difference there, Sammy--about twenty years'
difference--in the Federal pen. But it wasn't destroyed; this note was
printed from it by one of the slickest gangs of counterfeiters in the
United States--but I don't need to tell you that, I guess you know who
they are. I've been after them a long time, and I've got them now, just
as tight as I've got you. Instead of destroying that plate, you stole
it, and disposed of it to the gang. How much did they give you?”
Matthews' face seemed to hold a dumb horror, and his fingers picked at
the arms of the chair. His mother had moved from beside him now, and
both her hands were patting at the man's sleeve in a pitiful way, while
again and again she tried to speak, but no words would come.
“It's a lie!” said Matthews again, in a colourless, mechanical way.
The man glanced at Mrs. Matthews as he put the five-dollar note back
into his pocket, seemed to choke a little, shook his head, and all trace
of the official sternness that had crept into his voice disappeared.
“It's no good,” he said in a low tone. “Don't do that, Mrs. Matthews,
I've got to do my duty.” He leaned a little toward the chair. “It's dead
to rights, Sammy. You might as well make a clean breast of it. It was
up to you and Al Gregor to see that the plate was destroyed. It WASN'T
destroyed; instead, it shows up in the hands of a gang of counterfeiters
that I've been watching for months. Furthermore, I've got the plate
itself. And finally, though I haven't placed him under arrest yet for
fear you might hear of it before I wanted you to and make a get-away,
I've got Al Gregor where I can put my hands on him, and I've got his
confession that you and he worked the game between you to get that plate
out of the bureau and dispose of it to the gang.”
“Oh, my God!”--it came in a wild cry from the sick man, and in a
desperate, lurching way he struggled up to his feet. “Al Gregor said
that? Then--then I'm done!” He clutched at his temples. “But it's not
true--it's not true! If the plate was stolen, and it must have been
stolen, or that note wouldn't have been found, it was Al Gregor who
stole it--I didn't, I tell you! I knew nothing of it, except that he and
I were responsible for it and--and I left it to him--that's the only way
I'm to blame. He's caught, and he's trying to get out of it with a light
sentence by pretending to turn State's evidence, but--but I'll fight
him--he can't prove it--it's only his word against mine, and--”
The other shook his head again.
“It's no good, Sammy,” he said, a touch of sternness back in his tones
again. “I told you it was open and shut. It's not only Al Gregor. One
of the gang got weak knees when I got him where I wanted him the other
night, and he swears that you are the one who DELIVERED the plate to
them. Between him and Gregor and what I know myself, I've got evidence
enough for any jury against every one of the rest of you.”
Horror, fear, helplessness seemed to mingle in the sick man's staring
eyes, and he swayed unsteadily upon his feet.
“I'm innocent!” he screamed out. “But I'm caught, I'm caught in a net,
and I can't get out--they lied to you--but no one will believe it any
more than you do and--and it means twenty years for me--oh, God!--twenty
years, and--” His hands went wriggling to his temples again, and he
toppled back in a faint into the chair.
“You've killed him! You've killed my boy!” the old lady shrieked out
piteously, and flung herself toward the senseless figure.
The man jumped for the table across the room, on which was a row of
bottles, snatched one up, drew the cork, smelled it, and ran back with
the bottle. He poured a little of the contents into his cupped hand,
held it under young Matthews' nostrils, and pushed the bottle into Mrs.
Matthews' hands.
“Bathe his forehead with this, Mrs. Matthews,” he directed reassuringly.
“He'll be all right again in a moment. There, see--he's coming around
now.”
There was a long, fluttering sigh, and Matthews opened his eyes; then
a moment's silence; and then he spoke, with an effort, with long pauses
between the words:
“Am--I--to--go--now?”
The words seemed to ring absolute terror in the old lady's ears. She
turned, and dropped to her knees on the floor.
“Mr. Kline, Mr. Kline,” she sobbed out, “oh, for God's love, don't take
him! Let him off, let him go! He's my boy--all I've got! You've got
a mother, haven't you? You know--” The tears were streaming down the
sweet, old face again. “Oh, won't you, for God's dear name, won't you
let him go? Won't--”
“Stop!” the man cried huskily. He was mopping at his face with his
handkerchief. “I thought I was case-hardened, I ought to be--but I guess
I'm not. But I've got to do my duty. You're only making it worse for
Sammy there, as well as me.”
Her arms were around his knees now, clinging there.
“Why can't you let him off!” she pleaded hysterically. “Why can't
you! Why can't you! Nobody would know, and I'd do anything--I'd pay
anything--anything--I'll give you ten--fifteen thousand dollars!”
“My poor woman,” he said kindly, placing his hand on her head, “you are
talking wildly. Apart altogether from the question of duty, even if
I succeeded in hushing the matter up, I would probably at least be
suspected and certainly discharged, and I have a family to support--and
if I were caught I'd get ten years in the Federal prison for it. I'm
sorry for this; I believe it's your boy's first offence, and if I could
let him off I would.”
“But you can--you can!” she burst out, rocking on her knees, clinging
tighter still to him, as though in a paroxysm of fear that he might
somehow elude her. “It will kill him--it will kill my boy. And you can
save him! And even if they discharged you, what would that mean against
my boy's life! You wouldn't suffer, your family wouldn't suffer,
I'll--I'll take care of that--perhaps I could raise a little more than
fifteen thousand--but, oh, have pity, have mercy--don't take him away!”
The man stared at her a moment, stared at the white face on the
reclining chair--and passed his hand heavily across his eyes.
“You will! You will!” It came in a great surging cry of joy from the old
lady. “You will--oh, thank God, thank God!--I can see it in your face!”
“I--I guess I'm soft,” he said huskily, and stooped and raised Mrs.
Matthews to her feet. “Don't cry any more. It'll be all right--it'll be
all right. I'll--I'll fix it up somehow. I haven't made any arrests yet,
and--well, I'll take my chances. I'll get the plate and turn it over to
you to-morrow, only--only it's got to be destroyed in my presence.”
“Yes, yes!” she cried, trying to smile through her tears--and then
she flung her arms around her son's neck again. “And when you come
to-morrow, I'll be ready with the money to do my share, too, and--”
But Sammy Matthews shook his head.
“You're wrong, both of you,” he said weakly. “You're a white man,
Kline. But destroying that plate won't save me. The minute a single note
printed from it shows up, they'll know back there in Washington that the
plate was stolen, and--”
“No; you're safe enough there,” the other interposed heavily. “Knowing
what was up, you don't think I'd give the gang a chance to get them
into circulation, do you? I got them all when I got the plate. And”--he
smiled a little anxiously--“I'll bring them here to be destroyed with
the plate. It would finish me now, as well as you, if one of them ever
showed up. Say,” he said suddenly, with a catch in his breath, “I--I
don't think I know what I'm doing.”
Mrs. Matthews reached out her hands to him.
“What can I say to you!” she said brokenly, “What--”
Jimmie Dale drew back along the wall. A little way from the door he
quickened his pace, still moving, however, with extreme caution. They
were still talking behind him as he turned from the corridor into the
passageway leading to the store, and from there into the store itself.
And then suddenly, in spite of caution, his foot slipped on the bare
floor. It was not much--just enough to cause his other foot, poised
tentatively in air, to come heavily down, and a loud and complaining
creak echoed from the floor.
Jimmie Dale's jaws snapped like a steel trap. From down the corridor
came a sudden, excited exclamation in the little old lady's voice, and
then her steps sounded running toward the store. In the fraction of a
second Jimmie Dale was at the front door.
“Clumsy, blundering fool!” he whispered fiercely to himself as he turned
the key, opened the door noiselessly until it was just ajar, and turned
the key in the lock again, leaving the bolt protruding out. One step
backward, and he was rapping on the counter with his knuckles. “Isn't
anybody here?” he called out loudly. “Isn't any--oh!”--as Mrs. Matthews
appeared in the back doorway. “A package of cigarettes, please.”
She stared at him, a little frightened, her eyes red and swollen with
recent crying.
“How--how did you get in here?” she asked tremendously.
“I beg your pardon?” inquired Jimmie Dale, in polite surprise.
“I--I locked the door--I'm sure I did,” she said, more to herself than
to Jimmie Dale, and hurried across the floor to the door as she spoke.
Jimmie Dale, still politely curious, turned to watch her. For a moment
bewilderment and a puzzled look were in her face--and then a sort of
surprised relief.
“I must have turned the key in the lock without shutting the door
tight,” she explained, “for I knew I turned the key.”
Jimmie Dale bent forward to examine the lock--and nodded.
“Yes,” he agreed, with a smile. “I should say so.” Then, gravely
courteous: “I'm sorry to have intruded.”
“It is nothing,” she answered; and, evidently anxious to be rid of him,
moved quickly around behind the counter. “What kind of cigarettes do you
want?”
“Egyptians--any kind,” said Jimmie Dale, laying a bill on the counter.
He pocketed the cigarettes and his change, and turned to the door.
“Good-evening,” he said pleasantly--and went out.
Jimmie Dale smiled a little curiously, a little tolerantly. As he
started along the street, he heard the door of the little shop close
with a sort of supercareful bang, the key turned, and the latch rattle
to try the door--the little old lady was bent on making no mistake a
second time!
And then the smile left Jimmie Dale's lips, his face grew strained and
serious, and he broke into a run down the block to Sixth Avenue. Here he
paused for an instant--there was the elevated, the surface cars--which
would be the quicker? He looked up the avenue. There was no train
coming; the nearest surface car was blocks away. He bit his lips in
vexation--and then with a jump he was across the street and hailing a
passing taxicab that his eyes had just lighted on.
“Got a fare?” called Jimmie Dale.
“No, sir,” answered the chauffeur, bumping his car to an abrupt halt.
“Good!” Jimmie Dale ran alongside, and yanked the door open. “Do you
know where the Palace Saloon on the Bowery is?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the man.
Jimmie Dale held a ten-dollar bank note up before the chauffeur's eyes.
“Earn that in four minutes, then,” he snapped--and sprang into the cab.
The taxicab swerved around on little better than two wheels, started on
a mad dash down the Avenue--and Jimmie Dale braced himself grimly in
his seat. The cab swerved again, tore across Waverly Place, circuited
Washington Square, crossed Broadway, and whirled finally into the upper
end of the Bowery.
Jimmie Dale spoke once--to himself--plaintively.
“It's too bad I can't let old Carruthers in on this for a scoop with his
precious MORNING NEWS-ARGUS--but if I get out of it alive myself, I'll
do well! Wonder if the day'll ever come when he finds out that his very
dear friend and old college pal, Jimmie Dale, is the Gray Seal that he's
turned himself inside out for about four years now to catch, and that
he'd trade his soul with the devil any time to lay hands on! Good old
Carruthers! 'The most puzzling, bewildering, delightful crook in the
annals of crime'--am I?”
The cab drew up at the curb. Jimmie Dale sprang out, shoved the bill
into the chauffeur's hand, stepped quickly across the sidewalk, and
pushed his way through the swinging doors of the Palace Saloon. Inside
leisurely and nonchalantly, he walked down past the length of the bar to
a door at the rear. This opened into a passageway that led to the side
entrance of the saloon on the cross street. Jimmie Dale emerged from
the side entrance, crossed the street, retraced his steps to the Bowery,
crossed over, and walked rapidly down that thoroughfare for two blocks.
Here he turned east into the cross street; and here, once more, his pace
became leisurely and unhurried.
“It's a strange coincidence, though possibly a very happy one,” said
Jimmie Dale, as he walked along, “that it should be on the same street
as the Sanctuary--ah, this ought to be the place!”
An alleyway, corresponding to the one that flanked the tenement where,
as Larry the Bat, he had paid room rent as a tenant for several years,
in fact, the alleyway next above it, and but a short block away,
intersected the street, narrow, black, and uninviting. Jimmie Dale, as
he passed, peered down its length.
“No light--that's good!” commented Jimmie Dale to himself. Then: “Window
opens on alleyway ten feet from ground--shoe store, Russian Jew, in
basement--go in front door--straight hallway--room at end--Russian
Jew probably accomplice--be careful that he does not hear you moving
overhead”--Jimmie Dale's mind, with that curious faculty of his, was
subconsciously repeating snatches from her letter word for word, even
as he noted the dimly lighted, untidy, and disorderly interior of what,
from strings of leather slippers that decorated the cellarlike entrance,
was evidently a cheap and shoddy shoe store in the basement of the
building.
The building itself was rickety and tumble-down, three stories high, and
given over undoubtedly to gregarious foreigners of the poorer class, a
rabbit burrow, as it were, having a multitude of roomers and lodgers.
There was nothing ominous or even secretive about it--up the short
flight of steps to the entrance, even the door hung carelessly half
open.
Jimmie Dale's slouch hat was pulled a little farther down over his eyes
as he mounted the steps and entered the hallway. He listened a moment.
A sort of subdued, querulous hubbub seemed to hum through the place, as
voices, men's, women's, and children's, echoing out from their various
rooms above, mingled together, and floated down the stairways in a
discordant medley. Jimmie Dale stepped lightly down the length of
the hall--and listened again; this time intently, with his ear to the
keyhole of the door that made the end of the passage. There was not a
sound from within. He tried the door, smiled a little as he reached for
his keys, worked over the lock--and straightened up suddenly as his
ear caught a descending step on the stairs. It was two flights up,
however--and the door was unlocked now. Jimmie Dale opened it, and, like
a shadow, slipped inside; and, as he locked the door behind him, smiled
once more--the door lock was but a paltry makeshift at best, but INSIDE
his fingers had touched a massive steel bolt that, when shot home, would
yield when the door itself yielded--and not before. Without moving the
bolt, he turned--and his flashlight for a moment swept the room.
“Not much like the way they describe this sort of place in storybooks!”
murmured Jimmie Dale capriciously. “But I get the idea. Mr. Russian Jew
downstairs makes a bluff at using it for a storeroom.”
Again the flashlight made a circuit. Here, there, and everywhere,
seemingly without any attempt at order, were piles of wooden shipping
cases. Only the centre of the room was clear and empty; that, and a
vacant space against the wall by the window.
Jimmie Dale, moving without sound, went to the window. There was a shade
on it, and it was pulled down. He reached up underneath it, felt for
the window fastening, and unlocked it; then cautiously tested the window
itself by lifting it an inch or two--it slid easily in its grooves.
He stood then for a moment, hardfaced, a frown gathering his forehead
into heavy furrows, as the flashlight's ray again and again darted
hither and thither. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in the room
but wooden packing cases. He lifted the cover of the one nearest to him
and looked inside. It was quite empty, except for some pieces of heavy
cord, and a few cardboard shoe boxes that, in turn, were empty, too.
“It's here, of course,” said Jimmie Dale thoughtfully to himself.
“Clever work, too! But I can't move half a hundred packing cases without
that chap below hearing me; and I can't do it in ten minutes, either,
which, I imagine is the outside limit of time. Fortunately, though,
these cases are not without their compensation--a dozen men could hide
here.”
He began to move about the room. And now he stooped before one pile of
boxes and then another, curiously attempting to lift up the entire pile
from the bottom. Some he could not move; others, by exerting all his
strength, gave a little; and then, finally, over in one corner, he found
a pile that appeared to answer his purpose.
“These are certainly empty,” he muttered.
There was just room to squeeze through between them and the next stack
of cases alongside; but, once through, by the simple expedient of moving
the cases out a little to take advantage of the angle made by the
corner of the room, he obtained ample space to stand comfortably upright
against the wall. But Jimmie Dale was not satisfied yet. Could he see
out into the room? He experimented with his flashlight--and carefully
shifted the screen of cases before him a little to one side. And yet
still he was not satisfied. With a sort of ironical droop at the
corners of his lips, as though suddenly there had flashed upon him the
inspiration that fathered one of those whimsical ideas and fancies that
were so essentially a characteristic of Jimmie Dale, he came out from
behind the cases, went across the room to the case he had opened when he
first entered, took out the cord and the cover of one of the cardboard
shoe boxes, and with these returned to his hiding place once more.
The sounds from the upper stories of the tenement now reached him hardly
at all; but from below, directly under his feet almost, he could hear
some one, the proprietor of the shoe store probably, walking about.
Tense, every faculty now on the alert, his head turned in a strained,
attentive attitude, Jimmie Dale threw on the flashlight's tiny switch,
took that intimate and thin metal case from his pocket, extracted a
diamond-shaped, gray paper seal with the little tweezers, moistened the
adhesive side, and stuck it in the centre of the white cardboard-box
cover, then tore the edges of the cardboard down until the whole was
just small enough to slip into his pocket. Through the cardboard he
looped a piece of cord, placard fashion, and with his pencil printed the
four words--“with the compliments of “--above the gray seal. He
surveyed the result with a grim, mirthless chuckle--and put the piece of
cardboard in his pocket.
“I'm taking the longest chances I ever took in my life,” said Jimmie
Dale very seriously to himself, as his fingers twisted, and doubled,
and tied the remaining pieces of cord together, and finally fashioned a
running noose in one end. “I don't--” The cord and the flashlight went
into his pocket, the room was in darkness, the black mask was whipped
from his breast pocket and adjusted to his face, and his automatic was
in his hand.
Came the creak of a footstep, as though on a ladder exactly below him,
another, and another, receding curiously in its direction, yet at the
same time growing louder in sound as if nearer the floor--then a crack
of light showed in the floor in the centre of the room. This held for
an instant, then expanded suddenly into a great luminous square--and
through a trapdoor, opened wide now, a man's head appeared.
Jimmie Dale's eyes, fixed through the space between the piles of cases,
narrowed--there was, indeed, little doubt but that the shoe-store
proprietor below was an accomplice! The store served a most convenient
purpose in every respect--as a secret means of entry into the room, as
a sort of guarantee of innocence for the room itself. Why not! To the
superficial observer, to the man who might by some chance blunder into
the room--it was but an adjunct of the store itself!
The man in the trap-doorway paused with his shoulders above the floor,
looked around, listened, then drew himself up, walked across the floor,
and shot the heavy bolt on the door that led into the hallway of the
house. He returned then to the trapdoor, bent over it, and whistled
softly. Two more men, in answer to the summons, came up into the room.
“The Cap'll be along in a minute,” one of them said. “Turn on the
light.”
A switch clicked, flooding the room with sudden brilliancy from half a
dozen electric bulbs.
“Too many!” grunted the same voice again. “We ain't working
to-night--turn out half of 'em.”
The sudden transition from the darkness for a moment dazzled Jimmie
Dale's eyes--but the next moment he was searching the faces of the three
men. There were few crooks, few denizens of the crime world below the
now obsolete but still famous dead line that, as Larry the Bat, he did
not know at least by sight.
“Moulton, Whitie Burns, and Marty Dean,” confided Jimmie Dale softly
to himself. “And I don't know of any worse, except--the Cap. And gun
fighters, every one of them, too--nice odds, to say nothing of--”
“Here's the Cap now!” announced one of the three. “Hello, Cap, where'd
you raise the mustache?”
Jimmie Dale's eyes shifted to the trapdoor, and into them crept a
contemptuous and sardonic smile--the man who was coming up now and
hoisting himself to the floor was the man who, half an hour before, had
threatened young Sammy Matthews with arrest.
The Cap, alias Bert Malone, alias a score of other names, closed the
trapdoor after him, pulled off his mustache and gray wig, tucked them in
his pocket, and faced his companions brusquely.
“Never mind about the mustache,” he said curtly. “Get busy, the lot of
you. Stir around and get the works out!”
“What for?” inquired Whitie Burns, a sharp, ferret-faced little man. “We
got enough of the old stuff on hand now, and that bum break Gregor made
when he pinched the cracked plate put the finish on that. Say, Cap--”
“Close your face, Whitie, and get the works out!” Malone cut in shortly.
“We've only got the whole night ahead of us--but we'll need it all.
We're going to run the queer off that cracked plate.”
One of the others, Marty Dean this time, a certain brutal aggressiveness
in both features and physique, edged forward.
“Say, what's the lay?” he demanded. “A joke? We printed one fiver off
that plate--and then we knew enough to quit. With that crack along
the corner, you couldn't pass 'em on a blind man! And Gregor saying he
thought we could patch the plate up enough to get by with gives me a
pain--he's got jingles in his dome factory! Run them fivers eh--say, are
you cracked, too?”
“Aw, forget it!” observed Malone caustically. “Who's running this gang?”
Then, with a malicious grin: “I got a customer for those fivers--fifteen
thousand dollars for all we can turn out to-night. See?”
The others stared at him for a moment, incredulity and greed mingling in
a curious half-hesitant, half-expectant look on their faces.
Then Whitie Burns spoke, circling his lips with the tip of his tongue:
“D'ye mean it, Cap--honest? What's the lay? How'd you work it?”
Malone, unbending with the sensation he had created, grinned again.
“Easy enough,” he said offhandedly. “It was like falling off a log.
Gregor said, didn't he, that the only way he had been able to get
his claws on that plate was on account of young Matthews going away
sick--eh? Well, the old Matthews woman, his mother, has got money--about
fifteen thousand. I guess she ain't got any more than that, or I'd have
raised the ante. Aw, it was easy. She threw it at me. I framed one up on
them, that's all. I'm Kline, of the secret service--see? I don't suppose
they'd ever seen him, though they'd know his name fast enough, but I
made up something like him. I showed them where I had a case against
Sammy for pinching the plate that was strong enough to put a hundred
innocent men behind the bars. Of course, he knew well enough he was
innocent, but he could see the twenty years I showed him with both eyes.
Say, he mussed all over the place, and went and fainted like a girl. And
then the old woman came across with an offer of fifteen thousand for the
plate, and corrupted me.” Malone's cunning, vicious face, now that
the softening effects of the gray hair and mustache were gone, seemed
accentuated diabolically by the grin broadening into a laugh, as he
guffawed.
Marty Dean's hand swung with a bang to Malone's shoulder.
“Say, Cap--say, you're all right!” he exclaimed excitedly. “You're
the boy! But what's the good of running anything off the plate before
turning it over to 'em--the stuff's no good to us.”
“You got a wooden nut, with sawdust for brains,” said Malone
sarcastically. “If he'd thought the gang of counterfeiters that was
supposed to have bought the plate from him had run off only one fiver
and then stopped because they say it wouldn't get by, and weren't going
to run any more, and just destroy the plate like it was supposed to have
been destroyed to begin with, and it all end up with no one the wiser,
where d'ye think we'd have banked that fifteen thousand! I told him I
had the whole run confiscated, and that the queer went with the plate,
so we'll just make that little run to-night--that's why I sent word
around to you this morning.”
“By the jumping!” ejaculated Whitie Burns, heavy with admiration. “You
got a head on you, Cap!”
“It's a good thing for some of you that I have,” returned Malone
complacently. “But don't stand jawing all night. Go on, now--get busy!”
There was no surprise in Jimmie Dale's face--he had chosen his position
behind a pile of cases that he had been extremely careful, as a man
is careful when his life hangs in the balance, to assure h
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