The Adventures of Jimmie Dale Part 2

The bus had reached the lower end of Fifth Avenue, pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s, 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 bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, 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 unb.u.t.toned vest.

Hardly a sound it made as it bit into the door. Half a minute pa.s.sed--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 s.p.a.ce than was sufficient for bare pa.s.sageway. Jimmie Dale moved cautiously--and once more the flashlight in his hand showed the way for an instant--then darkness again.

The cluttered acc.u.mulation 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 pa.s.sed a sort of crude, part.i.tioned-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 c.u.mbersome 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 gla.s.ses at headquarters had many a time regretfully a.s.sured 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 k.n.o.b 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 bra.s.s b.u.t.tons 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 pa.s.sed 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 part.i.tion--then the bark of a revolver shot, the tinkle of breaking gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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--unp.a.w.nable. 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 d.i.c.ks 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 cl.u.s.ter 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?"