The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale Part 14

And now Jimmie Dale smiled again--that curious flicker on his lips that mingled whimsicality and a deadly earnestness. The Tocsin had made no mistake. Showing through the aperture, gleaming under the flashlight's ray, was the nickel dial of a safe. He worked rapidly now. The first panel out, the remainder came much more readily--and finally the entire face of the safe was disclosed. Jimmie Dale stared at it--and pursed his lips. It was an ugly safe, extremely ugly--from a cracksman's point of view! Also, there seemed a hint of irony, a jeer almost, in the impa.s.sive wall of steel that confronted him. It was one of his own make--one that had helped, in the old days, to ama.s.s the millions that his father had left to him--and it was one of the _best_!

In an abstracted, deliberate way, his eyes pondering the safe, the blue-steel tools were replaced in the pockets of the leather girdle; and then the long, slim, tapering fingers closed upon the dial's k.n.o.b and twirled it tentatively, and his head bent forward until his ear was pressed hard against the face of the safe.

It was very still now--only the breathing from above that seemed in cadence with those strange and paradoxical palpitations that are known only in a great silence--the piano for the moment had ceased its jangle.

Jimmie Dale's fingers, from the dial, sought the floor, and frictioned briskly over the rough, threadbare carpet, until the nerves tingled under the delicate skin--and then they shot to the dial again.

Strained, every faculty keyed up to its highest tension, he crouched there against the safe. Again and again his fingers rubbed over the rough carpet, and again the sweat beads oozed out upon his forehead with the strain--and then there came through the stillness a long-drawn intake of his breath. The handle swung the bolt with a low metallic thud--the safe was open.

There was the inner door now. Again those slim fingers, almost raw, quivering now at the tips, rubbed along the carpet, and the lips, just showing beneath the edge of the mask, grew tight with pain. Then he leaned forward, crouched once more, his head and shoulders inside the outer door, like some strange animal burrowing for its prey. Faint, musical, like some far distant tinkle, came the twirling of the dial--and then, suddenly, he drew back sharply, his hand shot to his pocket, whipped out his automatic, and, motionless there on his knees, every muscle rigid, he listened. There was the piano again, the breathing, the weird pound and thump of the silence--nothing else. He shook his head in half angry, half tolerant self-remonstrance. He was under strain, that was all--he had thought he had heard a footstep out there in the alleyway. He laid his automatic on the floor within instant reach, and turned again to the safe--acute and sensitive as his hearing was, it would haw taken good ears indeed to have distinguished a step at that distance on the other side of the house!

But now he worked, seemingly at least, with even greater rapidity than before. Imagination had had one effect, if it had had no other--it was a spur, a reminder that at any moment there might well be a footstep, and one that was born only of the imagination! His jaws clamped. He had not counted on this--an old-fashioned iron monstrosity that was dismaying only in its appearance, perhaps--but not this! He had been here far longer now than he--

'Ah'--tense, low, that deep intake of the breath again.

The inner door swung wide; the flashlight's ray leaped, dazzling white, into the interior, and, on the lower shelf, upon a flat, narrow, black tin box--the cash-box.

In an instant, Jimmie Dale had picked it up. It was not locked, and he lifted the cover. From within there scintillated back the gleam of diamonds--a handful of pendants, brooches, ear-rings lay there disclosed, and, too, a string of pearls. Ten thousand dollars! It was a modest figure! He reached his hand inside the box--and on the instant s.n.a.t.c.hed it back, and thrust the box swiftly into his pocket. The flashlight was out. The room was in darkness.

This time it was not imagination--nor, he knew now, had it been imagination before. There was a faint creak of the flooring in the kitchen, a single incautious step that he placed as having come from near the doorway of the pa.s.sage--and now some one had halted on the threshold of the room itself. Jimmie Dale's brain was working with lightning speed. There had been no time to reach the window--time only to s.n.a.t.c.h up his automatic and retreat a little from the immediate vicinity of the safe. Had the other heard the slight sound--it was only the brushing of his coat against the wall! Much less had there been time to close the safe--nor would it have done any good--he could not have replaced the broken panelling! And now--_what_? The man, with a stealth that he, Jimmie Dale, except for that one incautious footfall, could not have excelled, must have entered through a window from the alleyway into the pa.s.sage. It was dark, utterly dark--save that the window showed dimly like a faint transparent square set in the blackness.

He could not see, but he could _sense_ the other standing there in the doorway, motionless, silent, as though listening. Perhaps a minute pa.s.sed. There was something nerve-racking now in the silence, something sinister, something pregnant with menace. And then, suddenly, there came a low, scratching sound, and a match flame spurted through the darkness, and lighted up a face--a face that was thrust forward through the doorway with a sort of pent-up and malicious eagerness; a vicious face, with sharp, restive black eyes under great, hairy eyebrows; a face with a huge jaw, outflung now, that was like the jaw of a beast.

It was the Wolf!

CHAPTER X

THE CHASE

It held for the fraction of a second, that light--no more. It travelled upward past the face, as though the Wolf were holding it above his head to get his bearings; and then, with a sharp and furious oath, the match was hurled to the floor, there was a scuffling sound--and then silence again.

Jimmie Dale's automatic was thrust a little forward in his hand, as he crouched against the wall. He could have shot the man, as the other stood in the doorway. The Wolf had offered a target that it would have been hard to miss--and it would, one day, have saved the law the same task! He was a fool, perhaps, that he had not taken what was, perhaps again, the one chance he had for his life, for he was at a decided disadvantage now, since he knew intuitively that the Wolf, scuttling back, had now craftily protected himself behind the jamb of the door, and yet at the same time still commanded the interior of the room. But he could not have fired in cold blood like that--even upon the Wolf, devil though the man was, murderer a dozen times over though he the man to be! He, Jimmie Dale, had never shot to _kill_ not yet--but in a fight, cornered, if there was no other way...!

He moved a little, a bare few inches, then a few more--without a sound.

In the light of the match, the Wolf must have seen the dismantled panelling and the open safe, and a masked figure crouched against the wall--and the Wolf would have marked the position of that crouched figure against the wall!

Silence--a minute of it--still another!

Again Jimmie Dale moved inch by inch--toward the window. And yet to attempt the window was to invite a shot and expose himself, for, dark as it was, his body would show plainly enough against the background of that lesser gloom of window square.

Jimmie Dale's eyes strained through the blackness across the room. He could just make out the configuration of the doorway. The Wolf was just on the other side of it, just inside the kitchen, he was sure of that.

Almost a smile was flickering over Jimmie Dale's tight-pressed lips.

There was a way--there was a way now, if the Wolf did not get him with a chance shot. He moved again, and reached the window, crouched low beneath the sill--and pa.s.sed by the window.

And then the Wolf spoke from the doorway in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, and in the whisper there was a low, taunting laugh.

"I been waitin' for you to try the window, but you're too foxy--eh? All right, my bucko--then I'll get you another way--with just one shot, see?

And then--_good-night_! And say, whoever t'h.e.l.l you are, thanks for crackin' the box for me!"

The man's voice came from the _right_ of the doorway--and the door opened _inward_--and he, Jimmie Dale, remembered that he had opened it _wide_. It was slow, very slow, this creeping inch by inch through the darkness. It seemed as though his breath were as stertorous as that breathing from above, and that the Wolf must hear.

And then the Wolf laughed low again.

There was a curious crackling noise, as of paper being torn--and then, quick, in the doorway, came a yellow flame, and the Wolf's hand showed from around the edge of the jamb, and, making momentary daylight of the room, a flaming piece of paper, tossed in, fell upon the floor.

There was a flash, the roar of the report--and another--as the Wolf fired! There was the sullen _spat_ of a bullet upon the panelling an inch from Jimmie Dale's head--and a sharp and sudden pain, as though a hot iron had seared his leg.

And now Jimmie Dale's automatic, too, cut flashes with its vicious flame-tongues through the black. Coolly, steadily, he was firing at the doorway--to hold the Wolf there--to keep the Wolf now in the position of the Wolf's own choosing. The paper was but a dull cinder in the centre of the room; twisted too tightly, it had gone out almost immediately.

There came screams, loud, terrified, in a woman's voice from the floor above--and the hoa.r.s.er tones of a man shouting. A window was flung open.

Snarling blasphemous, furious oaths, the Wolf was firing at the flashes of Jimmie Dale's revolver--but each time as Jimmie Dale fired, the sound drowned in the roar of the report, he moved a good yard forward.

Came the trampling of feet from overhead now; and now, as the woman still screamed, answering shouts and yells came from the dance hall.

Jimmie Dale had the foot of the bed now near the corner. He again, and instantly flung himself flat upon the floor--and, in the answering flash of the Wolf's shot, placed the exact location of the _door_ itself.

There was tumult enough now to deaden the slight sound he made. He crept swiftly past the bed to the wall, against which the door, wide open, was swung back, felt out with his hand, the edge of the door, and, leaping suddenly to his feet, hurled the door shut upon the Wolf. There was a scream of pain--the door as it slammed perhaps had caught the Wolf's arm or wrist--but before it was opened again Jimmie Dale was across the room, and, flinging himself through the window, dropped to the ground.

The door crashing back against the wall again, the Wolf's baffled yell of rage, and an abortive shot, told him that his ruse had been solved.

He was running now, as rapidly as he could in the darkness and in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the Spider's house and the wall of the brick building. Yells in increasing volume sounded from the direction of "The Yellow Lantern"; and now he could hear the pound of feet racing across the courtyard toward the antique shop. The woman, from the open window above, was still screaming with terror.

If he could gain the door in the fence--and the lane! But there was still the Wolf to reckon with! The Wolf had only to run through the kitchen and out by the back entrance--the shorter distance of the two.

But the Wolf had already lost a few seconds so that now the race was a gamble. Could he, Jimmie Dale, get there _first_! He could not run in the other direction--that would take him into the courtyard, and the courtyard now, as evidenced by the yells and shouting, was filled with an excited crowd emptying from the dance hall.

He reached the rear end of the house, and darted across the wider s.p.a.ce here, racing for the opening in the fence--and suddenly changed his tactics, and began to zigzag a little. A revolver flash cut the night.

Came the Wolf's howl from the back stoop, and, over his shoulder, Jimmie Dale saw the other, dark-shadowed, leap forward in pursuit--and heard the Wolf fire again.

He flung himself against the fence door, and it gave with a crash.

Pandemonium reigned behind him. In a blur he saw the courtyard, that was dimly lighted now by the open doors and open windows of the dance hall, swaying with shapes, and, like ghostly figures, a mob tearing toward him down the alleyway.

The Wolf's voice, punctuated with a torrent of blasphemy and vile invective, shrilled out over the tumult:

"Come on! Here he is! Out in the lane!"

"Who is it?" shrilled another voice.

"I don't know!" yelled the Wolf. "Catch him, and we'll d.a.m.n soon find out!"

Jimmie Dale was running like a hare now down the lane. The Wolf leading, still firing, the crowd poured out into the lane in pursuit. Jimmie Dale zigzagged no longer, there was greater risk in that than in risking the shots--it was black enough in the lane to risk the shots; but his lead, barely twenty-five yards, was too short to risk their gaining upon him through his running from side to side.

His brain, cool in peril, worked swiftly. The Sanctuary! That was the one chance for his life! He had been no more than a masked figure huddled against the wall of the room in there. The Wolf had not recognised him. He would be safe if he could reach the Sanctuary! There were two blocks to go along the street ahead, then the next lane, and from that into the intersecting lane, the loose board in the fence that swung at a touch, the French window--and the Sanctuary. But to accomplish this he must _gain_ upon his pursuers, not merely hold his own, but increase the distance between them by at least another fifteen or twenty yards; he must, in other words, be out of range of vision as he disappeared through the fence. Well, he should be able to do that! It was the trained athlete against an ill-conditioned, dissolute mob!

He swerved from the lane into the street. There was grim and h.e.l.lish humour in the thought that a _wolf_ should be leading the snarling, howling pack, blood mad now, at his heels! The Wolf had ceased firing--obviously because the Wolf's revolver was empty. The others, a lesser breed, and previously intent on a peaceful orgy at the dance hall, were evidently not armed.

Jimmie Dale gained five yards, another five, and another ten. He had no fear of being recognised as Smarlinghue even here, where, poorly illuminated as the street was, it was like bright sunlight compared with the darkness of the lane. There was no stooped, bent figure, no slouching gait--there was, instead, a tall, broad-shouldered man, whose face was masked, and who ran with the speed of a greyhound, and whose automatic, spitting ahead of him as he ran, invited none of the few pedestrians, or those rushing to their doorways, to block his path.

He swerved again, into a lane again, the lane he had been making for; and, as he swerved, he flung a sidelong glance down the street. Yes, his twenty-five yards were fifty now, except for the Wolf, who ran perhaps ten yards in advance of any of the others. The howls, yells, shouts and execrations welled into a louder outburst as he dashed into the lane.

Ten from fifty left forty. Forty yards clear! It was a very narrow margin, even allowing for the blackness of the lane--but it was enough--it was slightly more than the distance along the intersecting lane to the rear of the Sanctuary--he would have pushed aside that loose board before the Wolf turned the corner from one lane into the other!