The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale Part 19

Ah! There they were! A yell and a revolver shot rang out simultaneously as they caught sight of him--and Jimmie Dale dropped down to the ground on the inside of the fence. In the moonlight he could see quite distinctly. He darted across the yard, heading for the bas.e.m.e.nt door of the building that loomed up in front of him.

The little steel picklock was in his hand as he reached the door. A second--two--three went by. He straightened up--and again he waited--stepping back a few feet to stand sharply outlined in the moonlight.

Again a shout in signal that he was seen, as one of the officers' heads appeared over the top of the fence--and Jimmie Dale, as though in mad haste, plunged through the door.

And now suddenly his tactics changed. He needed every second he could gain, and the police now certainly could no longer lose their way. He swung the door shut behind him, locked it to delay them, and s.n.a.t.c.hed his flashlight from his pocket. He was at the top of a few ladder-like steps that led down into the cellar of the building, and halfway along the length of the cellar the ray of his flashlight swept across a huge coal bin, its sides, it seemed, built almost up to the ceiling.

Jimmie Dale was muttering to himself now, as he took the steps at a single leap, and raced toward the side of the bin that flanked the wall--"seventh board from the wall--knot on a level with shoulders"--and now he was counting rapidly--and now the round, white ray played on the seventh board. They were smashing at the cellar door now. The knot!

Ah--there it was! He pressed it. Two of the boards in front of him, the width of a man's body, swung back. He left this open--a blazed trail for his pursuers, battering now at the cellar door--and stepped forward into a little opening, too short to be called a pa.s.sage, and, silent now, halted before another door.

Brain and eyes and hands were working now with incredible speed. That it was a sound-proof room was not, perhaps, altogether an unmixed blessing!

Was the place deserted? Was there any one within? He could hear nothing.

Well, after all, did it make any ultimate difference? The room itself would condemn them!

The picklock was at work again--working silently--working swiftly. And now, in its place, his automatic was in his hand.

He crouched a little--and with a spring, flinging wide the door, was in the room. There was a smothered cry, an oath, the crash of an overturned chair, as two men, from a table heaped with little piles of crisp, new banknotes, sprang wildly to their feet: And Jimmie Dale's lips twisted in a smile not good to see. Standing there before him were Curley and Haines.

"Keep your seats, gentlemen--please!" said Jimmie Dale, with grim irony.

"I shall only stay a moment. It is Mr. Curley and Mr. Haines, I believe--in their _private_ office! Permit me!"--he reached out with his left hand, and closed the door. "Ah, I see there is a good serviceable bolt on it. I have your permission?"--he slipped the bolt into place.

"As I said, I shall only stay a moment; but it would be unfortunate, most unfortunate, if we were by any chance interrupted--prematurely!"

Haines, ashen white, was gripping at the table edge. Curley, a deadly glitter in his wicked little eyes, moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

"How'd you get here, and what the h.e.l.l d'you want?" he burst out fiercely.

"As to the first question, I haven't time to answer it," said Jimmie Dale evenly. "What I want is the sealed envelope stolen from Henry Grenville's safe--and I'm in a _hurry_, Mr. Curley."

"You're a fool!" said Curley, with a sneer. "It's--"

"Yes, I know," said Jimmie Dale, with ominous patience, "it's counterfeit, you miserable pair of curs! Counterfeit like the rest of that stuff there on the table! Nice place you've got here--everything, I see--press, plates, engraver's tools--nothing missing but the rest of the gang! Perhaps, though, they can be found! Now then, that envelope--quick!" Jimmie Dale's automatic swung forward significantly.

"It's in the drawer of the table," snarled Curley. "Curse you, who--"

"Thank you!" Jimmie Dale's lips were a thin line. "Now, you two, stand out there in the middle of the floor--and if either of you make a move other than you are told to make, I'll drop you as I would drop a mad dog!" He jerked the two chairs out from the table, and, still covering Curley and Haines, placed the chairs back to back. "Sit down there, stretch out your arms full length on either side, the palms of your hands against each other's!" he ordered curtly; and, as they obeyed--Haines, cowed, all pretence at nerve gone, Curley cursing in abandon--he slipped the handcuffs over their wrists on one side, and, taking the piece of cord from his pocket that he had intended for the Rat's ankles, he deftly noosed their wrists on the other side with a slip knot, which he fastened securely.

He stepped over to the table.

"Counterfeiting five-hundred and thousand-dollar bills is rather out of the ordinary run, isn't it--I see these on the table here are the regular small variety!" he observed coolly, as he pulled the drawer open. "The big ones make a quick turn-over, though, if you have the plant to turn them out, and can swing a scheme to cash them--after banking hours--and steal them back! h.e.l.lo, what's this!"--the sealed envelope, torn open at one end, evidently by the Rat in his examination, but still full of the counterfeit notes, was blood-smeared, and on the upper left-hand corner there showed the distinct impression of a finger print.

There was a sudden crash against the door.

Both men, in their chairs, strained around--and now Curley, too, had lost his colour.

"My G.o.d, what's that!" he whispered.

The thin metal case was in Jimmie Dale's hand. With the tweezers, he lifted one of the little gray seals to his lips, moistened it, and, using his elbow, pressed it firmly down upon the envelope.

Came another furious thud upon the door--and another.

"What's that!" Curley's voice was a frantic scream now. "For G.o.d's sake, do you hear, what's that!"

Jimmie Dale, under a pencilled arrow mark indicating the finger print, was scrawling a few words in printed characters.

"It's the police," said Jimmie Dale calmly. "Somebody murdered the Rat to-night!" He surveyed the envelope in his hand critically. Between the arrow mark and the gray seal were the words: "Look on the Rat's collar--and these gentlemen's fingers." He laid the envelope down on the table--and, as the door suddenly splintered and sagged under a terrific blow from some heavy object, he retreated hurriedly to the farther end of the room. Here a half dozen steps led upward, and hanging from the ceiling beside them was a cord to which was attached a leaden weight. He jerked the cord quickly. A panel above him slid noiselessly back. He leaped to the top of the stairs, and paused for a moment.

"They've been looking for this place for several years, I guess," said Jimmie Dale softly. "And I guess it will change hands to-night for the last time--and without the need of any Bill of Sale from old Henry Grenville! But we were speaking of the Rat--and why the Rat was murdered. If the Rat had had a chance to spread the news that the money paid by Mr. Curley this afternoon was counterfeit, it--"

Jimmie Dale did not finish his sentence. In a bound, as the door from the cellar crashed inward, he was through the panel opening and in the room above. There was light from the open panel behind him--enough to show him that he was in a small room which was fitted up as an office--the office of Haines & Curley, wholesale liquor dealers!

In an instant he was out of the office, and running silently down the length of the store. He s.n.a.t.c.hed off his mask, reached the front door, opened it, stepped out on the quiet, deserted street--and a moment later Jimmie Dale was but one of the many that still, even at that hour, drifted their way along the Bowery.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST CARD

Two weeks had gone by--or was it three? How long was it since he had found the Tocsin's letter in the secret hiding place of the new Sanctuary! It had seemed to him then that he had been given a new lead, a new hope; for, once he had recovered from his startled amazement at the realisation that she was as conversant with the secrets of the new Sanctuary as she had been with the old, there had come the thought of turning that very fact to his own account--that if he were unable to reach or find her by any other means, he might succeed, instead, by letting her unwittingly come to him. She had come there once to the Sanctuary when he had been absent; she was almost certain to come there again--when she _thought_ he was absent! He had put his plan into execution. For days at a stretch he had remained hidden in the Sanctuary--and nothing had come of it--and then the inaction, coupled with the knowledge that the peril which faced her, even though his previous efforts to avert it had all been abortive, had made it unbearable to remain longer pa.s.sive, and he had given it up, and gone out again, combing and searching through the dens and dives of the underworld.

That had been two weeks ago--or three. And the net result had been nothing!

Jimmie Dale allowed the evening newspaper to slip from his fingers. It dropped to the arm of his lounging chair, and from there to the floor.

It was no use. He had been reading mechanically ever since he had returned from the club half an hour ago, and he was conscious in only the haziest sort of way of what he had been reading. The market, the general news items, the editorials, had all blended one into the other to form a meaningless jumble of words; even the leading article on the front page, that proclaimed as imminent the final and complete expose of what had come to be known as "The Private Club Ring"--an investigation that, from its inception, he had hitherto followed closely, promising as it did to involve and link in partnership with the lowest of the underworld names that heretofore had stood high up in the social circles of New York--seemed uninteresting and unable to hold his attention to-night.

He rose impulsively from his chair, and, walking down the length of the richly furnished room, his tread soundless on the thick, heavy rug, drew the portieres aside, and stood looking out of the rear window; It was dark outside, but presently the shadows formed into concrete shapes, and, across the black s.p.a.ce of driveway and yard, the wall of the garage a.s.sumed a solid background against the night. He pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead heavily, and a wanness came into his face and eyes. Once before he had stood here at this window of his den, the room that ran the entire depth of his magnificent Riverside Drive residence, and old Jason had stood at the front window--and they had watched, Jason and he--watched the shadows, that were not shadows of walls and buildings, close in around the house. That was the night before he had escaped from the trap set by the Crime Club; the night before the old Sanctuary had burned down, and police and underworld alike had believed the Gray Seal buried beneath the charred and fallen walls; the night before she, the Tocsin, had come for a little while into her own, and for a little while--into his arms.

His lips twisted in pain. A little while! Days of glad and glorious wonder! They were gone now; and in their place was emptiness and loneliness--and a great, overmastering fear and terror that would clutch at times, as it clutched now, cold at his heart.

It was not so very long ago that night, only a few months ago, but it seemed as though the years had come and rolled away since then. She was gone again, driven by a peril that menaced her life into hiding again--a peril that she would not let him share--because she _loved_ him.

The pain that showed on his twisted lips was voiced in a low, involuntary cry. Because she loved him! His hands clenched hard. Where was she? Who was it that dogged and haunted her, that was wrecking and ruining her life? G.o.d knew! And G.o.d knew, employing every resource he possessed, he had done everything he could to reach her. And all that he had accomplished had been the creation of a new character in the underworld! That was all--and yet, strangely enough, in that way there had come to him the one single gleam of relief that he had known, for out of the creation of that character had sprung again the activities of the Gray Seal, and with the resumption of those activities, since, as in the old days, those "calls to arms" of hers had come again he knew that, at least, she was so far alive and safe.

Jimmie Dale swung from the window, and began to pace rapidly up and down the room. Safe--yes! But for how long? She had outwitted those against her up to now, but for how long would--

He had halted abruptly beside the table. Some one was knocking at the door.

"Come!" he called.

And old Jason entered--and it seemed to Jimmie Dale that he must laugh out like one suddenly over-wrought and in hysteria. In the old butler's hand was a silver card tray, and on the tray was--but there was no need to look on the tray, old Jason's face, curiously mingling excitement and disquiet, the imperturbability of the butler gone for the nonce, was alone quite eloquent enough. But Jimmie Dale, master of many things, was most of all master of himself.

"Well, Jason?" His voice was quiet and contained as he spoke. He reached out and took from the tray a white, unaddressed envelope. It was from her, of course--even Jason knew that it was another of those mysterious epistles, one of the many that had pa.s.sed through the old butler's hands, that had in the last few years so completely revolutionised, as it were, his, Jimmie Dale's, mode of life. "Well, Jason?" He was toying with the envelope in his hand. "How did it come this time?"

"It was in another envelope, Master Jim, sir--addressed to me, sir,"

explained the old butler nervously. "A messenger boy brought it, sir. I opened the outside envelope, Master Jim, and--and I knew at once, sir, that--that it was one of those letters."