Читать книгу Jimmie Dale and the Phantom Clue - Frank L. Packard - Страница 6

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The taxi rolled and swayed its way along. Jimmie Dale sat staring at the portfolio that bumped with the motion of the car upon his knees. In some thirty-odd minutes, at half-past three to be exact, the police would be paying a visit to Laroque’s quarters, and even if the man were not back there by then, the police were patient and would wait! They would get Laroque—but not the evidence. They might even let the man go again—temporarily. It would not matter. Laroque’s freedom, if obtained at all, would be of very short duration. The evidence lacking at Gentleman Laroque’s would be found within the hour and in abundant measure, together with Mr. Isaac Shiftel himself, at—Isaac Shiftel’s!

But that was not all; nor, indeed, that which most vitally interested him. Despite the Tocsin’s efforts to keep him out of those shadows, as she had termed it, that seemed to have closed down upon her blacker and more ominous even than before, the night’s work had already brought him greater returns than he had ever dared to hope for or expect. He knew three of the pawns who moved at the criminal will of the unknown leader whom she had styled the Phantom. One of the three was dead, but there remained two; and of the two, one was Laroque, and the other was a miserable little rat-like creature, who, under persuasion, was not likely to prove over-secretive. And Shiftel’s tongue, once made to wag, held promise of almost anything, even the “Open Sesame” to what was now his, Jimmie Dale’s, ultimate goal—the Phantom.

Jimmie Dale’s eyes travelled to the window, held there for a few minutes noting the taxi’s progress, and then fixed introspectively again on the portfolio.

Shiftel! He knew Shiftel as only the initiated knew him, as only those knew him whose ears were attune to the whispered confidences of the underworld’s exchanges in the dens and dives hidden away from the light of day, where he, Jimmie Dale, once as Larry the Bat, and now in the present day as Smarlinghue, the broken-down artist and hop-fighter, was welcomed as one of the élite of that inglorious realm. He had even seen Shiftel on one or two occasions—an unkempt, bearded, spectacled foreigner of uncertain age, a cringing little beast, hideously cunning, a master in his own peculiar line of deviltry. Shiftel ostensibly, for the benefit of the police should they ever prove inquisitive, made his living in his two-room, dirty, bachelor apartment, by working on garments which he brought from various sweat shops. If he were rarely at home and too lazy to work much, that was his misfortune, his loss, and his sole personal affair! But the underworld held him in quite other regard—as a “fence,” a “shover of stolen goods,” who was safe, and in cleverness without an equal. There were few crooks in the Bad Lands but were hungry for Isaac Shiftel’s services, but Shiftel was not approachable to all; it was understood, and perforce had regretfully come to be accepted as a fact, that he dealt only with a small and select clientele of his own choosing, whose personnel was more guessed at than known; and that to break into the charmed circle was a feat attempted by many but accomplished by few. And as far back as Jimmie Dale could remember, as far back as he could remember even Gentleman Laroque, Shiftel had lived in the same miserable rooms in the same miserable tenement.

The taxi rattled on. At intervals Jimmie Dale kept glancing out of the window. And then, as the taxi turned at last into the Bowery, he smiled suddenly, laid his handkerchief on the portfolio, and reached into one of the pockets of the leather girdle under his vest. Shiftel! He took out a thin metal case, like a cigarette case, and from the case, with a pair of tiny tweezers that mocked at finger-prints, he lifted out a diamond-shaped gray paper seal that was adhesive on one side, and dropped it on the handkerchief. He returned the metal case to its hiding place, folded the handkerchief carefully, and replaced it in his pocket.

A moment later the taxi stopped. Jimmie Dale alighted, paid and dismissed the chauffeur, and as he swung around the corner, walking east from the Bowery, he looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes past three. It became now simply a question whether Laroque was still with Shiftel, or had gone home.

The street, one of the most shabby of East Side streets, was dark, poorly lighted, and free of pedestrians. Jimmie Dale passed by a tenement whose shabbiness was quite in keeping with its surroundings, passed by a narrow areaway which separated the tenement from another which might have been a duplicate of the first—and halted before the entrance of the second tenement.

The outer door was unlocked. In a moment he was inside the hallway, and in utter blackness now stood motionless, listening. Then again the black silk mask was slipped over his face, and again it was as though a shadow moved. Shiftel’s apartment was the middle one on the ground floor facing the other tenement across the areaway.

Jimmie Dale passed down the length of the hall, counting the doors on his right by the sense of touch, and, returning, crouched with his ear against the panel of the door he had selected. From within, so faintly as to be indefinable in any concrete way, there came the sound of movement. Still Jimmie Dale listened, even while his fingers worked silently at doorknob and lock. He nodded his head as he completed his work. There had been no sound of voices. Gentleman Laroque had evidently been and gone. Isaac Shiftel was alone.

And then suddenly Jimmie Dale was on his feet, and in a flash was in the room, the door closed and locked behind him. Through the doorway of a connecting room ahead of him he could see the unkempt, bearded figure of Shiftel as the man, with a cry, sprang wildly to his feet from the chair in which he had been seated, clawing, even as he sprang, at the white, glittering array of diamonds strewn upon the table-top before him.

“Who’s that? Who’s there?” the man called out hoarsely.

Jimmie Dale’s automatic covered the other as he moved swiftly forward to Shiftel’s side.

“Quite an elaborate collection you’ve got here, Isaac,” he said softly. “First water stones of course, or you wouldn’t be handling them. And please don’t wriggle, Isaac, until I—ah, thanks!” He had laid the portfolio down on the table, and his fingers passing deftly over Shiftel’s clothing had whipped out a revolver from the other’s pocket and transferred it to his own.

But now Shiftel seemed to have got a sudden grip upon himself. He leaned forward, peering sharply from behind his spectacles at Jimmie Dale’s masked face.

“No,” he said with a snarl, “I don’t know you, because I don’t know your kind. But you evidently don’t know Isaac Shiftel. Those stones, eh? That’s it, is it? Well, you may get out of here with them, but afterwards—eh?—do you think Isaac Shiftel’s arm is so short as that?”

Jimmie Dale made no answer. He retreated a step, and with his free hand began to unfasten the portfolio.

Shiftel shook his fist virulently now. The first shock once over, he was, through familiarity, apparently quite at his ease again in dealing with—a crook.

“How’d you get wise to this, eh?” he demanded fiercely. “How’d you—” His glance had travelled to the window that opened on the areaway. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “That’s it, eh? The shade’s down, but like a fool I left the window open. You had the luck to sneak into that areaway.” He peered again into Jimmie Dale’s face, and abruptly his tone and manner changed. He rubbed his hands together ingratiatingly. “I said you didn’t know Isaac Shiftel,” he said smoothly; “but you do—everybody in your line of business knows Isaac Shiftel. I’ll make a deal with you—a fair share—eh? You don’t want Isaac Shiftel as an enemy. I’ll give you—”

“You’re getting in ahead of me, Isaac,” interrupted Jimmie Dale plaintively. He coughed slightly—and politely pressed his handkerchief to his moistened lips. “I meant to be the first to offer something.” With a quick jerk of his revolver hand, he plucked a diamond necklace from the top of the portfolio, and tossed it upon the table. “That, for instance—Isaac.”

The ornament seemed to fascinate Shiftel. As if drawn to it against his will, he leaned forward staring at it; and then, as though actuated by a sort of frightened incredulity, he reached out a hand toward it—but Jimmie Dale’s hand that still held the handkerchief was the quicker. It fell and gripped like a vise upon the back of Shiftel’s hand.

“Just a moment, Isaac,” said Jimmie Dale coolly. “There is something else that I want you to have—as a little memento of the occasion.”

There came a startled cry from Shiftel. Jimmie Dale had withdrawn his hand, and Shiftel was staring now, not at the diamond necklace, but at a diamond-shaped gray paper seal that was pasted on the back of his hand.

“I’ll say it for you!” Jimmie Dale’s smile was not inviting. “The Gray Seal! I apologise for the melodrama, but I think it will aid you, Isaac, to see things in a clearer light. You’ve got a little information that I want, and I imagine it will help to quicken your memory and loosen your tongue to know who wants it.”

There was no answer. The man, his lips twitching, was still staring at the back of his hand.

With a sudden movement, Jimmie Dale emptied the contents of the portfolio upon the table. He brushed them into a heap with the diamonds already there.

“They belong together,” said Jimmie Dale, in a curious monotone, “and I couldn’t bear to see them left behind. They’ll be found together too, Isaac, for I am afraid it will be impossible to make any one believe now that Jathan Lane’s safe has never been disturbed.” His voice hardened suddenly. “You’re going up for this, Isaac. I make no bargain with you. The police are going to be tipped off over the phone, and they are going to find you here trussed up in that chair with the diamonds in front of you. But before the police get you, you are going to deal with me. I want to know who the man is you, and those with you, take your orders from. And before we are through you are going to tell me, Isaac—all you know.”

Shiftel’s tongue was circling his lips. He shook his head. He was cringing now, supplicating with his hands.

“I don’t know anything,” he protested wildly. “You’re all wrong. You’re all wrong about everything. I don’t know anything about Jathan Lane. I don’t know where the diamonds came from. I never ask questions in my business. They were brought in here for me to shove, and—”

“That’s enough, Isaac!” snapped Jimmie Dale. “The game is up! Your friend, Patrick Denton, alias the Minister, is dead up there on the floor of Jathan Lane’s private library, where he—”

“Dead!” Shiftel’s hands had ceased their movements. The man stood rigid. Something stronger than himself seemed to have stripped him of further power to dissimulate. “Dead! You—you killed him?”

“Never mind about that!” Jimmie Dale bit off his words. “It’s enough for you to know for the present that he is dead. You’re not quite so innocent as you were—are you, Isaac? And as for the man who brought those stones here, a friend of mine has kindly arranged to have the police pay a little visit at Gentleman Laroque’s at just about this time; to be precise”—he drew his watch from his pocket—“at—”

Jimmie Dale’s words ended abruptly. He, too, was suddenly standing tense and rigid. A footstep, guarded, cautious, was coming along the areaway out there. It was coming nearer to the open window—the drawn shade did not hide the sound. Instinctively his eyes sought the dial of his watch.

It was half past three.

“At Laroque’s!” Shiftel, his ears strained toward the window, was whispering the words. “The police—at Laroque’s!” And then he raised both fists in fury and shook them above his head. “You snitch, you cursed snitch”—the low, whispered words seemed but to accentuate the man’s sudden flood of passion—“we’ll get you yet for this!”

For an instant Jimmie Dale’s brain seemed to reel in turmoil and chaos. That voice was no longer Shiftel’s. Those words! Once he had heard those exact words before, and—with a quick step forward, his hand reached out, tearing beard and spectacles from the other’s face.

“Gentleman Laroque!”

“Yes, you fool!” said Laroque, still whispering. “So you’ve tripped at last, eh? You didn’t know, and you’ve brought the police here. Well, take the consequences! It’s you who’s trapped!” He was backing slowly away from both table and window toward the inner wall of the room. “Perhaps you’ll explain the possession of those stones! You fool, you and that woman with you, you don’t know what you’re up against, but—”

“Don’t move!” ordered Jimmie Dale grimly.

“Just this far,” smiled Laroque. “I hear them coming along the hall inside now. Don’t forget there’s one of your police on guard outside the window, and—”

The room was in instant darkness. The bare fraction of a second passed, not more; there was a faint scraping sound from the direction where Laroque had been standing—and Jimmie Dale’s flashlight, whipped from his pocket, was sweeping around him.

The room was empty!

Jimmie Dale’s face was set like chiselled marble. Empty! Gone! The man was gone! But that was not all! Voices were ringing that slogan of the old days in his ears again: “Death to the Gray Seal!” He did not need to be told what it meant to be caught by either police or underworld. He, too, heard those guarded footsteps inside the tenement and coming now along the hall. His mind, alert, virile, was working with lightning speed. The doorway was behind him, and Laroque could not have gone that way—nor by the window guarded by the police. There must be some secret exit from the room. If so, given but a second, while he, Jimmie Dale, was attempting an escape, Laroque could get back again and secure the diamonds that lay upon the table. And he, Jimmie Dale, was responsible for them now!

And now Jimmie Dale in action was swift as his racing thoughts. Whether he could save himself or not, there was at least a way to save the stones. With the flashlight switched on, he propped it on the end of the table, its ray streaming over the gems and playing in the opposite direction from the connecting door.

“If you can hear me, Laroque,” he whispered, “I warn you—don’t try it! All you’ll get off that table will be a bullet, whether I’m caught or not!”

It was utter blackness behind him. He backed swiftly, silently through the connecting door, and across the outer room to the door that led into the hall. His automatic held a line on the table top. He crouched at the far side of the door casing. They were here now. He heard a whispered consultation outside, as his fingers, closing on the key, silently unlocked the door. Queer! His brain was racing again. A queer sight! All blackness back here—and, through the connecting doorway, a light, apparently coming from nowhere, streamed over a shimmering, scintillating mass of diamonds, and ended by imposing itself in a white, luminous circle on a dirty, greasy wall behind! His eyes never left the table; his automatic never wavered in its line. Queer! The Phantom! Gentleman Laroque—Isaac Shiftel! Could it be? Was that a partial answer to the Tocsin’s “score of aliases and score of domiciles”? Was Gentleman Laroque the Phantom? Yet how had she taken this for Laroque’s home if she hadn’t known the two men were one? And she hadn’t known. She had said so. But—yes, it was not unexplainable. It might easily have been—just as it had been with him, Jimmie Dale, as Larry the Bat, or as Smarlinghue. She might have seen Laroque come here some evening—and Shiftel might have come out—while she thought Laroque remained at home. It might easily be that she did not know Shiftel, and so—

“Bust it in!” The words came sharp, incisive, from the hall; then a quick exclamation: “Blamed if the door ain’t unlocked! Come on!”

The door was flung violently open. A man swung forward into the room—and halted abruptly, staring toward the connecting doorway.

“For Heaven’s sake, sergeant, look at that!” he burst out.

A man behind pushed eagerly forward. And Jimmie Dale, crouching low by the baseboard in the blackness, slipped through the doorway behind the other without a sound, and in a moment was outside the tenement and walking quietly along the street—in a direction that ignored the areaway.

Half an hour later Jimmie Dale mounted the steps of a palatial residence on Riverside Drive. He smiled softly as he stumbled and shuffled so noisily that before he had gained the topmost step the door was opened for him by the white-haired old butler, who had been butler to Jimmie Dale’s father before him, and whose proudest boast was that he had dandled his Master Jim upon his knee. It would have been so easy to have slipped in, and passed the old man, and gone upstairs to bed—and broken the old man’s heart to have been found out asleep at his self-appointed post.

“What!” said Jimmie Dale severely—and used identically the same words he had used on a hundred similar occasions: “Sitting up again for me, Jason? How many times am I to tell you that I won’t have it? Jason, go to bed at once!”

“Yes, sir,” said Jason. “Thank you, sir. Thank you, Master Jim, sir—I will.”