Читать книгу Jimmie Dale And The Missing Hour - Frank Lucius Packard - Страница 4

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JIMMIE DALE drew suddenly back into the shadows, and the next instant was crouched, beneath the front door steps, at the basement entrance to one of a row of rather pretentious brownstone houses. It was late. The street was deserted—save for that solitary figure who had just turned the corner half a block away and was coming in this direction.

This house here was his, Jimmie Dale’s, immediate objective, and he had not a moment to lose—but now he waited. Much less than half an hour ago, for he had made all speed uptown, someone in the press around him on the Bowery had thrust that envelope into his hand. Who? He did not know. The Tocsin herself this time? He did not even know who the Tocsin was—he knew only that it was another “call to arms” from her to the Gray Seal. And this one tonight, it would seem, so far as the element of time was concerned, was more urgent than any he had ever received before. He had not dared risk the quarter of an hour at least that it would have taken him to go to the Sanctuary, remove his make-up, and change from the disreputable attire of Larry the Bat to the well-cut tweeds of Jimmie Dale—which latter would have been infinitely more in keeping with his visit to this decidedly exclusive residential neighborhood!

But still Jimmie Dale waited—silent and motionless. Larry the Bat, well known as a denizen of the underworld, would be hard put to it, if seen, to explain his presence in this locality so foreign to his usual haunts, even if he were not caught in any untoward act! He fretted impatiently. The snail-like way in which that cop out there was approaching, sauntering in leisurely fashion along his beat, was maddening.

The footsteps drew nearer, louder, rang on the pavement a few feet away from Jimmie Dale’s crouched form, passed by, and continued on along the street, gradually growing fainter in the distance.

And then Jimmie Dale, millionaire clubman, alias the Gray Seal, alias Larry the Bat, peer of the inglorious realm of Gangland, was in action.

From beneath his tattered vest, from that curious leather girdle around his waist, whose numerous stout-sewn upright pockets contained a finely tempered, compact, powerful burglar’s kit, he drew out a slender, blued-steel little instrument. And now, as he pressed close against the basement door, the little instrument slipped into the keyhole, and his slim, tapering fingers, whose tips were as a sixth sense to Jimmie Dale, and none the less sensitive now as the grimy digits of Larry the Bat, were at work.

Came then a faint rasp of metal. The door opened silently, closed as silently—and Jimmie Dale stood in pitch blackness within the house.

For a moment he remained motionless, listening. There was no sound. Then from the girdle came a small flashlight. Its ray winked through the black. Yes, there ahead of him were the stairs. He moved swiftly forward and began to mount them.

Was he in time? If so, how much time had he to spare? “The wall safe,” the Tocsin had written, “in the library behind the big Corot. First floor-right-rear.” It took time for even the Gray Seal to open a wall safe, or any other kind of a safe!

He made no sound. Why should he? Jimmie Dale’s lips parted in a smile that was almost one of apology—to the carpeted stairs. These were not the bare rickety treads of the Sanctuary where, more than once in the years gone by, it had literally meant the difference between life and death to him that there should emanate no single telltale creak out of the ambushed chorus that lay in wait to give blatant tongue in unison at little more provocation than the footfall of a cat!

It was as though a shadow scarcely darker than the surrounding darkness flitted up the stairs and along the hallway above. A minute more and Jimmie Dale had opened the library door and stepped into the room. Here, with the door left open behind him, he listened again. Nothing! Certainly no one of the household appeared to have been disturbed. The first few words of the Tocsin’s letter formulated themselves in his mind once more. The letter had begun as every letter she had ever written to him had begun:

“Dear Philanthropic Crook: “It may already be too late, in which case . . .

His mental rehearsal of the letter ended as abruptly as though the letter itself had ended in the same way. His flashlight, playing inquisitively around the library, had become suddenly arrested, its white ray focused on the wall opposite the door and near the lower end of the room.

It was too late. A large painting had been taken down and now stood on the floor propped against the wall; and, where the picture had hung, the door of a wall safe was swung out wide open.

Jimmie Dale’s lips firmed into a straight line. Not so good! There rang suddenly, premonitorily, in his ears the slogan of the police and the underworld alike: “Death to the Gray Seal!” With that safe already opened, there was perilous work ahead of him—before daylight came. And if he lost the throw of the dice? Whether trapped by the police or the underworld, and the identity of the Gray Seal was thereby disclosed, the end would be the same—only perhaps the chair up the river there at Sing Sing would be the more merciful death. He shrugged his shoulders. Great as its commercial value might be, he had not come here to save a necklace of first-water diamonds—he had come here to save, if possible, a man’s life.

Well, then, the note! The Tocsin had said that if the necklace were gone the note would be here.

He stepped across the room, and his flashlight bored into the interior of the wall safe. The safe contained what appeared to be a number of documents such as insurance policies and the like, nothing else—except an embossed monogrammed correspondence card that had ostentatiously been placed in full view just inside the door of the safe.

Jimmie Dale picked up the card—obviously one of Mrs. Braemer’s own—and, utilizing the ray of his flashlight, began to read the closely written lines that were penned upon it:

“Dear Mother:

“I’ve taken the necklace. Better call it a day. I won’t bother you any more. There’s no love lost between us anyway. You know I’m a bit of a rotter, but you don’t know how much of a rotter I am. I wouldn’t advise you to try to find out—it would only bring scandal to the holy Braemer name!

“You’ve been pretty tight with money”—Jimmie Dale turned over the card—“and I’m in a jam. This is the way out—and a cheap way out for you. After all, I’m entitled to something by way of patrimony. I’ll call this quits. I don’t exist any more. You can tell any story you like to account for my disappearance—no one will be able to contradict you, as neither you nor anyone else, particularly the police, will ever hear from me again. I hope you won’t shed too many tears—for the necklace—I know you won’t shed any for me.

“Tom.”

Jimmie Dale lost not an instant—there was not an instant to lose. There would be ample time for his mind to run riot on the way downtown. He thrust the card into his pocket, and, leaving the door of the wall safe wide open as he had found it, left the house, as he had come—like a swift-moving shadow.

And five minutes later Larry the Bat was staring out through the window of a subway express at the black walls that rushed past him.

He gave free rein to his thoughts now.

He knew something—as a matter of fact, a great deal—about the Braemers. The Braemer family had, to some extent, moved in his own social orbit. Thomas Braemer, the husband and father, had died some ten years ago, leaving his entire estate, which involved a very considerable sum of money, to his widow. The son, Thomas, the “Tom” of the correspondence card, now in his early twenties, had from boyhood shown vicious tendencies, and Mrs. Braemer, a woman of sterling qualities, aware of these tendencies, had kept what check she could upon the lad from the time of her husband’s death. But Mrs. Braemer did not know the half of it, as the note on the correspondence card had intimated. The boy had pretty well gone the limit. The underworld had a far more intimate conception of the depths to which the boy had fallen than the boy’s mother had. Larry the Bat, for instance, knew Tom Braemer for what Tom Braemer really was—Jimmie Dale knew Tom Braemer only from the standpoint of what might be called Tom Braemer’s social status. A tough break for Mrs. Braemer and the boy! Tom Braemer had become what Larry the Bat was credited with being: a dope fiend, a frequenter of the lowest and cheapest—since his mother, with justification, kept him short of money—pipe joints below the Dead Line. Larry the Bat had time and again seen Tom Braemer in one or another of these dives.

Jimmie Dale’s dark eyes grew hard. He spoke suddenly, bitterly under his breath:

“Food for the wolves!”

His thoughts swerved abruptly. That letter of the Tocsin—that he had torn into tiny shreds and cast away after having memorized it, just as he had precautiously torn up and cast away all of her former letters.

“Spike Dorlan,” she had said.

He knew Spike Dorlan. Who in the Bad Lands did not? Spike, czar and autocrat of the so-called Vulture Gang to which he had given birth, and which paid him unswerving allegiance, both by reason of each member’s individual fears, since death was the penalty for disloyalty, and likewise because of the goodly dividends that were paid out under Spike’s unholy leadership, was a killer of the worst type. To Spike, a human life blotted out, if that should chance to advance his interests in any degree, was merely a commonplace detail. He took that life—or his gang did it for him—casually. Spike’s activities were not wholly unsuspected by the police, but Spike was eminently resourceful in a vicious way; and the low cunning, in which art he was a past master, with which he staged his coups had so far enabled him to thumb his nose at the law—which was still another reason why his followers swore by him to a man.

“Death to the Gray Seal!” That ugly slogan was jangling through Jimmie Dale’s mind again. Death at the hands of the police for the “crimes,” even of murder, that he had taken upon himself to save the innocent; death at the hands of the underworld because the Gray Seal, still mysterious and unknown, but once the idol of those who shunned the daylight and lived outside the law, had squealed and sent the rats who justly deserved it to their doom at the hands of the authorities!

And now tonight! There was no more treacherous hive in gangland than the tenement where Spike Dorlan had his headquarters and abode. The pitcher that went to the well! Would it go once too often—before the identity of the Tocsin, the woman, always in danger herself, and whom he had come to love more than life itself, still remained a mystery to him?

His mind probed suddenly back into the years that were gone. That night in Maiden Lane when he had been obliged to carry away with him that string of pearls (afterwards returned, of course) in his sudden dash to escape from Marx’s, the big jewelry store, whose safe he had opened! It had all begun out of a spirit of pure adventure, suggested doubtless through his connection with his father’s business—the business of manufacturing safes—his gray-seal device employed as a guarantee that no innocent bystander of the underworld should be accused of, or suffer for, the series of apparent crimes that were being committed to the dismay and mystification of the police.

How had she known about that string of pearls, and, above all, who he was?

Larry the Bat, gathering his smudgy, unwashed forehead into heavy puckers, shook his head. He did not know. The only intimate thing he knew about her, if even this could be termed intimate, was that just recently, about a month ago, he had found her gold signet ring in the finger of her glove, which latter she had dropped on the floor of his parked car while he was dining one night at Marlianne’s. She had not meant to drop her glove there, much less her ring—he was well enough aware of that—but she had dropped them just the same in her hurry to escape from him unseen as he had emerged from the restaurant.

Sonnez le Tocsin was the scroll that he had read beneath the crest on the ring—the crest itself a bell surmounted by a bishop’s miter. French! Was that in any way significant—an indication of her nationality? A twisted smile pulled down the corners of his mouth. The scroll on even the British coat of arms was in French!

Sonnez le Tocsin! Ring the Tocsin! Sound the alarm! He had called her the Tocsin since then. It seemed so immeasurably apt. Never since that first letter in which she had told him she knew of his escapade at Marx’s in Maiden Lane, and had written—the words lived always in his memory—that “the cleverness, the originality of the Gray Seal as a crook lacked but one thing, and that one thing was that his crookedness required a leading string to guide it into channels that were worthy of his genius,” had any communication received from her been but another call to arms and to sound again the alarm.

He had perforce accepted her ultimatum that in future “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?”—and he had answered “Yes” in the personal column of the next morning’s News-Argus, as she had instructed. His acceptance, however, needless to say, had been accompanied by a mental reservation that he could, and always would, queer any shady work whereby she might attempt to exploit him.

But there had been no shady work for the Gray Seal to do—only some poor devil pulled out of a jam; some man, falsely accused, proved innocent, and the guilty brought to book; some solitary human to bless, while New York’s millions cursed, the name of the Gray Seal. How had she found him out that night in Maiden Lane? The question would never down. How did she come by all this inside knowledge that inspired her notes? He did not know.

Would he ever know?

Larry the Bat emerged from the subway and slunk deep into the East Side. He halted finally in front of a down-at-the-heels, three-story tenement on an ill-lighted cross street. This was Spike Dorlan’s lair—in the top flat.

He glanced sharply up and down the street. In view of what he proposed to do, it would be practically equivalent to his death warrant were Larry the Bat recognized or known to have been here at this hour tonight. There was no one in sight.

The front door was unlocked—the tenants of this hovel-like place did not carry pass-keys! Jimmie Dale stepped inside and began a silent progress up the stairs that, unlike those of the Braemer mansion of a little while before, were as potentially a bedlam of outcries as were those of the Sanctuary itself.

He gained the hallway above. It was utterly dark—except that, here and there, from warped, ill-fitting doorsills, there showed a faint and irregular thread of light. There were sounds—voices muffled behind closed doors; an occasional cough; the clink of a glass. Daylight here was the accepted time for sleep! There were smells—garlic predominated. The place was airless, musty.

Jimmie Dale stole along the hallway of the second floor and began his ascent to the top landing. Reaching this, he halted and nodded in grim satisfaction to himself. He had never been honored with an entrée to Spike Dorlan’s hangout, but the Toscin had never failed in even the most minute of details—those details that had so often bridged the narrow margin between life and death. Directly facing the head of the stairs was the gang leader’s bedroom. No light, either from keyhole or sill, showed from it. The adjoining room to the left was Spike Dorlan’s antechamber where he gave audience, when the spirit moved him, to those who, under his despotic leadership, had risen to the rank, if it could be called a rank, of satraps of the underworld—and from beneath the sill of this door there seeped one of those faint, irregular threads of light that he had noted, from under other sills, on his way up from the ground floor.

Again Jimmie Dale nodded sharply to himself. It was still in the early hours of the morning; and, though he had arrived too late at the Braemer mansion, it would seem now that he could not have been very far outstripped in his race to forestall Spike Dorlan’s successfully vicarious raid on Mrs. Braemer’s wall safe—vicarious because certainly Spike Dorlan, who modestly avoided the footlights, would have delegated the job to an expert emissary. Spike Dorian was still up—and, no doubt, was gloating, at the present moment, over the wretched plunder that his aforesaid emissary had brought him.

Perhaps even the emissary himself was still here.

Jimmie Dale moved across the hall. His ears nestled against the panel of the door. There were no voices from within; but there was the sound of presence . . . faint, almost indefinable . . . little noises . . . movement as of one shifting one’s position in a chair . . . breathing—Spike Dorlan, past middle age and corpulent, was inclined to be a trifle stertorous.

A minute passed, and yet another—and then Jimmie Dale moved. Spike Dorlan was alone in there.

From one of the pockets in the girdle beneath his vest Jimmie Dale took out a black silk mask and slipped it over his face—as his eyes searched through the darkness of the hallway in both directions. There was no sign of light anywhere, save only this meager glow that escaped from under the sill of Spike Dorlan’s door.

And now Jimmie Dale knelt down at the threshold, and from a pocket in the girdle there came, this time, a thin metal case, like a cigarette case. The light, pitiful as it was, was adequate—for Jimmie Dale was working now by almost the sense of touch alone. From the case, with a pair of tiny tweezers that reposed inside the cover, he lifted out one of the diamond-shaped gray seals, adhesive on its under side, that lay within between protecting sheets of oil paper—the insignia of the Gray Seal that had been so many times microscopically searched in vain by the police for fingerprints! He took a none too clean piece of cotton, which did duty for Larry the Bat’s handkerchief, from his jacket pocket, laid the gray seal upon it, and carefully folding the handkerchief, put it back again in his pocket.

Then he stood up. Was the door locked? He tested it noiselessly—and an ironic little smile twisted at the corners of his mouth for a fleeting instant. Spike Dorlan, once ensconced therein, appeared to be imbued with a sublime optimism anent the security afforded him by his own domain! Or perhaps there was another reason why the door was unlocked. Not that it mattered either way—save for the extra moment or so that it would take to open it!

Jimmie Dale’s face was safe from recognition behind the black silk mask, but there remained the chance that the tattered attire of Larry the Bat, if seen, might possibly be identified, and if so—. His lips were suddenly a straight line. Oh, yes, he could hear the howls of the underworld like a pack of ravening wolves at his heels! But “chance” had no place in the Gray Seal’s vocabulary. Spike Dorlan would be favored with no such clue.

“The wall switch,” she had written, “the type that pushes in and out, is just inside the jamb of the door on the left-hand side, shoulder high from the floor.”

Jimmie Dale’s hands sought his pockets again—for the small flashlight and his automatic. For the fraction of a second he stood there poised—and then his movements were lightning like in their rapidity.

In his left hand he held the flashlight, but with two free fingers he turned the door knob, pushed the door just far enough open to allow the back of his hand to sweep up and down the wall beside the door jamb—and the light in the room went out. But instantly in its place the ray of the flashlight, held a little nearer to his body in order to disclose the outflung automatic in his right hand, stabbed through the blackness.

Jimmie Dale was in the room. His shoulders closed the door softly behind him.

There had come a startled oath. Spike Dorlan had half risen from the chair where he had been sitting at a table near the center of the room—he had had no time to do more than that—and his fingers, curled like claws, were still reached out as though to snatch up a string of diamonds from the table that glistened now in the flashlight’s gleam.

“Leave that alone!” It was not Larry the Bat who spoke in the vernacular out of the corner of his mouth; it was Jimmie Dale’s crisp, cultured voice. “I might like to examine it myself!”

Spike Dorlan hastily withdrew his hands. Jimmie Dale advanced to the table.

“Put your hands above your head and turn around with your back to me!” he ordered.

The man in a dazed way hesitated, but the prod of Jimmie Dale’s automatic brought obedience.

Jimmie Dale laid the flashlight on the table—and his deft fingers searched the other’s person. He extracted a gat from Spike Dorlan’s hip pocket and transferred it to his own.

“Now sit down!” he instructed curtly, as he picked up the flashlight from the table.

Once more Spike Dorlan obeyed; but, finding his voice in some measure, gave vent to a guttural curse this time.

Jimmie Dale surveyed the other unhappily. Spike Dorlan, like most of his ilk, was yellow at heart. To kill unconcernedly while he sneered was one thing; to face death himself with any degree of unconcern was another. The pendulous jowls, none too cleanly shaven, quivered; in the beady black eyes, much too small for the flabby face, was unmistakable fear.

But, lacking personal courage, Spike Dorlan did not lack wits—Spike Dorlan’s gang had many a time had evidence of that. He snarled now.

“What t’hell does this mean?” he blustered. “And who t’hell tipped you off?”

Jimmie Dale shook his head.

“I don’t know who tipped me off. I wish I did,” he murmured wistfully; and then his voice hardened: “But as for what it means, I’ll tell you.” Again he laid his flashlight down—but propped it now against a cigar box on the table so that the ray fell full on Spike Dorlan’s face. “First this”—he picked up the diamond necklace and thrust it into his pocket. “And next”—he laid the correspondence card on the table—“this!”

He tilted the flashlight so that Spike Dorlan might see clearly, then tilted it back so that it played on the other’s face once more.

Spike Dorlan’s tongue was circling his lips. “Who are you?” he demanded hoarsely. “Damn you, who are you, anyway?”

“I’ll tell you that, too—though you could hardly have expected an answer,” Jimmie Dale replied as he took his handkerchief from his pocket, lifted it to his lips, then pressed it down upon the table—and drew the handkerchief away. Under the flashlight, its ray conveniently tilted again, the moistened adhesive side adhering firmly to the table, the diamond-shaped gray seal was exposed to Spike Dorlan’s staring eyes. “I apologize for this on two counts,” confessed Jimmie Dale contritely. “In the first place because I have been wantonly plagiarizing myself, having done this exact thing several times before; in the second place because I realize that it is unpardonably melodramatic—but my excuse is that on former occasions, as well as the present one, necessity has compelled.”

Spike Dorlan did not appear to have heard. His face was sallow.

“The Gray Seal!” His voice was a shaken whisper. “Almighty Gawd!”

“You flatter me!” returned Jimmie softly, as with the forefinger of his free hand he edged the correspondence card a little nearer to the other. “A clever bit of forgery, Spike. I doubt if, in the ordinary course of events, it would ever have been questioned. Jake Winler”—a deadly menace had come creeping into Jimmie Dale’s quiet voice—“got out of Sing Sing a month ago. One of the slickest penmen in the country—and one of your mob!”

Spike Dorlan was obviously striving to get a grip on himself. One pudgy hand passed through his hair. He stopped licking his lips.

“Well, what about it?” he inquired ingratiatingly.

Jimmie Dale leaned suddenly across the table—the muzzle of his automatic thrust within almost an inch of the other’s eyes.

“Don’t try to stall!” he warned in an ugly monotone. “You’re playing against a royal flush. Is Tom Braemer, that kid you’ve framed, still alive?”

Spike Dorlan drew hastily back in his chair. Fear was in his eyes again.

“Yes—sure!” he gulped. “Sure, he is! Honest to Gawd, that’s straight. You can see for yourself that there’d be no use bumping him off unless we’d got the sparklers—and I never got them until a few minutes ago. You can see that for yourself, can’t you?”

“That was what I was banking on,” stated Jimmie Dale in the same uncompromising tone. “I hope you’re telling the truth—for his sake, and yours.”

“I’m handing you the straight goods,” asserted Spike Dorlan earnestly.

“I hope so!” Jimmie Dale’s voice was icy. “If you are, and the kid is returned safely to his home, all you lose are these few thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds—and without the police nosing in. I’ll promise you that much to make it worth your while—to save his life. On the other hand, if anything has already happened to him, or happens, I’ll see that the police are wised up, and that you go to the chair for it. You remember what happened to Stangeist, the Mope, Australian Ike, and Clarie Dean, don’t you?”

Spike Dorlan’s fear seemed suddenly to be engulfed in a wave of passion. He struck his clenched hand down on the table.

“Yes!” he snarled. “You squealed on them. You sent them, and others too, to the hot seat to burn. That’s all you are—a dirty, double-crossing squealer! But your number’s up, and some day we’ll get you! Don’t fool yourself there! You can come here and grab that necklace after I’ve done all the work, and then tell me where I get off. You’re the worst thief of the lot of us, and you’ve bumped off quite a few guys yourself. You’ve got a hell of a nerve! To hear you spiel you’d think you’re the only one had the right to cannon a bird, or —”

An ungentle thrust in the chest from the muzzle of Jimmie Dale’s automatic put an abrupt end to Spike Dorlan’s outburst.

“Quite a tirade!” commented Jimmie Dale dispassionately. “But I see that you have grasped the point. Where I have sent others, I can send you. Ever seen that room up the river? Take a salutary look at it some day—before you are the guest of honor! If Tom Braemer dies, you die—while the state’s witnesses look on!”

Spike Dorlan’s tongue was once more circling his lips.

Jimmie Dale regarded the gangster for an instant in silence, then he spoke again, as he pocketed the correspondence card.

“You are a cur,” he rasped scathingly, “a despicable cur! Young Tom Braemer was your meat. According to your frame-up, he steals the necklace from his mother, leaves a signed confession behind, disappears—and is never heard of again. How could he ever be heard of again if his disappearance is based on the hoary premise that dead men tell no tales? In the investigation that would follow, the depths to which he has fallen would be unearthed by the police, his theft and disappearance under such circumstances would be logical to a degree, no suspicion would be aroused that things were not as they seemed, the affair would be hushed up for the sake of his mother and the family name, you would be left in possession of your miserable loot without fear of exposure—and all it would cost you would be a man’s life! But Tom Braemer did not steal that necklace. You stole it. And you—”

The flashlight, in Jimmie Dale’s left hand again, was searching Spike Dorlan’s face. Into the gangster’s eyes had come—and vanished—a momentary gleam of cunning. But Jimmie Dale had heard it, too—the creak of the decrepit staircase, the heavy tread of men’s mounting footsteps. He counted. Three of them, at least—more likely four.

And then, in no more than the space of time it would take a watch to tick, Jimmie Dale circled the table to Spike Dorlan’s side.

“Some of your crowd, eh?” he shot out in a whisper. “Coming here for last-minute orders as to whether Tom Braemer is ‘for it,’ or not?” The muzzle of his automatic prodded viciously at the pit of the other’s stomach. “Answer!”

“Yes,” mumbled Spike Dorlan.

“Stand up!” ordered Jimmie Dale peremptorily. “And, if you make a sound, you go out first! Understand?”

Spike Dorlan rose to his feet. Jimmie Dale’s flashlight pointed the way—through the open connecting door into the bedroom.

The insistent prodding of the automatic’s muzzle indicated the further direction that was to be taken. The two men halted at the bedroom door that opened on the hall. Jimmie Dale unlocked it silently.

The footsteps were clattering now on the hallway without—moving toward the sitting-room door, Spike Dorlan’s “audience chamber.” The chances were perhaps an even break—perhaps only one in ten. But there was no other way.

Spike Dorlan’s myrmidons seemed to be clustered around the sitting-room door now—they were knocking upon it.

“Remember!” Jimmie Dale’s lips were pressed against the gangster’s ear. “Tom Braemer at home, and alive, by daylight—or you smoke!”

Spike Dorlan was given no chance to reply. With every ounce of his strength behind the blow, Jimmie Dale’s fist crashed to the other’s chin, and the man, hurtling backward into the room, went down under the blow.

Jimmie Dale tore the door open and darted out into the hall. A dark shape, a straggler from his fellow gangsters obviously, loafed in the way; but before Jimmie Dale’s headlong rush the man toppled over with a startled yelp.

Jimmie Dale, in the darkness now, took the stairs two and three at a time. But, when no more than halfway down the upper flight, came Spike Dorlan’s screaming voice, punctuated with hysterical and frantic oaths:

“The Gray Seal! Get him! Get the—! It’s the Gray Seal! Give him the works!”

Came then a chorus of blasphemous yells, the tongue flames of revolver shots lancing through the blackness down the stairway from above—the thud of feet in pursuit.

Jimmie Dale gained the hallway of the second floor. Doors, in this tenement of sleepless night, flew open avidly because of the commotion—and closed hastily as Jimmie Dale’s automatic barked a passage for himself along the hall.

He reached the head of the stairway leading to the ground floor, leaped downward, and, near the bottom, tripped—to plunge head foremost the rest of the way as something, a chair, he thought subconsciously, was hurled down in front of him from over the banister above.

He picked himself up, fighting desperately against giddiness and nausea. There was not only his own life at stake, but another’s. If they got him now, and he went out like a snuffed candle as he surely would, they would get back the necklace, Spike Dorlan would be “sitting pretty,” and Tom Braemer would never be heard of again.

His left arm hung limpless. He thrust his automatic into his pocket, tore the mask from his face, jumped for the front door, wrenched it open, and dashed out into the street.

Coming down the stairs, though a flight behind him, Spike Dorlan’s gangsters had been in full cry. He had at least that much start, that much lead. Nerve force alone sustaining him, he swerved into an alleyway as they now came pouring out of the tenement, and their yells echoed from the street.

On he ran—another alleyway—then a cross street—another alleyway again. None knew the East Side with its intricate ramifications as Jimmie Dale knew it. On he forced himself to run until all sound of pursuit had died away. He had thrown them off the trail—but none too soon, for despite his every effort now his pace had begun to slacken woefully.

He slumped down finally on a doorstep. He was hurt—and badly hurt. The last vestige of his strength seemed to have ebbed away. His left arm was useless. His head ached and throbbed mercilessly. The street swam before his eyes. He wasn’t going to faint, was he?

He lashed himself mentally. Above all and everything else he must retain his senses. Larry the Bat must not be found here with that telltale necklace in his pocket—whether by the police, Spike Dorlan’s mob, or by anyone else. He must get somewhere—to cover and safety. It was too far to the Sanctuary—he had not strength enough for that.

And then suddenly uplift surged upon him. Luck that he should have come this way! He knew where he was; for, notwithstanding his twistings and turnings, he had never lost his bearings from the moment he had fled from Spike Dorlan’s tenement. Down that alleyway almost directly across the street was one of the entrances to Lan Chi’s pipe joint—where Larry the Bat, supposed dope fiend, was always a welcome guest.

Jimmie Dale staggered to his feet. Thank God for the hour and the empty street! A bunk where he could rest and get his strength back; a pipe—that he would not smoke! He could even drift off into unconsciousness there with impunity if a fainting spell actually overtook him. His condition would be attributed to his bout with opium.

He made his way unsteadily across the street, disappeared in the mouth of the alleyway—and a minute or so later was standing in one of the half-dozen small cubicle-like enclosures that were thinly partitioned off from one another in Lan Chi’s subcellar.

Larry the Bat was an honored client. Lan Chi himself was in attendance; but Lan Chi, who had long since graduated from pidgin English, was apologetic.

“Full house tonight,” he explained obsequiously. “Have to make double. I go get you pipe.”

“All right,” responded Larry the Bat mechanically as Lan Chi shuffled away.

A lamp suspended from the ceiling gave a modicum of light. There were two bunks here, and, as Lan Chi had intimated, one was already occupied. Not so good! But he had no choice in the matter. He was in no condition to go elsewhere. He felt weak, and his head was going around, but he must see who was in that bunk there. He stepped over to it and peered down.

The occupant waved his long-stemmed pipe dreamily.

“Hello, Larry!” he said.

“Oh, it’s youse, eh? Hello, Sonny!” responded Larry the Bat cordially, as he retreated to his own bunk and threw himself down upon it.

Lan Chi reappeared, bringing an offering to the god of poppy and vanished.

Larry the Bat, reputedly confirmed dope fiend, had never taken a whiff of opium in his life; and now, more through force of habit than anything else, he toyed with his pipe in pretense—with the artistry of long practice. His mind was ragged. It seemed to work in snatches. He was all in for the moment, but he’d be fit enough again after a few hours’ rest. His arm wasn’t broken—he was sure of that. That was Sonny Gartz over there in that bunk. He, Jimmie Dale, had hoped to be alone in here. Nothing to fear from Sonny, though. Young Sonny Gartz was still one of the lesser breed in the underworld; not a specialist in any particular line of criminal activity as yet, but with the promise of big things ahead—if a bullet or the police did not get him on the way up! And meanwhile Sonny was known everywhere throughout the purlieus of the Bad Lands as being a square guy and on the level. He, Jimmie Dale, could even fall into a coma here, and that necklace in his pocket would still be safe so far as Sonny Gartz was concerned.

A coma? What was the matter with him? Perhaps it wasn’t only that smash on his head and the hurt of his injured arm. The entire cellar here reeked with the sweet, sickish fumes of opium. Perhaps that had a lot to do with it now. It was coming over him again—that same premonitive sensation he had experienced out there on the street, only intensified—as though he were slipping over the edge of an abyss and falling, slowly at first, then faster and faster, with a swift whirling motion—down into nothingness.

When Jimmie Dale opened his eyes again it was with the vague consciousness that he was being shaken roughly, and that a voice was screaming in his ear.

“Come on, Larry!” the voice seemed to scream. “For Gawd’s sake, come on! Youse have got to beat it—quick!”

Jimmie Dale struggled weakly upon his elbow —and fell back on the bunk again. His limbs were without vigor; and, apart from his whirling head, his lungs seemed to be strangely choked, and he gasped for breath. That was Sonny Gartz screaming at him, wasn’t it? He stared at the form that bent over him. Yes, that was Sonny, all right, but Sonny appeared to be idiotically enveloped in a cloud of some sort of smoke—like one of those pictured jinns of schoolboy days emerging from the neck of a bottle!

“Wot’s the matter, Sonny?” he muttered.

Again he felt himself being shaken, but this time more violently and insistently than before.

“Jeese, Larry, snap out of it!” Sonny’s scream was frantic now, rising in its pitch. “De dump’s on fire. It’ll be a bloody furnace in a minute. Get up out of dat! Damn youse, get up out of dat, or de two of us is gone!”

For a moment the stupor cleared partially away from Jimmie Dale’s brain. The subcellar was on fire . . . Those yellow waves were flames . . . The thin partition . . . Those clouds were smoke from the blazing woodwork . . . It was death, of course, to be trapped in here. He half wrenched, half threw himself from the bunk and gained his feet. Perhaps it was too late already . . . He heard cries and shrieks of terror . . . Sonny was a fool not to run for it when every second counted . . . What was Sonny waiting for . . .?

Jimmie Dale groped out with his hands, took a step forward—and pitched to the floor.

But he still clung desperately to a thread of consciousness. He heard Sonny Gartz curse in hysterical, insane desperation. He realized that he was being carried in Sonny’s arms. Then scorching heat . . . Always screams and hideous cries . . . A falling timber, blazing, that struck them both, blocking the way . . . On again, stumbling, swaying . . . Sonny retching as he breathed . . Smoke, curtains of it, acrid, suffocating . . .

And then a lapse into unconsciousness again—and then the realization of open space, of cool, fresh, life-giving air.

His senses revived. He lifted his head and looked around him. It was half light. He was lying on the ground close up against a board fence; Sonny Gartz sat beside him. From the distance, muffled, came the clang of a bell, shouts, the separately indeterminate sounds as of an excited, milling throng.

“Feelin’ better, eh?” inquired Sonny Gartz solicitously.

“Yes,” said Larry the Bat. “Where are we?”

“Around de corner in Ike Cohen’s junk yard. Listen to de crowd! Dere’s about half a dozen tenements fer a bonfire, an’ half de fire brigade, an’ a million cops down dere. I got out by a way youse would’ve known yerself if youse hadn’t had a coupla pipes too many, an’ I was afraid of a pinch, but I couldn’t get youse any furder dan dis. I guess youse got a bad arm from dat hunk of rafter dat fell on us, but youse’ll be all okay when de dope wears off—an’ I’ll get youse over to yer own dump as soon as youse can stagger around enough to make a getaway an’ grab a taxi or something.”

Jimmie Dale stared at the other for a long minute. He was miserably weak and sick, but his mind was functioning again. At mention of the police he had mechanically thrust his hand into his pocket, not through mistrust of Sonny Gartz, but at the thought of what a “pinch” by the police would have meant with that necklace found in his possession—and also the sudden fear that it might have dropped out of his pocket as Sonny had carried him to safety. But it was quite safe. His fingers, in his pocket, were still clutched around it.

Jimmie Dale’s thoughts swerved. What, after all, did the necklace matter compared with what this man had done? In the most literal sense his life had been saved by Sonny Gartz; and in the most literal sense Sonny Gartz had not hesitated to risk his own life in so doing. His eyes roved over the other. Sonny Gartz’s face was blistered and scorched, his hands were bleeding, his clothes torn.

“Youse did a swell thing for me, kid,” said Larry the Bat—and Larry the Bat’s voice was husky with emotion.

“Aw, ferget it!” growled Sonny Gartz awkwardly.

By sheer force of will, for the second time that night, Jimmie Dale rose to his feet.

“Nix!” said Larry the Bat, as he reached out his hand. “It ain’t one of dose things dat I fergits. Maybe some day I can do something fer youse.”

Sonny Gartz laughed to hide embarrassment.

“Maybe youse can—youse never knows,” he said. “Well, den, make it a rain check, Larry.”

“It’ll be good any time, Sonny—an’ dat goes all de way,” said Larry the Bat simply.

“All right,” said Sonny Gartz. “Youse’re on yer feet again—let’s go!” . . .

But that was in the years before. . . .