The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale

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Produced by Brendan Lane, Mary Meehan and PG Distributed Proofreaders

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE

BY

FRANK L. PACKARD

1919

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I SMARLINGHUE

II THE WARNING

III THE MAN WITH THE SCAR

IV THE DIAMOND PENDANT

V "DEATH TO THE GRAY SEAL!"

VI THE REHABILITATION OF LARRY THE BAT

VII THE BOND ROBBERY

VIII AT HALFPAST ONE

IX 'WARE THE WOLF!

X THE CHASE

XI THE VOICES OF THE UNDERWORLD

XII IN THE SANCTUARY

XIII THE SECRET ROOM

XIV THE LAST CARD

XV CAUGHT IN THE ACT

XVI ONE CHANCE IN TEN

XVII THE DEFAULTER

XVIII ALIAS ENGLISH DICK

XIX THE BEGINNING OF THE END

XX THE OLD-CLOTHES SHOP

XXI SILVER MAG

XXII THE TOCSIN'S STORY

XXIII HUNCHBACK JOE

XXIV AT FIVE MINUTES OF TWELVE

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE

CHAPTER I

SMARLINGHUE

A diminutive gas-jet's sickly, yellow flame illuminated the room with
poverty-stricken inadequacy; high up on the wall, bordering the ceiling,
the moonlight, as though contemptuous of its artificial competitor,
streamed in through a small, square window, and laid a white, flickering
path to the door across a filthy and disreputable rag of carpet; also,
through a rent in the roller shade, which was drawn over a sort of
antiquated French window that opened on a level with the floor and in
line with the top-light, the moonlight disclosed a narrow and squalid
courtyard without.

In one corner of the room stood a battered easel, while against the wall
near it, and upon the floor, were a number of canvases of different
sizes. A cot bed, unmade, its covers dirty and in disorder, occupied the
wall space opposite the door. In the centre of the mean and uninviting
apartment stood a table, its top littered with odds and ends, amongst
which the remains of a meal, dishes and food, fraternised gregariously
with a painter's palette, brushes and paint tubes. A chair or two, long
since disabled, and a rickety washstand completed the appointments.

The moonlight's path across the floor wavered suddenly, the door opened,
was locked again, and with a quick, catlike step a man moved along the
side of the wall where the shadows lay thickest near the door, dropped
on his knees, and began to fumble hurriedly with the base-board of the
wall, pausing at every alternate second to listen intently.

A minute passed. A section of the base-board was lifted out, the man's
hand was thrust inside--and emerged again with a large roll of
banknotes. He turned his head for a quick glance around the room, his
eyes, burning out of a gaunt, hollow-cheeked, pallid face, held on the
torn window shade--and then, in almost frantic haste, he thrust the
banknotes back inside the wall, and began to replace the base-board. But
it was not the window shade, nor yet the courtyard without with which he
was concerned--it was the sound of a heavy footstep outside the door.

And now the door was tried. The man on the floor, working with desperate
energy to replace the base-board, coughed in an asthmatic, wheezing way,
as there came the imperative smashing of a fist upon the door panels,
coupled with a gruff, curt demand for admittance. Again the man
coughed--to drown perhaps the slight rasping sound as the base-board
slid back into place--and, rising to his feet, shuffled hastily to the
door and unlocked it.

The door was flung violently open from without, a heavy-built,
clean-shaven, sharp-featured man stepped into the room, slammed the door
shut behind him, re-locked it, and swept a shrewd, inquisitive,
suspicious glance about the place.

"It took you a damned long time to open that door, _Mister_
Smarlinghue!" he said sharply.

The man addressed touched his lips with the tip of his tongue nervously,
shrank back, and made no reply.

The lapel of the visitor's coat thrown carelessly back displayed a
police shield on the vest beneath; and now, completing a preliminary
survey of the surroundings, the man's eyes narrowed on Smarlinghue.

"I guess you know who I am, don't you? Heard of me perhaps, too--eh?
Clancy of headquarters is my name!" He laughed menacingly, unpleasantly.

Smarlinghue's clothes were threadbare and ill-fitting; his coat was a
size too small for him, and from the short sleeves protruded blatantly
the frayed and soiled wristbands of his shirt. He twined his hands
together anxiously, and retreated further back into the room.

"I haven't done anything, honest to God, I haven't!" he whined.

"Ain't, eh?" The other laughed again. "No, of course not! Nobody ever
did! But now I'm here--just dropped in socially, you know--I'll have a
look around."

He began to move about the room. Smarlinghue, still twining his hands in
a helpless, frightened way, still circling his lips nervously with the
tip of his tongue, followed the other's movements in miserable
apprehension with his eyes.

Clancy, as he had introduced himself, shot up the roller shade, peered
out into the courtyard, yanked the shade down again with a callous jerk
that almost tore it from its fastenings, and strode over toward the
easel, contemptuously kicking a chair that happened to be in his way
over onto the floor. Reaching the easel he picked up the canvas that
rested upon it, stared at it for a moment--and with a grunt of disdain
flung it away from him to the ground.

There was a crash as it struck the floor, a ripping sound as the
canvas split, and with a pitiful cry Smarlinghue rushed forward and
snatched it up.

"It--it was sold," he choked. "I--I was to get the money to-morrow. I
have had bad luck for a month--nothing sold but this--and now--and
now--" He drew himself up suddenly, and, with the ruined painting
clutched to his breast, shook his other fist wildly. "You have no right
here!" he screamed in fury. "Do you hear! I have not done anything! I
tell you, I have not done anything! You have no right here! I will make
you pay for this! I will! I will!" His voice was rising in a shrill
falsetto. "I will make you--"

"You hold your tongue," growled Clancy savagely, "or I'll give you
something more than an old chromo to make a row about! I don't want any
mass meeting of your kind of citizens. Get that?" He caught Smarlinghue
roughly by the shoulder, and pushed him into a chair near the table.
"Sit down there, and close your jaw!"

Cowed, Smarlinghue's voice dropped to a mumble, and he let the torn
canvas slip from his fingers to the floor.

Clancy laughed gruffly, pulled another chair to the opposite side of the
table, sat down himself, and eyed Smarlinghue coldly for a moment.

"Sold it, eh?" he observed grimly. "How much were you going to
get for it?"

A cunning gleam flashed in Smarlinghue's eyes--and vanished instantly.
He wet his lips with his tongue again.

"Ten dollars," he said hoarsely.

Clancy brushed aside the litter on the table, and nonchalantly laid down
a ten-dollar bill.

With a sharp little cry that brought on a fit of coughing, Smarlinghue
stretched out his hand for the money eagerly.

Clancy drew the money back out of reach.

"Oh, no, nothing like that!" he drawled unpleasantly. "Don't make the
mistake of taking me for a fool. I'm not buying any ten-cent art
treasures at ten dollars a throw!"

Smarlinghue's eyes remained greedily riveted on the ten-dollar note. He
began to twine his hands together once more.

"I don't know what you mean," he muttered tremulously.

"Don't you!" retorted the other shortly. "Well, I mean exactly what I
say. I'm not buying any pictures, I'm buying--_you_. I have been keeping
an eye on you for the last three or four months. You're just the guy
I've been looking for. As far as I can make out, there ain't a dive or a
roost in the Bad Lands where you don't get the glad hand--eh?"

"I--I haven't done anything! Not a thing! I--I swear I haven't!"
Smarlinghue burst out frantically.

"Aw, forget it!" Clancy permitted a thin smile to flicker contemptuously
across his lips. "You've got a whole lot of friends that I'm interested
in. Get the idea? There ain't a crook in New York that's shy of you. You
got a 'stand-in' everywhere." He held up the ten-dollar bill. "There's
more of these--plenty of 'em."

Smarlinghue pushed back his chair now in a frightened sort of way.

"You--you mean you want me for--for a stool pigeon?" he faltered.

"You got it!" said Clancy bluntly.

Smarlinghue's eyes roved about the room in a furtive, terror-stricken
glance, his hand passed aimlessly over his eyes, and he crouched low
down in his chair.

"No, no!" he whispered. "No, no--for God's sake, Mr. Clancy, don't ask
me to do that! I can't--I can't! I--I wouldn't be any good, I--I can't!
I--I won't!"

Clancy thrust head and shoulders aggressively across the table.

"You will--if you know what's good for you!" he said evenly. "And,
what's more, there's a little job you're going to break your hand in on
to-night."

"No! No, no! I can't! I can't!" Smarlinghue flung out his arms
imploringly.

Clancy lowered his voice.

"Cut that out!" he snapped viciously. "What's the matter with you!
You'll be well paid for it--_and have police protection_. You ought to
know what that'll mean to you--eh? You live like a gutter-snipe
here--half starved most of the time, for all you can get out of those
ungodly daubs!"

A curious dignity came to Smarlinghue. He sat upright.

"It is my art," he said. "I have starved for it many years. Some day I
will get recognition. Some day I--"

"Art--hell!" sneered Clancy; and then he laughed coarsely, as, his
fingers prodding under the miscellany of articles on the table, he
suddenly held up a hypodermic syringe. "This is _your_ art, my bucko!
Why, you poor boob, don't you think I know you! Cocaine's the one thing
on earth you live for. You're stewed to the eyes with it now. Here, just
watch me! Suppose"--he caught the syringe in a quick grip between the
fingers of both hands--"suppose I just put this little toy out of
commission now, and--"

With a shrill screech, Smarlinghue sprang from his chair, and clawed
like a demented man at the other's hands for possession of the
hypodermic.

Clancy surrendered the syringe with a mocking grin, and shoved
Smarlinghue backward into his chair again.

"Oh, yes; you're an artist all right--a coke artist!" he remarked
coolly. "But that's what makes you solid in every den in New York, and
that's how you come in useful--to me. Well, what do you say?"

There was a hunted look in Smarlinghue's eyes.

"They'd--they'd kill me," he said huskily.

"Sure, they would!" agreed Clancy easily. "If they found you out it
would be good-night, all right--that's what you're getting paid for.
But"--his voice hardened--"if you don't come across, I'll tell you what
_I'll_ do to you. I'll--"

"You can't do anything! Not a thing!" Smarlinghue cried wildly. "You
haven't anything on me at all. I've never done a thing, not a single--"

"Oh, I guess there's enough to make you sweat," Clancy cut in brutally.
"You give me the icy paw, and I'll see that the tip leaks out from the
right quarters that you _are_ a stool pigeon. That'll take care of your
finish, too, won't it--good and plenty!"

Smarlinghue stared miserably. Again and again his tongue circled his
lips. Twice he tried to speak--and only succeeded in mumbling
inarticulately.

Clancy got up from the table, walked around it, and, standing over the
crouched figure in the chair, tapped with his finger on the hypodermic
in Smarlinghue's hands.

"And that ain't all," he announced with a malicious grin. "You come in
and play the game with me, or I'll fix it so that you'll never get
another squirt of dope if you had a million bucks to buy it with--ah, I
thought that would get you!"

Smarlinghue was on his feet. The terror of the damned was in his face.

"No! No! My God--no--not that! You--you wouldn't do that!" He reached
out his arms to the other.

"You know--I've gone too far to do without it. If I didn't have it, I--"

"I've seen a few of them in that sort of jim-jams," said Clancy
malevolently. "You can't tell me anything about it. If you appreciate
it, that's enough--it's up to you. You heard what I said. If you're
looking for that particular kind of hell, go to it. Only don't kid
yourself. When I pass the word to put the screws on, the lid's down for
keeps. Well, what's the answer? Coming across? Quick now! I haven't got
all night to spend here!"

Smarlinghue's hands were trembling violently; he sat down in his chair
in a pitiful, uncertain way.

"Yes, yes!" he whispered. "_Yes!_ I got to do it. I'll do it, Mr.
Clancy, I'll do it! I'll--I'll do anything!"

A half leer, half scowl was on Clancy's face, as he stood regarding
the other.

"I thought you would!" he grunted roughly. "Well then, we'll get down to
business--and _to-night's_ business. You know the back entrance to Malay
John's hang-out?"

Smarlinghue's eyes widened a little in a startled way. He nodded his
head.

"Very good," said Clancy gruffly. "_You'll_ have no trouble in getting
in there. And once in there you'll have no trouble in getting up to
Malay's private den. I've been wised up that Malay and a few of his pals
are getting ready to pull off a little game uptown. I want the dope on
it--_all_ of it. They've been meeting in Malay's den for the last few
nights--understand? They drift in between half past eleven and
twelve--you get there a little _before_ halfpast eleven. You haven't
anything to be afraid of, so don't lose your nerve. Malay himself is
away this evening and won't be back before midnight; and the door won't
be locked, as otherwise the others couldn't get in. Everything's clear
for you. Savvy? Once you're in the room, there's plenty of places to
hide--and that's all you've got to do, except keep your ears and eyes
open. Get the lay?"

Again Smarlinghue nodded--unhappily this time.

"All right!" said Clancy crisply. "I'm not coming around here any
more--_unless I have to_. It might put you in bad. You can make your
reports and get your orders through Whitie Karn at his dance hall."

"Whitie Karn!" The exclamation seemed to come involuntarily, in a quick,
frightened way from Smarlinghue.

Clancy's lips twisted in a smile.

"Kind of a jolt--eh--Smarlinghue? You didn't suspect he was one of _us_,
did you?--and there's more than Whitie Karn. Well, it will teach you to
be careful. Suppose Whitie, for instance, passed the word that you were
a snitch--eh? It won't do you any harm to keep that in mind once in a
while." He moved over to the door. "Well, good-night, Smarlinghue! I
guess you understand, don't you? You ought to be a pretty valuable man,
and I expect a lot from you. If I don't get it--" He shrugged his
shoulders, held Smarlinghue for an instant with half-closed, threatening
eyes--and then the door closed behind him.

Smarlinghue did not move. The steps receded from the door, and died away
along the passage. A minute, two minutes went by. Suddenly Smarlinghue
pushed back the wristband of his shirt, and pricked the skin with the
needle of the hypodermic. The door, without a sound, swung wide open.
Clancy stood in the doorway.

"Good-night again, Smarlinghue," he said coolly.

The hypodermic fell clattering to the floor; Smarlinghue jumped
nervously in his chair.

Clancy laughed--significantly; and, without closing the door this time,
strode away again. His steps echoed back from the passageway, the front
door opened and shut, his boot heel rang on the pavement without--and
all was silence.

Smarlinghue rose from his chair, shuffled across the room, closed the
door and locked it, then shuffled back again to the roller shade over
the little French window, and, taking a pin from the lapel of his coat,
fastened the rent together.

A passing cloud for a moment obscured the moonrays from the top-light;
the gas-jet choked with air, spluttered, burning with a tiny, blue,
hissing flame; then the white path lay across the floor again, and the
yellow flare of gas spurted up into its pitiful fulness--and in
Smarlinghue's stead stood another man. Gone were the stooping shoulders,
gone the hollow cheeks, the thin, extended lips, the widened nostrils,
as the little distorting pieces of wax were removed; and out of the
metamorphosis, hard and grim, set like chiselled marble, was revealed
the face of--Jimmie Dale.

CHAPTER II

THE WARNING

For a moment Jimmie Dale stood there hesitant, the long, slim, tapering
fingers curled into the palms of his hands, his fists clenched tightly,
a dull red suffusing his cheeks and burning through the masterly created
pallor of his make-up; and then slowly as though his mind were in
dismay, he walked across the room, turned off the gas, and going to the
cot flung himself down upon it.

What was he to do? What ghastly irony had prompted Clancy to sort _him_
out for a police spy? If he refused, if he attempted to stall on Clancy,
Clancy's threat to stamp him in the eyes of the underworld as a snitch
meant ruin and disaster, absolute and final, for "Smarlinghue" would
then have to disappear; on the other hand, to be allied with the police
increased his present risks a thousandfold--and they were already
hazardous enough! It meant constant surveillance by the police that
would hamper him, rob him of his freedom of movement, adding
difficulties and perils innumerable to the enacting of this new dual
personality of his.

Jimmie Dale's hands clenched more fiercely. It was an impossible
situation--it was untenable. That he could play his role in the
underworld with only the underworld to reckon with--_yes_; but with the
police as well, watching him in his character of a poor, drug-wrecked
artist, constantly in touch with him, likely at any moment to make the
discovery that Smarlinghue and Jimmie Dale, the millionaire clubman, a
leader in New York's most exclusive set, were one and the same--_no_!
And yet what was he to do? With the Gray Seal it had been different.
Then, police and underworld alike were openly allied as common enemies
against him--but none had known who the Gray Seal was until that night
when the Magpie had roused the Bad Lands like a hive of swarming hornets
with the news that the Gray Seal was Larry the Bat; none had known until
that night when it was accepted as a fact that Larry the Bat, and
therefore the Gray Seal, had perished miserably in the tenement fire.

Around the squalid room, lighted now only by the moonrays, Jimmie Dale's
eyes travelled slowly, abstractedly. Yes, in that one particular it was
different; but here was the New Sanctuary, and again he was living the
old life in close, intimate companionship with the underworld--the old
life that only six months ago he had thought to have done with forever!

He turned his face suddenly to the wall, and lay very still--only his
hands still remained tightly clenched, and the hard, set look on his
face grew harder still.

Six months ago, like some mocking illusion, like some phantom of
unreality that jeered at him, it seemed now, he had lived for a few
short weeks in a dreamland of wondrous happiness, a happiness that all
his own great wealth had never been able to bring him, a happiness that
no wealth could ever buy--the joy of her--the glad promise that for
always their lives would be lived together--and then, as though she had
vanished utterly from the face of the earth, she was gone.

The Tocsin! Marie LaSalle to the world, she was always, and always would
be, the Tocsin to him. _Gone_! A hand unclenched and passed heavily
across his eyes and flirted the hair back from his forehead. She had
taken her place in her own world again; her fortune had been restored to
her, its management placed in the hands of a trust company; the interior
of the mansion on Fifth Avenue, with its sliding walls and secret
passages, that had served as headquarters for the Crime Club, was in the
process of reconstruction--and she had disappeared.

It had come suddenly, and yet--as he understood now, though then he had
only attributed it to an exaggerated prudence on her part--not without
warning. In the three weeks that had intervened between the night of the
fire in the old Sanctuary and her disappearance, she had permitted him
to see her only at such times and at such intervals as would be
consistent with the most casual of acquaintanceships. He remembered well
enough now her answer to his constant protests, an answer that was
always the same. "Jimmie," she had said, "a sudden intimacy between us
would undo all that you have done--you know that. It would not only
renew, but would be almost proof positive to those who are left of the
Crime Club that their suspicions of Jimmie Dale were justified, and from
that as a starting point it would not take a very clever brain to
identify Jimmie Dale as Larry the Bat--and the Gray Seal. Don't you see!
You never knew me before all the misery and trouble came--there was
nothing between us then. To see too much of each other now, to have too
much in common now would only be to court disaster. Our intimacy must
appear to come gradually, to come naturally. We must wait--a year at
least--Jimmie."

A year! And within a few hours following the last occasion on which she
had said that, Jason, his butler, had laid the morning mail upon the
breakfast table, and he had found her note.

It seemed as though he were living that moment over again now, as he lay
here on the cot in the darkness--his eagerness as he had recognised the
well-known hand amongst the pile of correspondence, the thrill akin to
tenderness with which he had opened the note; and then the utter misery
of it all, the room swirling about him, the blind agony in which he had
risen from his chair, and, as he had groped his way from the room, the
sudden, pitiful anxiety on the faithful old Jason's face, which, even in
his own distress, he had not failed to note and understand and be
grateful for.

There had been only a few words in the note, and those few carefully
chosen, guarded, like the notes of old, lest they should fall into a
stranger's hand; but he had read only too clearly between the lines. She
had had only far too much more reason for fear than she had admitted to
him; and those fears had crystallised into realities. One sentence in
the note stood out above all others, a sentence that had lived with him
since that morning months ago, the words seeming to visualise her, high
in her courage, brave in the unselfishness of her love: "Jimmie, I must
not, I cannot, I will not bring you into the shadows again; I must fight
this out alone."

He recalled the feverish haste in which he had acted that morning--the
one thought that had possessed him being to reach her if possible before
she could put her designs into execution. Benson, his chauffeur,
reckless of speed laws, had rushed him to the hotel where, pending the
remodelling of the Fifth Avenue mansion, she had taken rooms. Here, he
learned that she had given up her apartments on the previous afternoon,
and that it was understood she had left for an extended travel tour, and
that her baggage had been taken to the Pennsylvania Station. From the
hotel he had gone to the trust company in whose hands she had placed the
management of her estate. With a few additional details, disquieting
rather than otherwise, it was the story of the hotel over again. They
did not know where she was, except that she had told them she was going
away for a long trip, had given them the fullest powers to handle her
affairs, and, on the previous afternoon, had drawn a very large sum of
money before leaving the institution.

He had returned then, like a man dazed, to his home on Riverside Drive,
and had locked himself in his den to think it out. She had covered her
tracks well--and had done it in a masterly way because she had done it
simply. It was possible that she had actually gone away for a trip; but
it was more probable that she had not. He had had, of course, no means
of knowing; but the sort of peril that threatened her, his intuition
told him, was not such as to be diverted by the mere expedient of
absenting herself from New York temporarily; and, besides, she had said
that she would _fight_ it out. She could hardly do that in the _person_
of Marie LaSalle, or away from New York. She was clever, resourceful,
resolute and fearless--and those very traits opened a vista of
possibilities that left his mind staggering blindly as in a maze. She
was gone--and alone in the face of deadly menace. He remembered then
the curious, unnatural calmness underlying the mad whirling of his
brain at the thought that that was not literally true, that she was
not, nor would she ever be alone--while he lived. It was only a
question of _how_ he could help her. It had seemed almost certain that
the danger threatening her came from one of two sources--either from
those who were left of the Crime Club, relentless, savage for vengeance
on account of the ruin and disaster that had overtaken them; or else
from the Magpie, and behind the Magpie, massed like some Satanic
phalanx, every denizen of the underworld, for Silver Mag had
disappeared coincidently with Larry the Bat, coincidently with the
Magpie's attempted robbery of the supposed Henry LaSalle's safe, to
which plot she was held by the underworld to be a party, coincidently
with the dispersion of the Crime Club, _and coincidently with the
reappearance of the heiress Marie LaSalle_--and, further, Silver Mag
stood condemned to death in the Bad Lands as the accomplice of the Gray
Seal. But Silver Mag had disappeared. Had the underworld, prompted by
the Magpie, solved the riddle--did it know, or guess, or suspect that
Silver Mag was Marie LaSalle?

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