The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale

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Jimmie Dale's hand went out, both of them, and were laid affectionately
on the old man's shoulders.

"I put my life in your hands that night, Jason," he said simply. "Go on.
What is it?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, Master Jim, sir." Jason swallowed hard; his voice
choked a little. "It isn't much, sir, I--I don't know that it's anything
at all; but nights, sir, when I'm sitting up for you, Master Jim, and
you don't come home, I--"

"But I've told you again and again that you are not to sit up for me,
Jason," Jimmie Dale remonstrated kindly.

"Yes, I know, sir." Jason shook his head. "But I couldn't sleep, sir,
anyway--thinking about it, Master Jim, sir. I--well, sir--sometimes I
get terribly anxious and afraid, Master Jim, that something will
happen to you, and it seems as though you were all alone in this, and
I thought, sir, that perhaps if--if some one--some one you could
trust, Master Jim, could do something--_anything_, sir, it might make
it all right. I--I'm an old man, Master Jim, it--it wouldn't matter
about me, and--"

Jimmie Dale turned abruptly to the table. His own eyes were wet. These
were not idle words that Jason used, or words spoken without a full
realisation of their meaning. Jason was offering, and calling it
presumption to do so, his life in place of his, Jimmie Dale's, if by so
doing he could shield the master whom he loved.

"Thank you, Jason." Jimmie Dale turned again from the table. "There is
nothing you can do now, but if the time ever comes--" He looked for a
long minute into Jason's face; then his hands were laid again on the
other's shoulders, and he swung the old man gently around. "There's the
door, Jason--and God bless you!"

Jason went slowly from the room. The door closed. For the first time
that he had ever held a letter of hers in his hand Jimmie Dale was for a
moment heedless of it. If the time ever came! He smiled strangely. The
love and affection that had come with the years of Jason's service were
not all on one side. Not for anything in the world would he put a hair
of that gray head in jeopardy! It was not lack of faith or trust that
held him back from taking Jason into his full confidence--it was the
possibility, always present, that some day the house of cards might
totter, the Gray Seal be discovered to be Jimmie Dale, and in the ruin,
the disaster, the debacle that must follow, the less old Jason knew, for
old Jason's own sake, the better! It was the one thing that would save
Jason. The charge of complicity would fall to the ground before the old
man's very ingenuousness!

And then Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders, a sort of whimsical
fatalistic philosophy upon him, and, as he tore the envelope open, he
sat down in the lounging chair close to the table. Another "call to
arms"! An appeal for some one else--never for herself! He shook his
head. How often had he hoped that the summons, instead, would prove to
be the one thing he asked and lived for--to take his place beside her,
to aid _her_! Not one of these letters had he ever opened without the
hope that, in spite of the intuition which told him his hope was futile,
it would prove at last to be the call to him for herself! Perhaps this
one--he was eagerly unfolding the pages he had taken from the
envelope--perhaps this one--no!--a glance was enough--it was far remote
from any personal relation to her.

"Dear Philanthropic Crook"--he leaned back in his chair, as his eyes
travelled hurriedly over the opening paragraphs, a keen sense of
disappointment upon him, despite the intuition that had bade him expect
nothing else--and then suddenly, startled, tense, he sat upright,
strained forward in his seat. He could not read fast enough. His eyes
leaped over words and sentences.

"... They are playing their last card to-night ... David Archman ... it
is murder, Jimmie ... letter signed J. Barca ... Sixth Avenue stationer
... Martin Moore ... Gentleman Laroque, the gangster ... Niccolo Sonnino
... end house to left of courtyard entrance ... safe in rear room ...
lives alone ... tonight ..."

For a moment Jimmie Dale did not move as he finished reading the letter,
save that his fingers began to tear the pages into strips, and the
strips over and over again into tiny fragments--then, mechanically, he
dropped the pieces into the pocket of his dinner jacket and mechanically
reached for the newspaper that Jason had picked up and laid on the
table. And now a dull red burned in his cheeks, and the square jaw was
clamped and hard. Strange coincidence! Yes, it was strange--but perhaps
it was more than mere coincidence! He had an interest, a very personal,
vital interest in that article on the front page now, in this combine of
those who were frankly of the dregs of the criminal world and those of a
blacker breed who hid behind the veneer of respectability and station.

He read the article slowly. It was but the resume of the case that had
been under investigation for the past few weeks, the sensation it had
created the greater since the publicity so far given to it had but
hinted darkly at the scope of the exposure to come, while as yet no
names had been mentioned. "The Private Club Ring," as set forth in the
paper, operated a chain of what purported to be small, select and very
exclusive clubs, but which in reality were gambling traps of the most
vicious description--and the field of their operations was very wide and
exceedingly lucrative. Men known to have money, whether New Yorkers or
from out of town, were "introduced" there by "members" whose standing
and presumed respectability were beyond reproach--and they were bled
white; while, to add variety to the crooked games, orgies, revels and
carousals of the most depraved character likewise furnished the lever
for blackmail--the "member" _ostensibly_ being in as bad a hole, and in
as desperate a predicament as the "guest" he had introduced!

The article told Jimmie Dale nothing new, nothing that he did not
already know, save the statement that the evidence now in the possession
of the authorities was practically complete, and that the arrest and
disclosure of those involved might be expected at any moment.

He put down the paper, and stood up--and for the second time that night
began to pace the room. If the article had told him nothing new, it at
least explained that sentence in the Tocsin's letter--_they are playing
their last card to-night._ They must strike now, or never--the exposure
could be but a matter of a few hours off!

A face crowned with its gray hair rose before him, a kindly face, grave
and strong and fine, the face of a man of sterling honesty and
unimpeachable integrity--the face of David Archman, the assistant
district attorney, who had both instituted and was in charge of the
investigation that now threatened New York with an upheaval that
promised to shake many a social structure to its foundations. Yes, they
would play their last card, a vile, despicable and hellish card--but how
little they knew David Archman! They would break his life; it would,
indeed, as the Tocsin had said, be murder--but they would never break
David Archman's unswerving loyalty to principle and duty! They had tried
that--by threats of personal violence, by the offer of bribes in sums
large enough to have tempted many!

His face hard, his forehead gathered in puzzled furrows, Jimmie Dale
stepped to the door, and locked it; then, drawing aside the portiere
that hung before the little alcove at the lower end of the room, knelt
down before the squat, barrel-shaped safe, and his fingers began to play
over the knobs and dials.

Yes, it was a vitally personal matter now; there was an added incentive
to-night spurring the Gray Seal on to act. David Archman had been his
father's closest friend; and he, Jimmie Dale, himself had always looked
on David Archman, and with reason, as little less than a second father.
His frown grew deeper--he did not understand. But Tocsin did _not_ make
mistakes. He had had evidence of that on too many occasions when he had
thought otherwise to question it now--but David Archman's son in _this_!
It seemed incredible! The boy, he was little more than a boy, scarcely
twenty, was and always had been, perhaps, a little wild, but a thief, an
associate and accomplice of the city's worst crooks and criminals was
something of which he, Jimmie Dale, had never dreamed until this
instant, and now, while it staggered him, it brought, too, a sense of
merciless fury--a fury against those who would stab like inhuman
cowards, pitilessly, at the father through the son. Their last card! The
safe swung open. Their last card was--Clarie Archman, the son!

He reached into the safe, took out an automatic, and placed it in his
pocket. There was no necessity to go to the Sanctuary--what he would
need was here in duplicate, and it would be Jimmie Dale, not
Smarlinghue, who played the role of the Gray Seal to-night. A dozen
small steel picklocks in graded sizes followed the revolver, and
after these a black silk mask and a pocket flashlight--the thin,
metal insignia case containing the little diamond-shaped,
gray-coloured paper seals, never absent from his person since the
night he had lost and recovered it again, was already reposing in an
inner pocket of his clothes.

His face was still hard, as he stood up and closed the safe. The way
out, the way to save David Archman was plain, of course. It was even
simple--if it was not too late! And the way out was another "crime"
committed by the Gray Seal! Instead of Clarie Archman and J. Barca,
alias Gentleman Laroque, robbing the safe of one Niccolo Sonnino, dealer
in precious stones, it would be the Gray Seal--if it was not already too
late to forestall the others!

If it was not too late! He looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes
after eleven. Yes, there should be time; but, if not--what then? And
what of that letter? His teeth clamped. Well, he would try it; and he
would make every second count now! He was lifting the telephone receiver
of the private house installation now, calling the garage. Benson, his
chauffeur, answered him almost on the instant.

"The light touring car, Benson, please, and as quickly as possible,"
said Jimmie Dale pleasantly.

"Yes, sir--at once," Benson answered.

Jimmie Dale replaced the receiver on the hook, and, running now across
the floor, unlocked the door, crossed the hall, and entered his
dressing room. Here, he changed his dinner clothes for a dark tweed
suit--the location of Niccolo Sonnino's place of business was in a
neighbourhood where one in evening dress, to say the least of it,
would not go unobserved--transferred the metal case and the articles
he had taken from the safe to the pockets of the tweed suit, and
descended the stairs.

Standing in the hallway, Jason, that model of efficiency, with an
appraising glance at his master's changed attire, handed Jimmie Dale a
soft hat--and opened the door.

"Benson is outside, Master Jim," said Jason; but the look in the old
man's eyes was eloquent far beyond the respectful and studied quiet of
his words. The old face was pale and grave with anxiety.

"It's all right, Jason--all right _this_ time," Jimmie Dale smiled
reassuringly.

"Thank you, sir," said Jason, in a low voice. "I hope so, sir. And,
begging your pardon, Master Jim, sir, I pray God it is."

And for answer Jimmie Dale smiled again, and passed down the steps, and
entered the car. But the smile was gone as he leaned back in his seat
after giving Benson his directions--speed, and a corner a few blocks
away from Chatham Square--he was not so sure that it was all right. It
was entirely a question of time. Given the time and the
opportunity--Niccolo Sonnino out of the road, for instance--given twenty
minutes ahead of Clarie Archman and Gentleman Laroque, it would be
simple enough. But otherwise--his lips thinned--otherwise, he did not
know. Otherwise, there was promise of strange, grim work before
daylight came, work that might lead him out of necessity to the role of
Smarlinghue, and as Smarlinghue--anywhere! He did not know; he knew only
one thing--that, at any cost, if it lay within any power of his to
prevent it, David Archman should not live a broken man.

The car speeded its way rapidly along in a downtown direction, Benson
keeping, wherever possible, to the unfrequented streets. Jimmie Dale,
busy with his problem, his mind sifting and turning this way and that
the curious, and in some cases apparently conflicting details of the
Tocsin's letter, paid little attention to his surroundings, save to note
approvingly from time to time that a request to Benson to hurry was
equivalent to something perilously near to a contempt of speed laws. It
still seemed incredible that Clarie Archman was a thief, a safe-tapper,
even if but an amateur one. The boy must have travelled a pace of late
that was fast and furious. How had he ever become intimate enough with
Gentleman Laroque to be associated with the other in such a crime as
this? How had Laroque come to play a part in the miserable scheme of
trickery that was the Private Club Ring's last card.

Jimmie Dale shook his head helplessly at the first question--and shook
it again at the second. He knew Laroque--he knew him for one of the most
degraded, as well as one of the most dreaded, gang leaders in crimeland.
Laroque, in unvarnished language, was a devil, and, worse still, a most
callous devil. Laroque stood first and all the time for Laroque. If
murder would either further or safeguard Laroque's personal interests,
Laroque was the sort of man who would stop only to consider, not whether
the murder should be committed, but the method that might best be
employed in order to implicate as little as possible one Laroque! Also,
to those in the secrets of the underworld, Gentleman Laroque added to
his accomplishments, or had done so before he rose to the eminence of
gang leader, the profession of "box-worker"--not a very clever exponent
of the art, crude perhaps in his methods, but at the same time
efficacious, as a dozen breaks and looted safes in the years gone by
bore ample witness.

Grimly whimsical came Jimmie Dale's smile. Gentleman Laroque would have
made a very much better "confidence" man than safe-worker. The man was
suave, polished when he wanted to be, educated; he possessed all the
requisites, and, in abundance, the prime requisite of all--a cunning
that was the cunning of a fox. This might even have explained his
acquaintanceship with Clarie Archman, except for the fact that it did
not explain Clarie Archman's co-operation in a premeditated robbery
with any one!

Again Jimmie Dale shook his head--and there came another question, one
for which no answer, even of a suggestive nature, had been supplied in
the Tocsin's letter. Why had Niccolo Sonnino's safe been selected as the
one especial and desirable nut to crack? He knew Niccolo Sonnino, too,
in a general way, as all who resided near or had any dealings in the
neighbourhood where Sonnino lived, knew the man. True, combined with a
small trade in jewelry and precious stones, the former cheap and the
latter of an inferior grade to fit the purses of his customers, the man
was a money-lender--but in an equally small way. Loans of minor amounts,
a very few dollars as a maximum, was probably the extent of Sonnino's
ventures along this line. Sonnino himself was a crafty little man, but
craftiness, if it did not transgress the law, was not a crime; he was
undoubtedly a usurer in his petty way, and he was both feared and
disliked, but beyond that no one pretended to know anything about him.
Ordinarily, Sonnino's safe, then, might be expected to be rather a
barren affair, hardly a lure for a Gentleman Laroque brand of crook!
Why, then, Sonnino's safe to-night? What was in that letter signed "J.
Barca" that Clarie Archman had received? J. Barca was Gentleman Laroque;
that would have been evident in any case, even if the Tocsin had not
expressly said so--but the letter! Did the letter, apart from its
incriminating ingenuity, supply the answer to his question? Had Sonnino,
for instance, by some lucky turn, disposed of his stock in bulk, and was
thus for the moment in possession of an unusually large amount of cash;
or, inversely, had Sonnino received an unusual stock of stones? Either
of these theories, and equally neither one of them, might furnish the
answer! Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders grimly. He would find the
answer--in Sonnino's safe! One thing, however, one thing that might have
had some bearing on Laroque's choice, one thing for which he, Jimmie
Dale, was grateful to Laroque for making such a choice, was that
Sonnino's place lent itself admirably to attack--from the standpoint of
the attacker! A black courtyard, screened completely from the street; a
house that--

Jimmie Dale looked up suddenly, and, as suddenly, leaning forward, he
touched Benson's shoulder. They were just approaching a restaurant and
music hall known as "The Sphinx," that was popular for the moment with
the slumming parties from uptown.

"This will do. You may let me out here at The Sphinx, Benson," he said
quietly; and then, as the car stopped: "I shall not be long,
Benson--perhaps half an hour--wait for me."

Benson touched his cap. Jimmie Dale ran up the steps of the restaurant,
entered, threaded his way through several crowded rooms where the
midnight revelry was in full swing--and passed out of the place by a
convenient rear exit that gave on the adjoining cross street. The car
standing in front of The Sphinx would attract no notice; and he was now
on the same street as Sonnino's place, and only two short blocks away.

He started forward from the restaurant door--and paused, struggling with
a refractory match in an effort to light a cigarette. A man brushed by
him, making for the restaurant door, a tall, wiry-built, swarthy,
sharp-featured man--and Jimmie Dale flipped the stub of his match away
from him, and went on. Sonnino himself! There was luck then at the
start--the coast was clear!

CHAPTER XV

CAUGHT IN THE ACT

It was one of those countless streets on the East Side each so identical
with another--dark, not over clean, flanked on both sides with small
shops, basement stores and tenement dwellings that crowded one upon the
other in a sort of helpless confusion. Jimmie Dale moved quickly along.
The whimsical smile was back on his lips. Sonnino, whose business, the
money-lending end of it, would naturally have kept him late at work, was
now evidently intent on a belated meal; Sonnino, therefore, could be
counted upon as a factor eliminated for at feast the next half hour--and
half an hour was enough, a little more than enough!

Jimmie Dale glanced back over his shoulder. There was no one in sight.
A yard ahead of him, one of those relics of barbaric architecture,
tunnelled as it were through the centre of a building that the space
overhead might not be wasted, was the black driveway that gave
entrance to the courtyard behind, where Sonnino lived alone in one of
a half dozen small, tottering-from-age frame houses. Jimmie Dale drew
closer to the wall, came opposite the driveway--and disappeared from
the street.

It was the Gray Seal now, the professional Jimmie Dale, as silent in his
movements as the shadows about him. He traversed the driveway, and
emerged on the courtyard. Here, it was scarcely less dark. There was no
moon, and no lights in any of the houses that made the rear of the
courtyard. He could just discern the houses as looming shapes against
the sky line, that was all.

He crossed the courtyard, and, reaching the line of door-stepless,
poverty-stricken hovels--they appeared to be little more than
that--crept stealthily along to the end house at the left, halted an
instant to press his face against a black window pane, then tried the
door cautiously. It was locked, of course. Again there came the
whimsical smile, but it was almost hidden now by the black silk mask
that he slipped quickly over his face. His finger tips, that were like a
magical sixth sense to Jimmie Dale, embodying all the other five, felt
tentatively over the lock, then slipped into his pocket, selected
unerringly one of his picklocks, and inserted the little steel
instrument in the keyhole. An instant more and the door was opening
without a sound under Jimmie Dale's hand. And then, the door open, he
stepped over the threshold, and, in the act of closing the door behind
him, stood suddenly rigid--and where the whimsical smile had been
before, his lips were now compressed into a thin, straight line.

"What's that?" came a hoarse, shaken whisper out of the blackness
beyond.

"What's _what_?" demanded another voice--the whisper this time sharp and
caustic. "I didn't hear anything!"

"Neither did I," admitted the first speaker. "It wasn't that--it was
like a draft of air--as though the door or a window had been opened."

"Forget it!" observed the second voice contemptuously. "Cut out the
jumps--we've got to get through here before Sonnino gets back. You'd
make a wooden Indian nervous!"

There was silence for an instant, then a curious gnawing sound
punctuated with quick, low, metallic rasps as of a ratchet at work--and
upon Jimmie Dale for a moment came stunned dismay. Time, the one factor
upon which he had depended, was lost to him; Clarie Archman and
Gentleman Laroque were already at work in there in that room beyond. He
stood motionless, his brain whirling; and then slowly, without a sound,
an inch at a time, he began to close the door behind him. He could see
nothing; but the door connecting the two rooms was obviously open--the
distinctness with which the whispering voices had reached him was proof
of that. They were working, too, without light, or he would have got a
warning gleam when he had looked through the window. And now--what now?
The picklock was shifted to his left hand, as he drew his automatic from
his pocket. There was only one answer to the question--to play the game
out to the end, whatever that end might be!

Beneath the mask his face drew into chiselled lines, as the picklock
silently locked the door. There was one exit from that inner room, and
only _one_--through the room in which he stood. The Tocsin had drawn an
accurate word-plan of the crude, shack-like place, and now in his mind
he reconstructed it here in the darkness. The doorway into a small hall
that led to the stairs adjoined the doorway of that inner room where
the two were now at work--and in that room were no windows, it was a
sort of blind cubby-hole where Niccolo Sonnino transacted his most
private business.

Jimmie Dale crept forward up the room. There was no answering creak of
board or flooring, no sound save that gnawing sound, and the rasping
click of the ratchet. His place of vantage was against the wall between
the two doors--there, be could both command the exit from, and see into,
the inner room, while the doorway into the hall provided him with a
means of retreat should the necessity arise. And then, suddenly,
halfway up the room, he dropped down behind what was evidently a
jeweller's workbench. A whisper, obviously Laroque's this time, came
once more from the inner room.

"Shoot the flash again!" And then, savagely: "Curse it, not on the
_ceiling_! Can't you hold it steady! What the devil is the matter
with you!"

There was no answer. A dull glimmer of light filtered through the
doorway, but from the position in which he lay Jimmie Dale could
distinguish nothing in the inner room itself.

"All right! That'll do!" Laroque growled presently.

The light went out. Jimmie Dale crept forward again. And now he gained
the rear wall of the room, and crouched down close against it between
the two doorways.

Came the sound of breathing now, heavy, as from sustained exertion,
making almost an undertone of the steady _click-click-click_ of the
ratchet, and the sullen gnaw of the bit. The minutes passed. The
flashlight went on again--and Jimmie Dale strained forward. Two dark
forms, backs to him, were outlined against the face of the safe which
was at the far side of the room, a nickel dial glistened in the white
ray--he could make out nothing else.

Then darkness again. And again, after a time, the flashlight. Ten,
fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes dragged by. Jimmie Dale might have been
a shadow moving against the wall for all the sound he made as he changed
his cramped position; but, just below the mask, his lips were pressed
fiercely together. Would Gentleman Laroque never get through! Sonnino
was not only likely to return in a very few minutes now, but was almost
certain to do so. Under his breath Jimmie Dale cursed the gangster's
bungling methods--and not for their crudity alone. His first impulse
had been to surprise the two, hold them up at the revolver point, but
the result of such an act would have been abortive, for the disfigured
safe would stand a mute, incontrovertible witness to the fact that an
_attempt_ to force it had been made--and, whether it was actual robbery
or attempted robbery that was proved against the son, it in no way
deflected the blow aimed at David Archman. And, besides, there was the
letter! If he, Jimmie Dale, had been in time even to have prevented
Gentleman Laroque from sinking a bit into the safe, the letter would
have counted not at all--but now it counted to the extent that it
literally meant life and death. Who had it? Not Clarie Archman--that was
certain. And the Tocsin had not said--obviously because she, too, had
been in the dark in that respect. Therefore he could only wait, watch
and follow every move of the game throughout the rest of the night, if
necessary! It was the only course open to him; the letter, not the
robbery, was paramount now.

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