The Intelligence Officer - "On the Heels of De Wet"

Alexandre Dumas - "Chicot the Jester"

Florence A. Sitwell - "Daybreak"

Virginia Bennett - "The Pigeon Tale"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale

F >> Frank L. Packard >> The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale




A moment more, and Jimmie Dale, his mask in his pocket, had emerged from
the lane, and was walking nonchalantly along to the street corner;
another, and he had boarded a street car--but under Jimmie Dale's coat
was a most suspicious bulge. Conscious of this, he left the street car a
few blocks farther along, when he was far enough away to be certain that
he would have eluded all pursuit--and walked the rest of the distance to
Riverside Drive. If he had escaped unscathed, the package of banknotes
had not--it was his coat that shielded them from view, not the wrappers,
for the wrappers had been torn almost entirely away in his hasty exit
over the fence.

He reached his home, and mounted the steps cautiously. There was Jason
to consider--Jason with his lovable pernicious habit of sitting up for
his master. Jason must not see those banknotes, that was obvious, and if
Jason--yes!--Jimmie Dale was peering now through the monogrammed lace
that covered the plate glass doors in the vestibule--yes, Jason was
still sitting up. And then Jimmie Dale smiled that strange whimsical
smile of his. Jason was still sitting up--asleep in the hall chair.

Softly, without a sound, Jimmie Dale opened the front door, entered,
passed the old man, and went up the stairs. In his dressing room, he hid
away the package that tomorrow, or at the first opportunity, would
enrich some deserving charity, and, as silently as he had come up the
stairs, he descended them again, passed by the old man again, and went
out to the street once more. There was just one reason why Jason, tired
out and asleep, sat there--only one--because Jason, old Jason,
faithful, big-hearted Jason, loved his Master Jim.

Into Jimmie Dale's eyes there came a mist. Perhaps that was why, because
he could not see clearly, that he stumbled on his way up the steps
again; perhaps that was why he made so much noise that it was Jason who
opened the door and held out his hands for Jimmie Dale's coat and hat.

"What!" said Jimmie Dale severely. "Sitting up again, Jason? Jason, go
to bed at once!"

"Yes, sir," said Jason. "Thank you, sir. Thank you, Master Jim,
sir--I will."




CHAPTER XVI


ONE CHANCE IN TEN

It was three nights later. Old Jason had placed a tray with
after-dinner coffee and a liqueur set on the table at Jimmie Dale's
elbow--that was fully an hour ago, and both coffee and liqueur were
untouched. Things were not going well. Apart entirely from all lack of
success where the Tocsin was concerned, things were not going well. The
fate of Frenchy Virat, the fate of the Wolf, and, added to this, the
Gray Seal's intervention in the plans and purposes of one Gentleman
Laroque and certain gentlemen still higher up than Laroque, had not
passed unmarked or unnoticed in the underworld. And now in the
underworld a strange, ominous and far-reaching disquiet reigned. It was
an underworld rampant with suspicion, mad with fury, more dangerous
than it had ever been before.

Jimmie Dale's hand reached abstractedly into the pocket of his dinner
jacket for his cigarette case. He lighted a cigarette, leaned back once
more in the big, leather-upholstered lounging chair, and his eyes, half
closed, strayed introspectively around the luxuriously appointed room,
his own particular den in his Riverside Drive residence. Once, a very
long while ago, years ago, so long ago now that it seemed as though it
must have been in some strange previous incarnation, back in those days
when the Tocsin had first come into his life, and when he had known her
only as the author of those mysterious letters, those "calls to arms"
to the Gray Seal, she had written: "Things are a little too warm, aren't
they, Jimmie? Let's let them cool for a year."

A blue thread curled lazily upward from the tip of the cigarette. Jimmie
Dale's eyes fastened mechanically on the twisting, wavering spiral,
followed it mechanically as it rose and spread out into filmy,
undulating, fantastic shapes--and the strong, square jaw set suddenly
hard. It was not so very strange that those words should have come back
to him to-night! Things were "warm" now--and he could not let them
"cool" for a year!

"Warm!" He smiled a little mirthlessly. The comparison was very slight!
Then, at the beginning, at the outset of the Gray Seal's career, the
police, it was true, had shown a certain unpleasant anxiety for a closer
acquaintanceship, but that was about all. To-day, lashed on and mocked
by a virulent press, goaded to madness by their own past failures to
"get" the Gray Seal, to whose door they laid a hundred crimes and for
whom the bars of a death cell in Sing Sing was the goal if they could
but catch their prey, the police, to a man, were waging a ceaseless and
relentless war against him; and to-day, joining hands with the police,
the underworld in all its thousand ramifications, prompted by fear, by
suspicion of one another, reached out to trap him, and to deal out to
him a much more speedy, but none the less certain, fate than that
prescribed by the statutes of the law!

He shook his head. It could not go on--indefinitely. The role was too
hard to play; the dual life, in a sort of grim, ironical self-mockery,
brought even in its own successful interpretation added dangers and
perils with each succeeding day. As it had been with Larry the Bat, the
more he now lived Smarlinghue the more it became difficult to slough
off Smarlinghue and live as Jimmie Dale; the more Smarlinghue became
trusted and accepted in the inner circles of the underworld, the more he
became a figure in those sordid surroundings, and the more dangerous it
became to "disappear" at will without exciting suspicion, where
suspicion, as it was, was already spread into every nook and corner of
the Bad Lands, where each rubbed shoulders with his fellow in the
lurking dread that the other was--the Gray Seal!

The police were no mean antagonists, he made no mistake on that score;
but the peril that was the graver menace of the two, and the greater to
be feared, was--the underworld. And here in the underworld in the last
few days, here where on every twisted, vicious lip was the whisper,
"Death to the Gray Seal," there had come even another menace. He could
not define it, it was intuition perhaps--but intuition had never failed
him yet. It was an undercurrent of which he had gradually become
conscious, the sense of some unseen, guiding power, that moved and
swayed and controlled, and was present, dominant, in every den and dive
in crimeland. There had been many gang leaders and heads of little
coteries of crime, cunning, crafty in their way, and all of them
unscrupulous, like the Wolf, for instance, who had sworn openly and
boastingly through the Bad Lands, and had been believed for a season,
that they would bring the Gray Seal to a last accounting--but it was
more than this now. There was a craftier brain and a stronger hand at
work than the Wolf's had ever been! Who was it? He shook his head. He
did not know. He had gone far into the innermost circles of the
underworld--and he did not know. He sensed a power there; and in a dozen
different, intangible ways, still an intuition more than anything else,
he had sensed this "some one," this power, creeping, fumbling, feeling
its implacable way through the dark, as it were, toward _him_.

Yes, it was getting "warm"--perilously warm! And inevitably there must
come an end--some day. The warning stared him in the face. But he could
not stop, could not heed the warning, could not let things "cool" now
for a year, and stand aside until the storm should have subsided! Where
was the Tocsin? If his peril was great--what was hers!

He surged suddenly upward from his chair, his hands clenched until the
knuckles stood out like ivory knobs. The Tocsin! The woman he
loved--where was she? Was she safe _to-night?_ Where was she? He could
not stop until that question had been answered, be the consequences what
they might! Warnings, the realisation of peril--he laughed shortly, in
grim bitterness--counted little in the balance after all, did they not!
Where was the Tocsin?

The telephone rang. Jimmie Dale stared at the instrument for a moment,
as though it were some singular and uninvited intruder who had broken in
without warrant upon his train of thought; and then, leaning forward
over the table, he lifted the receiver from the hook.

"Yes? Hello! Yes?" inquired Jimmie Dale. "What is it?"

A man's voice, hurried, and seemingly somewhat agitated, answered him.

"I would like to speak to Mr. Dale--to Mr. Dale in person."

"This is Mr. Dale speaking," said Jimmie Dale a little brusquely.
"What is it?"

"Oh, is that you, Mr. Dale?" The voice had quickened perceptibly. "I
didn't recognise your voice--but then I haven't heard it for a long
while, have I? This is Forrester. Are--are you very busy to-night,
Mr. Dale?"

"Oh, hello, Forrester!" Jimmie Dale's voice had grown more affable.
"Busy? Well, I don't know. It depends on what you mean by busy."

"An hour or two," the other suggested--the tinge of anxiety in his tones
growing more pronounced. "The time to run out here in your car. I
haven't any right to ask it, I know, but the truth is I--I want to talk
to some one pretty badly, and I need some financial help, and--and I
thought of you. I--I'm afraid there's a mess here. The bank examiners
landed in suddenly late this afternoon."

"The--_what_?" demanded Jimmie Dale sharply.

"The bank examiners--I--I can't talk over the 'phone. Only, for God's
sake, come--will you? I'll be in my rooms--you know where they are,
don't you--on the cottier over--"

"Yes, I know," Jimmie Dale broke in tersely; then, quietly: "All right,
Forrester, I'll come."

"Thank God!" came Forrester's voice--and disconnected abruptly.

Jimmie Dale replaced the receiver on the hook, stared at the instrument
again in a perplexed way; then, called the garage on the private house
wire. There was no answer. He walked quickly then across the room and
pushed an electric button.

"Jason," he said a moment later, as the old butler appeared on the
threshold in answer to the summons, "Benson doesn't answer in the
garage. I presume he is downstairs. I wish you would ask him to bring
the touring car around at once. And you might have a light overcoat
ready for me--Jason."

"Yes, sir," said the old man. "Yes, Master Jim, sir, at once." His eyes
sought Jimmie Dale's, and dropped--but into them had come, not the
questioning of familiarity, but the quick, anxious questioning inspired
by the affection that had grown up between them from the days when, as
the old man was so fond of saying, he had dandled his Master Jim upon
his knee. "Yes, sir, Master Jim, at once, sir," Jason repeated--but he
still hesitated upon the threshold.

And then Jimmie Dale shook his head whimsically--and smiled.

"No--not to-night, Jason," he said reassuringly. "It's quite all right,
Jason--there's no letter to-night."

The old man's face cleared instantly.

"Yes, sir; quite so, sir. Thank you, Master Jim," he said. "Shall I tell
Benson that he is to drive you, sir, or--"

"No; I'll drive myself, Jason," decided Jimmie Dale.

"Yes, sir--very good, sir"--the door closed on Jason.

Jimmie Dale turned back into the room, began to pace up and down its
length, and for a moment the reverie that the telephone had interrupted
was again dominant in his mind. Jason was afraid. Jason--even though he
knew so little of the truth--was afraid. Well, what then? He, Jimmie
Dale, was not blind himself! It had come almost to the point where his
back was against the wall at last; to the point where, unless he found
the Tocsin before many more days went by, it would be, as far as he was
concerned--too late!

And then he shrugged his shoulders suddenly--and his forehead knitted
into perplexed furrows. Forrester--and the telephone message! What did
it mean? There was an ugly sound to it, that reference to the bank
examiners and the need of financial assistance. And it was a little odd,
too, that Forrester should have telephoned him, Jimmie Dale, unless it
were accounted for by the fact that Forrester knew of no one else to
whom he might apply for perhaps a large sum, of ready money. True, he
knew Forrester quite well--not as an intimate friend--but only in a sort
of casual, off-hand kind of a way, as it were, and he had known him for
a good many years; but their acquaintanceship would not warrant the
other's action unless the man were in desperate straits. Forrester had
been a clerk in the city bank where his, Jimmie Dale's, father had
transacted his business, and it was there he had first met Forrester. He
had continued to meet Forrester there after his father had died; and
then Forrester had been offered and had accepted the cashiership of a
small local bank out near Bayside on Long Island. He had run into
Forrester there again once or twice on motor trips--and once, held up by
an accident to his car, he had dined with Forrester, and had spent an
hour or two in the other's rooms. That was about all.

Jimmie Dale's frown grew deeper. He liked Forrester The man was a
bachelor and of about his, Jimmie Dale's, own age, and had always
appeared to be a decent, clean-lived fellow, a man who worked hard, and
was apparently pushing his way, if not meteorically, at least steadily
up to the top, a man who was respected and well-thought of by
everybody--and yet just what did it mean? The more he thought of it, the
uglier it seemed to become.

He stepped suddenly toward the telephone--and as abruptly turned away
again. He remembered that Forrester did not have a telephone in his
rooms, for, on the night of the break-down, he, Jimmie Dale, had wanted
to telephone, and had been obliged to go outside to do so. Forrester,
obviously then, had done likewise to-night. Well, he should have
insisted on a fuller explanation in the first place if he had intended
to make that a contingent condition; as it was, it was too late now,
and he had promised to go.

The sound of a motor car on the driveway leading from the private garage
in the rear reached him. Benson was bringing out the car now. Jimmie
Dale, as he prepared to leave the room, glanced about him from force of
habit, and his eyes held for an instant on the portieres behind which,
in the little alcove, stood the squat, barrel-shaped safe. Was there
anything he would need to-night--that leather girdle, for instance, with
its circle of pockets containing its compact little burglar's kit? He
shook his head impatiently. He had already told Jason--if in other
words--that there was no "call to arms" to the Gray Seal to-night,
hadn't he? It was habit again that had brought the thought, that was
all! For the rest, in the last few days, since this new intuitive danger
from the underworld had come to him, an automatic had always reposed in
his pocket by day and under his pillow by night; and by way of defence,
too, though they might appear to be curious weapons of defence if one
did not stop to consider that the means of making a hurried exit through
a locked door might easily make the difference between life and death,
his pockets held a small, but very carefully selected collection of
little steel picklocks. He smiled somewhat amusedly at himself, as he
passed out of the room and descended the stairs to the hall below. The
contents of the safe could hardly have added anything that would be of
any service even in an emergency! His mental inventory of his pockets
had been incomplete--there was still the thin, metal insignia case, and
the black silk mask, both of which, like the automatic, were never now
out of his immediate possession.

He slipped into his coat as Jason held it out for him, accepted the
soft felt hat which Jason extended, and, with a nod to the old
butler, ran down the steps, dismissed Benson, who stood waiting, and
entered his car.

It was three-quarters of an hour later when Jimmie Dale drew up at the
curb on the main street of the little Long Island town that was his
destination.

"Pretty good run!" said Jimmie Dale to himself, as he glanced at the
car's clock under its little electric bulb. "Halfpast nine."

He descended from the car, and nodded as he surveyed his surroundings.
He had stopped neither in front of the bank, nor in front of Forrester's
rooms--it was habit again, perhaps, the caution prompted by Forrester's
statement relative to the bank examiners. If there was trouble, and the
obvious deduction indicated that there was, he, Jimmie Dale, had no
desire to figure in it in a public way. Again he nodded his head. Yes,
he quite had his bearings now. It was the usual main street of a small
town--fairly well lighted, stores and shops flanking the pavements on
either side, and of perhaps a distance equivalent to some seven or eight
city blocks in length. Two blocks further up, on the same side of the
street as that on which he was standing, was the bank--not a very
pretentious establishment, he remembered; its staff consisting of but
one or two apart from Forrester, as was not unusual with small local
banks, though this in no way indicated that the business done was not
profitable, or, comparatively, large. Jimmie Dale started forward along
the street. On the corner just ahead of him was a two-story building,
the second floor of which had been divided into rooms originally
designed to be used as offices, as, indeed, most of them were, but two
of these Forrester had fitted up as bachelor quarters.

Jimmie Dale turned the corner, walked down the side street to the
office entrance that led to the floor above, opened the door, and ran
lightly up the stairs. At the head of the stairs he paused to get his
bearings once more. Forrester's rooms were here directly at the head of
the stairs, but he had forgotten for the moment whether they were on
the right or left of the corridor; and the corridor being unlighted now
and without any sign of life left him still more undecided. It seemed,
though, if his recollection served him correctly, that the rooms had
been on the right. He moved in that direction, found the door, and
knocked; but, receiving no answer, crossed the hall again, and knocked
on the door on the left-hand side. There was no answer here, either. He
frowned a little impatiently, and returned once more to the right-hand
door. Forrester probably was up at the bank, and had not expected him
to make the run out from the city so quickly. He tried the door
tentatively, found it unlocked, opened it a little way, saw that the
room within was lighted--and suddenly, with a low, startled
exclamation, stepped swiftly forward over the threshold, and closed the
door behind him.

It was Forrester's room, this one here at the right of the corridor--his
recollection had not been at fault. It was Forrester's room, and
Forrester himself was there--on the floor--dead.

For a moment Jimmie Dale stood rigid and without movement, save that as
his eyes swept around the apartment his face grew hard and set, his lips
drooping in sharp, grim lines at the corners of his mouth.

"My God!" Jimmie Dale whispered.

There was a faint, almost imperceptible odour in the room, like the
smell of peach blossom--he noticed it now for the first time, as his
eyes fastened on a small, empty bottle that lay on the floor a few feet
away from the dead man's outstretched arm. Jimmie Dale stepped forward
abruptly now, and knelt down beside the man for a hurried; examination.
It was unnecessary--he knew that even before he performed the act.
Yes--the man was dead He reached out and picked up the bottle. The odour
was tell-tale evidence enough. The bottle had contained prussic, or
hydrocyanic acid, probably the moist deadly poison in existence, and the
swiftest in its action. He replaced the bottle on the spot where he had
found it, and stood up.

Again, Jimmie Dale's eyes swept his surroundings. The room in which he
stood was a sort of living room or den. There was a desk over by the far
wall, a couch near the door, and several comfortable lounging chairs.
Forrester lay with his head against the sharp edge of one of the legs of
the couch, as though he had rolled off and struck against it.

Opposite the desk, across the room, was the door leading into the
second room of the little apartment. Jimmie Dale moved toward this now,
and stepped across the threshold. The room itself was unlighted, but
there was light enough from the connecting doorway to enable him to see
fairly well. It was Forrester's bedroom, and in no way appeared to have
been disturbed. He remembered it quite well. There was a door here,
too, that gave on the hall. He circled around the bed and reached the
door. It was locked.

Jimmie Dale returned to the living room--and stood there in a sort of
grim immobility, looking down at the form on the floor. He was not
callous. Death, as often as he had seen it, and in its most tragic
phases, had not made him callous, and he had liked Forrester--but
suicide was not a man's way out, it was the way a coward took, and if it
brought pity, it was the pity that was blunted with the sterner, almost
contemptuous note of disapproval. What had happened since Forrester had
'phoned, that had driven the man to this extremity? When Forrester had
'phoned he had appeared to be agitated enough, but, at least, he had
seemed to have had hopes that the appeal he was then making might see
him through, and, as proof of that, there had been unmistakable relief
in the man's voice when he, Jimmie Dale, had agreed to the other's
request. And what had been the meaning of that "financial help"? Had,
for instance--for it was pitifully obvious that if the bank had been
looted an _innocent_ man would not commit suicide on that account--a
greater measure of the depredation been uncovered than had been counted
on, so much indeed that, say, the financial assistance Forrester had
intended to ask for had now increased to such proportions that he had
realised the futility of even a request; or, again, had it for some
reason, since he had telephoned, now become impossible to restore the
funds even if they were in his possession?

A sheet of note paper lying on the desk caught Jimmie Dale's eyes. He
stepped forward, picked it up--and his lips drew tight together, as he
read the two or three miserable lines that were scrawled upon it:

What's left is in the middle drawer of the desk. There's only one way out
now--I don't see any other way. I thought that I could get--but what does
that matter! God help me! I'm sorry.

FLEMING P. FORRESTER.

I'm sorry! It was a pitiful epitaph for a man's life! I'm sorry! Jimmie
Dale's face softened a little--the man was dead now. "I'm sorry....
Fleming P. Forrester"--he had seen that signature on bank paper a
hundred times in the old days; he had little thought ever to see it on a
document such as this!

He stared at the paper for a long time, and then, from the paper, his
eyes travelled over the desk, then shifted again to Forrester--and then,
for the second time, he knelt beside the other on the floor. For the
moment, what was referred to as "being all that was left" in the middle
drawer of the desk could wait. There was another matter now. He felt
hurriedly through Forrester's vest and coat pockets--and from one of the
pockets drew out a folded piece of paper. It was not what he was looking
for, but it was all that rewarded his search. He unfolded the paper. It
was dirty and crumpled, and the few lines written upon it were badly
penned and illiterate:

The ante's gone up--get me? Six thousand bucks. You come across with
that to-morrow morning by ten o'clock--or I'll spill the beans. And I
ain't got any more paper to write any more letters on either--savvy?
This is the last.

There was no signature. Jimmie Dale read it again--and abruptly put it
in his own pocket. Yes, he had liked Forrester--well enough for this
anyway! The man might have a mother perhaps--it would be bad enough in
any case. And those other things, the empty bottle, the sheet of note
paper with its scrawled confession--what about them? He returned with a
queer sort of hesitant indecision to the desk. He had no right of course
to touch them unless--

He shook his head sharply, as he pulled open the middle drawer of the
desk.

"Newspapers--publicity--rotten!" he muttered savagely. "One chance in
ten, and--ah!"

From the back of the drawer where it had been tucked in under a mass of
papers, he had extracted a little bundle of documents that were held
together by an elastic band. He snapped off the band, and ran through
the papers rapidly. For the most part they were bonds and stock
certificates indorsed by their owners, and evidently had been held by
the bank as collateral for loans.

And then suddenly Jimmie Dale straightened up, tense and alert. He had
no desire, very far from any desire to be caught here, or to figure
publicly in any way in the case. The street door had opened and closed
again. Footsteps, those of three men, his acute, trained hearing told
him, sounded on the stairs. Again there came that queer, hesitant
indecision as he stood there, while his eyes travelled in swift
succession from the bank's securities in his hand to the note on the
desk, to the empty bottle on the floor, to the white, upturned face of
the silent form huddled against the couch.

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