Basil King - "The Letter of the Contract"

Various - "Walnut Growing in Oregon"

Various - "Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883"

Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Fanshawe"

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




"Sure!" said Hoppy Meggs.

"Well, we'll beat it, then," snapped Hunchback Joe.

The room was in darkness again. Jimmie Dale crouched further back along
the wall. The rear door opened, two shadows emerged, passed around the
corner of the tenement--and disappeared.

The minutes passed, five of them, and then Jimmie Dale, too, was making
his way softly along the areaway to the street--but in Jimmie Dale's
pockets were the short leaden blackjack, ugly for the stain on its
leathern covering, the packet of papers, and the roll of banknotes that
had been in Klanner's trunk. He gained the street, paused under the
nearest street lamp to consult his watch, and swung briskly along
again. It was a matter of only two blocks to Baldy Jack's, one of the
most infamous dance halls in the Bad Lands, but it was already ten
minutes to ten.

And now a curious metamorphosis came to Jimmie Dale's appearance. The
neat, well-fitting Fifth Avenue tweeds did not fit quite so
perfectly--the coat bunched a little at the shoulders, the trousers were
drawn a little higher until they lost their "set." His hat was pulled
still farther over his eyes, but at a more rakish angle, and his tie,
tucked into his shirt bosom just below the collar, exposed blatantly a
diamond shirt stud. But on Jimmie Dale's lips there was an ominous smile
not wholly in keeping with the somewhat jaunty swagger he had assumed,
and the lines at the corners of his mouth were drawn down hard and
sharp. It was miserable work, the work of a hound and cur! Who, better
than the _janitor_ of the bank, would have had the opportunity to carry
on that work there! And so they had selected Klanner as their victim.
But Klanner, if allowed to talk, might be able to defend
himself--therefore Klanner would not be allowed to talk. There was only
one way to prevent that effectively--by killing Klanner. But, again,
Klanner's death must not appear in any way to be consequent to the
murder at the bank--therefore it was to bear every evidence of having
been purely inadvertent, and, in a way, an accident. Yes, it was crafty
enough, hideous enough to be fully worthy even of the fiendish brain
that had planned it! Kid Greer, having probably struck up an
acquaintance with Klanner during the past few days, had inveigled
Klanner to-night into Baldy Jack's, ostensibly, no doubt, for an
innocent and casual glass of beer, and in a general row and melee in the
dance hall--not an uncommon occurrence in a place like Baldy
Jack's--Klanner would be shot and killed. The rest was obvious. The
man's effects would naturally be examined, and the evidence of his
"guilt" found in his trunk. It was an open and shut game against a dead
man! Even his previous good record would smash on the rock of a presumed
double life. The fact that Klanner had voluntarily been in a place like
Baldy Jack's was damning in itself!

Jimmie Dale, approaching the garishly lighted exterior of the dance hall
now, lit a cigarette. The plan, if successful, placed the guilt without
question or cavil upon Klanner, but that was not all--strong as that
motive might be, Clarke had had still another in view, and one that
perhaps took precedence over the first. Hunchback Joe had defined it
clearly enough. The documents would have been valueless to Clarke,
either to sell, or to put to any use himself, if the plans and
arrangements they contained were subsequently altered or changed. But it
was obvious that a man in Klanner's station could have no _personal_
interest in them; it was obvious, as evidenced by the money, that he was
working for some one else, and therefore the documents appearing in his
trunk would logically appear to have been recovered _before_ he had been
able to hand them over to his principal, and _before_ any vital harm had
been done that would necessitate any change in the details they
contained.

Jimmie Dale pushed the door of the dance hall open, and stepped
nonchalantly inside. It was the usual scene, there was the usual
hilarious uproar, the usual close, almost fetid atmosphere that mingled
the odours of stale beer and tobacco. Baldy Jack's was always popular,
and the place, even for that early hour, was already doing a thriving
business. Jimmie Dale's eyes, from a dozen couples swirling in the
throes of the bunny-hug on the polished section of the floor in the
centre of the hall, strayed over the little tables that were ranged
three and four deep around the walls. At the upper end of the room a
man, fair-haired and neatly dressed, though his clothes were evidently
not those of one in over-affluent circumstances, sat alone at one of the
tables. It might, or might not, be Klanner. Jimmie Dale strolled forward
up the hall, and, as though deliberating over his selection of a seat,
paused by the table. The man looked up. There was a long, jagged scar on
the other's right cheek bone. It was Klanner. Jimmie Dale pulled out a
chair at a vacant table directly behind the other, and sat down. A
waiter, in beer-spotted apron and balancing a dripping tray, came for
his order.

"Suds!" said Jimmie Dale laconically.

Again Jimmie Dale's eyes made a circuit of the place, failed to identify
the person of one Kid Greer, and, giving up the attempt, rested
speculatively instead on Klanner's back. Yes, he could quite fully
understand why the Tocsin could not have warned Klanner to beware, for
instance, of Kid Greer. Such a warning, apart from keeping Hunchback Joe
from planting the evidence, would even have defeated its own end--for,
even to save Klanner, the game had to be played out as Hunchback Joe had
planned it. They meant to "get" Klanner, and if not here at Baldy
Jack's, then somewhere else. She _knew_ what they meant to do here--she
_might not_ know when, or how, or where they would make the attempt if
they had been forced to change their plans.

Jimmie Dale tossed a coin on the table, as the waiter set down a glass
of beer in front of him--and then, over the top of the glass, Jimmie
Dale resumed his scrutiny of the hall. Directly behind him was a back
entrance that opened on a lane at the rear of the building; and between
himself and the entrance was only one table, which was unoccupied.
Jimmie Dale, playing with his match box, as he lighted another
cigarette, dropped the box, stooped to pick it up--and drew his chair
unostentatiously nearer to Klanner.

It was ten o'clock now, time that--yes, the game was on--_now!_ A man,
that he recognised as one of the Mole's gunmen, had dropped into a seat
a couple of tables away from Klanner, where there was a clear space
between the two men. There was a sudden jostling among the dancers on
the floor--then an oath, rising high above the riot of talk and
laughter--a swirl of figures--a medley of shouts and women's screams,
drowning out the squeak of the musicians' violins and the thump of the
tinny piano.

Jimmie Dale's jaws locked hard together. There was a struggling,
Furious mob at the lower end of the hall--but his eyes now never left
the gunman two tables away. Klanner, in dazed amazement, had half
risen from his seat, as though uncertain what to do. The screams,
shouts, oaths and yells grew louder--came the roar of a revolver
shot--another--pandemonium was reigning now. It seemed an hour, a great
period of time since the first shout had rung through the hall--it had
been but a matter of seconds. Jimmie Dale was crouched a little forward
in his chair now, tense, motionless. What was holding Hoppy Meggs! This
was Hoppy Meggs' cue, wasn't it?--those shots there, aimed at the floor,
had only been to create the panic--there was to be _another_ shot that--

The hall was in sudden darkness. With a spring, quick on the instant,
Jimmie Dale was upon Klanner's back, hurling the man to the floor. The
tongue-flame of a revolver split the black over his head; there was the
deafening roar of a revolver shot almost in his ears that blotted out
for an instant all other sounds--and then came the shouts and cries
again in an access of terror and now the rush of feet--a blind stampede
in the darkness for the exits. Another shot from the gunman, as though
to make his work doubly sure, followed the first--but now some of the
fear-stricken crowd had come between them, plunging, falling, tripping
over tables and chairs, seeking the rear exit.

"Quick!" Jimmie Dale breathed in Klanner's ear. He was half lifting,
half dragging the man along. "Quick--get your feet, man!"

There was a surging mob around them now, pushing, fighting madly to
reach the door; and, as Klanner regained his feet, they were both swept
forward, and, lunging through the door, were precipitated out into the
lane. And here, wary of a riot call that had probably already been rung
in by the patrolman on the beat, the crowd was taking to its heels and
dispersing in both directions along the lane.

"Quick!" said Jimmie Dale again--and, with his hand on Klanner's arm,
broke into a run.

Those running in the same direction turned off from the lane at the
first cross street; but Jimmie Dale held to the lane, and it was three
blocks away from Baldy Jack's before he stopped.

Klanner was panting from his exertions.

"My God--what's it mean!" he gasped. "I--I thought I saw a revolver in
that man's hand, the fellow next to me, just as the lights went out."

"You probably did," said Jimmie Dale grimly.

"Well----what's it mean?" repeated Klanner heavily.

It was a moment before Jimmie Dale answered. For the man's own sake, the
less that Klanner knew the better, probably--and yet the man must be
kept out of harm's way for the rest of the night. Having failed at Baldy
Jack's, it was certain, since Clarke's whole plan hinged on Klanner's
death, that they would try again. After to-night--if all went well--it
did not matter, for Klanner then would be no longer a factor to Clarke
or Hunchback Joe!

"It means," said Jimmie Dale gravely, "that there's been some sort of a
gangster's fight pulled off, and that probably there's been dirty
work--murder--in there. The police will go the limit to round up
everybody they can find who was in Baldy Jack's. There's only one thing
to do--keep your mouth shut and lie low to-night. You can't take any
chances of getting into this--you look like a man who's got a decent
job he doesn't want to lose, and you don't look like a man who is
entitled to be saddled with a reputation for hanging around that sort of
place. Do you live near here?"

"Yes," said Klanner, a little dully.

"Well then," said Jimmie Dale quietly, "get out of this neighbourhood
for the night. Don't risk recognition while the chase is hot. Go uptown
somewhere to any hotel you like, and _stay_ there in your room. You can
go to work just as well from there in the morning. Got any money?"

"Yes," said Klanner slowly. "Yes, I got some money--and I guess you're
right. Say, who are you anyway? You seem to have a line on this sort of
thing, and I guess I owe you a whole skin. If you hadn't--"

"I'm a man in a hurry," said Jimmie Dale whimsically--and then the
grim note crept back into his voice. "I am giving you a straight tip.
Take it--and take that street car that's coming along there." He held
out his hand.

"Sure!" said Klanner. "And I--"

"Good-night," said Jimmie Dale, and started abruptly across the street,
entering the lane on the other side again--but here, in the shadows, he
paused for a moment, watching until Klanner boarded the uptown car.




CHAPTER XXIV


AT FIVE MINUTES OF TWELVE

Twenty minutes later, well along the East River front, in an unsavoury
and deserted neighbourhood, Jimmie Dale was crouched before the door of
a small building that seemed built half on the shore edge, and half on
an old and run-down pier that extended out into the water. The building
itself was little more than a storage shed, and originally had probably
laid claims to nothing more pretentious--to-day it served as warehouse
and office for Hunchback Joe's "business," and, above, for Hunchback
Joe's living quarters. Jimmie Dale glanced around him sharply--not for
the first time. There were no other buildings in his immediate vicinity,
and such as could be seen loomed up only as black, shadowy, distant
shapes--warehouses and small factories, for the most part, and empty and
deserted now at night. It was intensely black--only a twinkling light
here and there from a passing craft on the river, and the glow from
thousands of street lamps that, like some strange aerial illumination,
hovered over the opposite shore. The shed itself, windowless at least in
front, was as silent, as deserted, and as black as all around it.

Jimmie Dale's hand stole into his pocket, produced a black silk mask,
adjusted the mask over his face--and then the deft, slim fingers were at
work with a little steel instrument on the door lock. A moment more, and
the door swung silently inward, slowly, inch by inch. He listened
intently. There was no sound. He stepped inside, and silently closed
and locked the door behind If Hunchback Joe had not returned yet, it was
necessary that Hunchback Joe should find the door as he had left
it--locked! Again Jimmie Dale listened--and then the ray of his
flashlight circled the place. A miscellany of ship's junk was piled
without any attempt at order all over the place; a board partition with
two small windows, one on each side of the door, ran from side to side
of the shed about a third of the way up its length; and in the sides of
the shed itself were also two small, narrow windows--too small and too
narrow, Jimmie Dale noted grimly, for the passage of a man's body.

He moved forward cautiously, though he was almost certain that he was
ahead of Hunchback Joe. He, Jimmie Dale, had come without an instant's
loss of time from Baldy Jack's, and it was more than an even chance that
Hunchback Joe would have remained somewhere in the neighbourhood until
the affair was over. It would take some little time--not until after the
police had restored order--to discover that the attempt upon Klanner had
been abortive, that Klanner's body was _not_ lying there dead on the
floor. But after that--Jimmie Dale opened the door of the partition
stealthily, slipped through, and, as his flashlight swept around again,
nodded his head sharply--yes, he had thought so!--there was a means of
communication here--a telephone. Well then, after that, Hunchback Joe
would set every crook and tool over whom he had any control at work to
find Klanner. But that meant different men at work in many different
directions, and there must therefore be some central spot where
Hunchback Joe could be instantly reached and reports made to him should
Klanner be found--and what better place, what more likely place than
here in the security of his own lair! Yes, Hunchback Joe, since he,
Jimmie Dale, was now satisfied that the other had not yet returned,
would be back here, and, in all probability, long before midnight.
Midnight! Why had the Tocsin set midnight, waited for midnight as the
hour for the Secret Service raid? Did she have a hidden purpose in that?
Was it possible she knew that some one beside Hunchback Joe would also
be here at that hour--that Clarke might be here, too! Well, why not!
There might well be need for a conference between Clarke and his unholy
chief of staff! There might--Jimmie Dale frowned savagely. His mind was
running riot! He had not come here to speculate on possibilities; for,
whatever might happen, there was definite and instant work to do.

The white ray of the flashlight played steadily now around him. The
place evidently served as the office; it was partitioned off again in
exactly the same manner from the rear of the shed, making an oblong
enclosure the width of the shed one way, and a good fifteen feet the
other. It was electric-lighted, and contained a battered table in lieu
of desk, upon which stood the telephone; there were several chairs, and
a safe, whose scratched, marred, and apparently ramshackle exterior did
not disguise from Jimmie Dale the fact that it was of the finest and
most modern make.

A rough, wooden stairway led above. Jimmie Dale mounted this, found that
it gave on a crudely furnished, attic-like bedroom, and then descending
again, he opened the rear door of the partition, and flashed his light
around the back of the shed. There were a few packing cases here--that
was all. The shed was evidently built out to the extreme end of the
pier, judging from its depth; and there had been side doors, but these
were boarded up and bore evidence of having been long out of use--and
there were no windows.

Jimmie Dale returned now to the front of the shed.

"Under the sail-cloth in left corner," she had written. Yes, here it
was! He stooped down, a twisted smile on his lips, and, taking from his
pocket the packet of papers and the blackjack, tucked them under several
folds of the cloth. "Unto Caesar!" she had said. Well, he had rendered
back to "Caesar" the things that were "Caesar's." He straightened up.
The Secret Service men would know where to look--she would have seen to
that! "Unto Caesar!" The smile died away, and an angry red tinged Jimmie
Dale's cheeks--he was picturing again that scene in Klanner's room, the
bestial deviltry of that deformed and hideous creature who, to cover up
his own guilt, was railroading an innocent man to death. "Unto
Caesar!"--yes, there was grim justice here--but that was not enough!
Justice might and _would_ have its turn, but before then there was
another sort of justice, too!

He went back into the office, and sat down in a chair beside the table
where he could command the door. He laid his flashlight, the ray on,
upon the table, took from his pocket the metal insignia case, lifted out
a seal, dropped it by means of the tweezers on his handkerchief, folded
the handkerchief carefully, and replaced the insignia case and
handkerchief in his pocket; then, switching off the flashlight, he
restored that, too, to his pocket.

It was dark now again--and silent. There was no sound, save the gentle
lap of water against the pier, and the distant, muffled murmur of
traffic from one of the great bridges that spanned the river. Jimmie
Dale's automatic was in his hand. There was one man who stood between
the woman whom he loved and her happiness, one man, who had driven her
from her home and by every foul art and craft had sought to take her
life, one man, one man only--Marre, alias Clarke. And once Clarke were
run to earth, she was free forever--no one else had any incentive in
hounding her to her death.

Well, there was one man who knew where Marre was--Hunchback Joe. And,
come what might, Hunchback Joe would tell him, Jimmie Dale, to-night
where Marre was! He was not so sure as the Tocsin that Hunchback Joe
would talk to the police; he was sure that Hunchback Joe would talk--_to
the Gray Seal_. That was all. That was what he was waiting for here now
in the darkness before the police came--for Hunchback Joe.

Time passed--a half hour--an hour. It was getting perilously close to
the time when the Secret Service men would be pounding at the door
out there, and the margin of time left for that grim interview with
Hunchback Joe was narrowing rapidly; but there was a strange, calm,
cold patience possessing Jimmie Dale--the man would come, and come in
time--he knew that, knew it as he knew that he sat there and lived
and breathed.

The silence was oppressive, heavy; it seemed to palpitate in rhythm with
the lap of the water against the pier. The minutes dragged by, another
five of them--and then suddenly Jimmie Dale sat rigidly forward in his
chair. The front door had not been unlocked or opened, but there was the
sound of a footstep now--from the rear section of the shed, where there
had appeared to be no entrance! The footstep came nearer--the door of
the partition opened--there was the click of the electric-light
switch--the light came on--and then a low, savage, startled oath came
from the doorway.

Jimmie Dale did not move--his automatic was covering the misshapen,
toad-like figure of Hunchback Joe, as the other stood just inside the
room. For a moment neither spoke--then Hunchback Joe laughed suddenly in
cool contempt.

"What's the game?" he demanded. "You don't need any mask on here--I deal
with your kind every day. What do you want?"

Jimmie Dale rose to his feet.

"This--to begin with!" he said--and, crossing the room, felt through the
other's pockets, and possessed himself of the man's revolver. "Now go
over there, and sit down at that table!"

Hunchback Joe laughed contemptuously again, as he obeyed; but there was
a hint of deadly menace in his voice as he spoke.

"Go to it--while you can!" he snarled. "You've got the drop on me. Well,
what do you want?"

Jimmie Dale followed, and faced the other across the table. Hunchback
Joe's eyes, with that curious, unpleasant trick of which the man seemed
possessed, were blinking ceaselessly.

"I want to give this back to you," said Jimmie Dale quietly--and
flung the roll of bills that he had taken from Klanner's trunk down
upon the table.

Hunchback Joe's eyes ceased to blink.

"Why, thanks!" grinned Hunchback Joe. "You're a queer sort of a
night marauder, you are! Sure this is for me, and that you aren't
making a mistake?"

"Quite sure," said Jimmie Dale, still quietly. "It's yours. It's the
money you planted in Klanner's trunk a couple of hours ago."

"I never heard of Klanner," said Hunchback Joe.

"It's simply the evidence that that isn't all I found in the trunk,"
said Jimmie Dale. "There was a packet of papers, and the blood-stained
blackjack with which Jathan Lane was murdered in the bank this
afternoon."

"My God, the man's mad!" muttered Hunchback Joe under his breath. "I'm
up against a maniac!"

Jimmie Dale had taken his handkerchief from his pocket, and, carrying it
to his mouth, had moistened the adhesive side of the little seal. His
voice rasped, as his hand went down upon the table.

"You blot on God's earth!" he said hoarsely. "That's enough of that!
The buttons are off the foils to-night, Hunchback Joe!"

For the second time, Hunchback Joe's eyes had ceased to blink. He was
staring at the gray seal on the table top in front of him, and now in
spite of his effort to maintain nonchalance, a whiteness had come
into his face.

"You!" he shrank back a little in his chair. "The Gray Seal!"

Jimmie Dale's lips were thin and drawn tight together. He made no
answer.

It was Hunchback Joe who broke the silence.

"What's your price?" he asked thickly. "I suppose you've got
those--those other things, or at least you know where they are."

"Yes," said Jimmie Dale grimly, "I know where they are."

"Well"--Hunchback Joe hesitated, fumbling for his words--"we're both
tarred with the same brush, only you're worse than I am. I've got to pay
your price, of course. Make it reasonable. I haven't got all the money
in the world. Tell me where those things are, and name your figures."

"My figure"--Jimmie Dale was clipping off his words--"is a little
information. A trade, Hunchback Joe--mine for yours. I want to know
where Peter Marre, alias Clarke, is?"

Hunchback Joe drew back from the table with a jerk. The whiteness in his
face had changed to an unhealthy, leaden gray. He shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. "That's straight--I've heard of Marre, of
course, everybody has, he's a lawyer; but I never heard of Clarke,
and that's--"

"A lie!" Jimmie Dale cut in, an ugly calm in his voice "You--"

But Jimmie Dale, too, was interrupted. The telephone on the table was
ringing. His automatic covering Hunchback Joe, he pulled the instrument
toward him, and lifted the receiver from the hook.

"Hello!" he said gruffly. "What's wanted?"

A voice responded in feverish excitement:

"Say, dat youse, Joe? Dis is Hoppy Meggs. Say, de fly cops has got
tipped off; dey're on de way down to yer place now. Youse want to beat
it on de jump!"

"Wait a minute!" said Jimmie Dale. He passed the instrument over to
Hunchback Joe. "It's for you," he said, with a queer smile.

Hunchback Joe put the receiver to his ear--and a moment later, without a
word in reply, returned it to the hook. But he had risen from his seat,
and, swaying on his feet, was gripping at the table edge for support.

"I could have told you that," said Jimmie Dale evenly; "but you've got
it now from a source that you won't question. I told you the buttons
were off the foils tonight, but you don't seem to realise it yet. Three
nights ago you laid a trap for me--_and the Pippin died_. Do you
understand what I mean now by naked foils? You've one chance for
life--and that's to answer my question. But I'll play fair with you, and
tell you that I'm going to see that the police get you even if you do
answer. Those documents and that blackjack are here in this place, and
the Secret Service men know where to find them." Jimmie Dale's watch was
in his hand. "It's five minutes to twelve. They'll be here at midnight.
I've got to make my getaway before they come. I need two minutes for
that, including locking you in so that _you_ can't get away. That leaves
you three minutes to make up your mind. If you answer, you can have
whatever chance your lawyers can get you; if you refuse, you and I
settle our score before I leave. It's three minutes against a possible
commutation of sentence to life imprisonment. _Where is Marre?_"

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