John Kendrick Bangs - "R. Holmes & Co."

Anonymous - "The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I"

Hesba Stretton - "The Christmas Child"

Clemens Brentano - "Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia"

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




Jimmie Dale took out a make-up box from the opening in the wall, and,
carrying it with him to the table, propped up a small mirror against a
collection of Smarlinghue's paint tubes. His fingers were working
swiftly now with sure, deft touches, supplying to his face, his neck,
his hands and wrists, not the unhealthy pallor of Smarlinghue, but the
grimy, unwashed, dirty appearance of Larry the Bat. It was the toss of a
coin, heads or tails, whether the Magpie was at the bottom of this or
not. The Magpie knew that Silver Mag had been in the affair that night
when Larry the Bat was discovered to be the Gray Seal; the Magpie knew
that Silver Mag was a pal of Larry the Bat, and, therefore, equally with
the Gray Seal, the underworld had passed sentence of death upon her--but
did the Magpie know that Silver Mag was Marie LaSalle, any more than he
knew that Larry the Bat was Jimmie Dale? That was the question--and its
answer would be wrung from the Magpie's lips to-night!

A piece of wax was inserted in each nostril, and behind the lobes of his
ears, and under his lip. Jimmie Dale stared into the mirror--the
vicious, dissolute face of Larry the Bat leered back at him. And then,
returning abruptly to the loosened section of the base-board, he
restored the make-up box to its hiding place. He reached inside again,
and procured a pistol and flashlight, which he stowed away in his
pockets; there would be no need to-night for that belt with its compact
little kit of burglar's tools; no need for that thin metal box with the
gray-coloured, adhesive paper seals, the insignia of the Gray Seal, for
to-night the Gray Seal would appear in _person_. No--wait! That
collection of little steel picklocks--and a jimmy! He would need those.
He felt for them in one of the pockets of the leather girdle,
transferred them to the pocket of his ragged trousers, and slipped the
base-board back into place.

And now he stepped to the gas-jet, and turned out the light. Then the
roller shade was raised, the French window silently opened, silently
closed--and Larry the Bat, hugging close against the wall of the
building, crept to the fence, and, lifting aside a loose board, passed
out into the lane, and from the lane to an empty and drearily-lighted
cross street.

There was no "sanctuary" now. Who in the underworld would fail to
recognise Larry the Bat! He was out in the open, on the fringes of the
Bad Lands, where recognition was to be feared from every passer-by, and
where, if caught, he would do well and wisely to use his own automatic
upon himself! And he must go deeper still, into the heart of gangland,
to reach that room in the basement beneath Poker Joe's gambling hell
where the Magpie lived--or, rather, burrowed himself away in those hours
that were miserly devoted to sleep.

But Jimmie Dale knew his East Side as no other man in New York knew it;
knew it as a man whose life again and again had depended solely upon
that knowledge. By lane and alley, by unfrequented streets, now running,
now crouched motionless in some dark corner waiting for footsteps to die
away along the pavement before he darted across the street in front of
him, Jimmie Dale threaded his way through the East Side, as through the
twistings and turning of some maze, puzzling, grotesque and intricate,
but with whose secrets notwithstanding he was intimately familiar.

When he paused at last, it was in a backyard, which he had entered by
the simple expedient of climbing the fence from the lane behind. A low
building loomed up before him, whose windows at first glance were dark,
but through whose carefully closed blinds and tightly drawn shutters
might still be remarked, if one were sufficiently inquisitive, the
faint, suffused glow of lights from within.

Jimmie Dale scarcely glanced at the windows. Poker Joe's at this
hour--it must be close to eleven o'clock, he calculated--would be just
about settling into its night's swing. He was quite well aware both that
the place was lighted and that there were by now perhaps a score of
gangland's elite already at the tables; and that the blinds and shades
were closed and drawn interested him only in that it safeguarded him
_without_ from being seen by any one from _within_!

But there was another window upon which Jimmie Dale now centred his
entire attention--a narrow, oblong window, cellar-like, just on a level
with the ground--and here there was neither a light nor a drawn shade.
He stole across the yard, and, five yards from the wall of the house,
dropped down on his hands and knees, and crawled silently forward.
Keeping a little to one side, he reached the window, and lay there
listening intently. There was no sound, save a low, almost inaudible
murmur of voices from the windows above him--nothing from the direction
of that dark, oblong window that he could reach out and touch now. The
Magpie was presumably not at home!

The long, slim, tapering fingers, whose nerves, tingling sensitively at
the tips, were as eyes to Jimmie Dale, those fingers that, to the Gray
Seal, were like some magical "open sesame" to the most intricate safes
and vaults, felt along the window sill, and, from the sill, made a
circuit of the sash. The window, he found, was hinged at one side and
opened inward; and now, under the pressure of his steel jimmy, inserted
between the ledge and the lower portion of the frame, it began to yield.

Lying there on the ground, Jimmie Dale, his head close to the opening,
listened with strained attention again. He had not made much noise,
scarcely any--not enough even to have aroused the Magpie if, say, by any
chance, the Magpie were within asleep. The sounds from the floor above
seemed to be louder now, to reach him more distinctly, but from the
basement room itself there was nothing, no sound even of breathing.

Satisfied that the room was unoccupied, Jimmie Dale pushed the window
wide open, and peered in. It was like looking into some dark cavernous
hole, and he could not distinguish a single object. Then his hand
slipped into his pocket for his flashlight, and the round, white ray
shot downward and around the place. The floor of the room was perhaps
five feet below the level of the window sill; to the left, against the
wall, was a bed; there was a chair, a table sadly in need of repair, a
few garments hanging from nails driven haphazardly into the plaster,
and, save for a dirty piece of carpet on the floor, nothing else. The
flashlight played slowly around the room. Opposite the window was the
door, and suspended from the centre of the ceiling was a single
incandescent lamp.

With a sort of grim nod of approval, Jimmie Dale snapped off his
flashlight, and, turning around, worked himself in through the
window feet first, and dropped silently to the floor. He had only to
wait now until the Magpie returned--whether it was a question of
hours or minutes.

Jimmie Dale made his way to the chair, and sat down--and again he
nodded his head grimly. It was very simple; he had only to wait, and
this place, this burrow of the Magpie's, could not have been improved
upon for his purpose. It was eminently suitable, so suitable that there
seemed something ironical in the fact that it should have been the
Magpie who had chosen it. One could commit _murder_ here, and none
would be the wiser--and none would be more keenly alive to that than
the Magpie himself! A threat from the Gray Seal in these surroundings
left nothing to be desired. They were making too much noise above to
hear anything in this room below the ground, and the little window
afforded an instant means of escape without the slightest danger of
discovery. Yes; the Magpie, not being a fool, would very thoroughly
appreciate all this.

Time passed. It was a nerve racking vigil that Jimmie Dale kept, sitting
there in the chair--waiting. It was so dark he could not have seen his
hand before his face. And it was silent, in spite of that queer
composite sound of voices, and shuffling feet, and the occasional squeak
of chair legs from above--a silence that seemed to belong to this
miserable hole alone, that seemed immune from all extraneous noises. And
after a time, in a curious way, the silence seemed to palpitate, to beat
upon the ear-drums, to grow almost uncanny.

His lips tightened a little, and he smiled commiseratingly at himself.
His nerves were getting a little too tautly strung, that was all; he was
listening too intently for that expected step upon the stair, for the
opening of that door he faced. And it was not like him to have an attack
of nerves--and especially in view of the fact that his plan, in the
simplicity of its execution did not even warrant anxiety for its
success. He had only to remain quiet until the Magpie entered and turned
on the light, then clap his automatic to the Magpie's head--the
psychology of fear would do the rest. And yet--what was it? As the
minutes dragged along, fight it as he would, a distinct depression, a
panicky sort of uneasiness, was settling down upon him. The darkness, in
a most unpleasant and disconcerting way, seemed to be full of eeriness,
of warnings.

For perhaps ten minutes he sat there in the chair, silent and
motionless, angry, struggling with himself--but his disquietude would
not down; rather, it but grew the stronger, until it took the form of
imagining that he was not _alone_ in the room. He scowled contemptuously
at himself. There was another psychology than that of fear--the
psychology of suggestion. That silence, palpitating in his ear-drums,
began to whisper: "You are not alone here--you are not alone--you are
not alone."

Was that a sound there outside the door? A step cautiously approaching?
He leaned forward tensely. No--his laugh was low, short, furious--_no!_
It was only from above, that sound.

Jimmie Dale's face hardened. It was childish, this sensation of
_presence_ in the room; but it was also unnerving. Why should so unusual
a thing happen to him to-night? Was it purely over-wrought nerves, due
to the strain of the peril he ran as Larry the Bat--or was it intuition?
Intuition had never failed him yet. Well, whatever it was, he would put
a stop to it. He was here to-night to get the Magpie, and nothing should
interfere with that. Nothing! He and the Magpie would square accounts
to-night--and square them once for all!

Not alone here in the Magpie's den--eh? His flashlight streamed out, and
began slowly and deliberately to circle the room. If his brain was so
restless and active that it must indulge in fantasies, it could at
least be diverted into another channel than--Jimmie Dale strained
forward suddenly in his chair. That was a pair of boots there at the
foot of the bed. There was nothing strange in a pair of boots, but these
boots were poised most curiously on their heels, with the toes pointing
upward. They just barely protruded from the foot of the bed, which
accounted for his not having been able to see them from the window when
he had flashed his light around--he could not see the upper portions of
them even now. And then, under his breath, Jimmie Dale jeered at himself
again. True, the boots were in a most peculiar position, but had his
nerves reached the state where a pair of boots would throw him into a
panic! How logical for some one to be hiding there under the bed--with
his feet in plain view! And yet what held the boots upright like that?
The foot of the bed itself? Jammed there, perhaps? Or--

"Damn it!" gritted Jimmie Dale. "I'm worse than a child to-night!"

He rose from his chair, stepped across the room to the foot of the
bed--and like a man dazed, his flashlight playing on the boots, his
automatic flung forward in his hand, he stood staring downward,
following his flashlight's ray with his eyes. Was he mad! Was his brain
now playing him some hideous trick! The boots were not empty, he could
see a man's ankles, the bottoms of a town's trousers; but the ankles and
the trousers seemed utterly insignificant--_on the sole of the right
boot was a diamond-shaped, gray-coloured, paper seal!_ His own
insignia--the insignia of the Gray Seal!

For an instant it might have been, he stood there rigidly, realising in
a sort of ghastly, subconscious way that the man under the bed made no
movement, made no attempt to evade discovery, made no sound; and then
Jimmie Dale stooped quickly, and raised one of the other's feet a few
inches from the floor. It fell back--a dead weight.

Jimmie Dale's jaws were hard clamped. There was devil's work here--some
of the Magpie's, possibly. Every faculty alert now, Jimmie Dale was
quietly lifting aside the small iron bed. The Magpie was no fool! By
underworld and police alike it would be accepted without questions that
the Gray Seal had held a day of reckoning in store for the Magpie. Had
the Magpie traded on that--to get rid of some one who was in his way,
this out-stretched, inert thing on the floor, and lay it to the door of
the Gray Seal? It was clever, hellish in its cunning. And it would
appear plausible enough. The Gray Seal had come here, say, searching for
the Magpie, and in the darkness had struck another down! Yes, the Magpie
could get away with that. It would stand to reason that the Magpie would
not lure a victim to his own den, and--

A low cry was on Jimmie Dale's lips. The bed was moved out now, and he
was stooping over a man whose head was gruesomely battered above the
right temple and back across the skull. The flashlight wavered in his
hand, as he held it focussed on the other's face. It was the
Magpie--dead.




CHAPTER VII


THE BOND ROBBERY

It seemed to Jimmie Dale that, in the darkness, the room was full of
unseen devils laughing and jeering derisively at him. It seemed that
reality did not exist; that only unreality prevailed. The Magpie--dead!
It seemed for the moment that he had utterly lost his grip upon himself;
that mentally he was being tossed helplessly about, the sport of fate.
The Magpie--_dead_! It meant--what did it mean? He must think now, and
think quickly. It meant, first of all, that any hope for the Tocsin
which he had built upon the Magpie was shattered, gone forever. And it
meant, that gray seal on the sole of the dead man's boot, that the
murder had been committed with even greater cunning and finesse, and an
even greater security for the murderer, than he had attributed to the
Magpie a moment since, when he had thought the Magpie the instigator,
and not the victim, of the crime.

He was examining the wound, searching for the weapon--it must have been
a blunt instrument of some sort--with which the blow, or blows, had been
struck. There was nothing. The Magpie lay there--dead. That was all.

Mechanically Jimmie Dale replaced the bed in its original position over
the murdered man, and stood staring down again at the gray seal on the
Magpie's boot. It was not _why_ the Magpie had been murdered, it was
_who_ had murdered him! Once, long, long ago, almost at the outset of
the Gray Seal's career, a spurious gray seal had been used before. But
this was a vastly different, and far more significant matter. Then it
had been an attempt to foist the identity of the Gray Seal upon a poor,
miserable devil in order to secure a reward--here it was a crime,
_murder_, coolly, callously laid to the Gray Seal, that the guilty man
might escape without a breath of suspicion. Just another crime credited
to the Gray Seal! No one would dispute it; no one would question it; no
one would dream that it had been done by any one other than the Gray
Seal. There was a brutal possibility about the ingenuity of the man who
had struck the blow. It was the Magpie who had put his finger upon Larry
the Bat as the Gray Seal; it was the Magpie who had tried to accomplish
the Gray Seal's death. Would it, then, occasion even surprise that the
Magpie should be found murdered in his own den at the hands of the Gray
Seal? It was even his own argument, the very reason that had led him to
assume the role of Larry the Bat, and had brought him here to the
Magpie's to-night!

Jimmie Dale bent down for a closer inspection of the diamond-shaped gray
seal on the boot's sole. It was not one of his own; but it was so
similar that it would unquestionably pass muster. The red crept to
Jimmie Dale's cheeks and burned there, as a sudden, merciless anger
swept upon him. _Who_ was the man who had done this, who sheltered
himself from murder behind the Gray Seal!

He laughed low and bitterly. Only another crime attributed to the Gray
Seal! It would not smirch the Gray Seal any--the Gray Seal had been
accused of worse than this! But the man who had dared to place that gray
seal there would answer for it!

He was still laughing in that low, bitter way, as he knelt now, and
took out his pocketknife. The gray seal, at least, would not be
found--he was lucky there--he had only to scrape it off, and--No--wait!
Would it not be better to leave it there? It would throw the murderer
off his guard if he believed that his plan had worked; and it could make
little difference to the Gray Seal's record to be held guilty of another
murder--temporarily. Temporarily! Yes, that was it! Here was one crime
of which the Gray Seal would be vindicated, and the guilty man be--

"_Jimmie!_"

It seemed to quiver, low-breathed, through the darkness--his name. His
name! Was he bereft of all his senses! His name! Here in this horrible
murder hole! Was he indeed mad with his imaginings, with these voices
that had been whispering, and laughing, and jeering at him out of the
blackness! And, absurdly, it had seemed this time that it was the
Tocsin's voice!

"Jimmie--quick! On the floor under the window!"

He whirled like a flash. Mistake! Imaginings! No! It _was_ the Tocsin!
It was her voice! The gleam of his flashlight cut the black, and,
leaping across the room, played upon the small, narrow, oblong
window--it was from there the voice had come. But it was only black and
empty there. And around the room his flashlight swept, and it was black
and empty there, too--except for a square, white object upon the floor
below the window. She was gone.

And it was like a half sob that came from Jimmie Dale's lips.

"Gone!" he whispered miserably. "Gone!"

Why had she gone like that? Why had she not waited--just for a moment,
just for the single instant, if he could have had no more, that he would
have given his life to have? And the answer was in his soul. He knew,
and he, knew that she, too, knew, that it would not have been moment or
an instant--that he would never have let her go again. And to follow
her? He shook his head. By the time he had climbed out of the window,
what trace, any more than there was now, would there of her! She was
gone--a sort of finality in her act, as there always was, that left
nothing to be done, or said.

But the note! That white thing there upon the floor! He crossed the
room, picked it up, tore it open, and, with his flashlight upon it,
began to read.

"Jimmie--Jimmie--" It was scrawled in haste, only a few lines. His eyes
travelled rapidly over the words, and suddenly his breath came fast.

"My God!" he cried out sharply.

As though he could not have read aright, he read again; disjointed words
and phrases muttered audibly: "... Afraid not in time ... hurry ... this
afternoon ... the Magpie and Virat ... Kenleigh, insurance broker ...
safe in Kenleigh's house ... ground floor--left ... one hundred thousand
dollars ... bonds ... will try it ... Meighan of headquarters ...
half-past one at Virat's ... Gray Seal ... Larry the Bat ... if
dangerous, keep away ..."

One glance around the room Jimmie Dale gave instinctively; and then he
was crawling through the window, and, outside, regaining his feet, he
darted across the yard, and out into the lane. Kenleigh, the insurance
broker--he repeated the address she had given in the note over to
himself. It was an apartment house on Avenue near Washington Square.

He ran on, as he had come, through lane and alley, working his way out
of the Bad Lands. It was dangerous, of coarse, in any case, but once
clear of that section of the city which houses the underworld, his risk
of discovery was greatly minimised, since, though familiar to every
denizen of gangland, Larry the Bat was naturally not the same intimate
figure in the more law-abiding and respectable districts; and he should,
except for an extraordinary piece of bad luck, pass in the quarters he
was now heading for as no more than exactly what his appearance
proclaimed him to be--a disreputable and seedy vagrant.

It was slow work, hurry as he would, doubling and zigzagging his way up
through the East Side; discouraging, when time was so great a factor, to
cover three and four times the actual distance in order to keep to the
lanes and alleys whose shelter he dared not leave; but he was spurred on
now by a sort of grim, unholy joy. He knew now who had murdered the
Magpie, and why; he knew now who was making a tool, a cat's-paw of the
Gray Seal; he knew now who had so cynically elected him, if caught, as a
substitute for the other to the electric chair. It was Virat! Frenchy
Virat, the suave, sleek gambler, confidence man and crook! Well, the
game was of Virat's choosing--and they would play it out now to the end,
Virat and the Gray Seal, if it was the last act of his, Jimmie Dale's,
life! It was only a question now of whether or not Virat had completed
all his work, of whether there was yet time to get to Kenleigh's.

It was close to midnight, as Jimmie Dale came out on Washington Square.
He crossed to Waverly Place, and, on the point of starting along Fifth
Avenue, drew suddenly back around the corner. A man, walking rapidly,
was just turning into Fifth Avenue from the opposite corner. Jimmie
Dale drew in his breath sharply. He had got out of sight just in time.
He recognised the quick, springy walk of the other. It was Meighan,
of Headquarters. And then Jimmie Dale smiled a little whimsically.
They were both bound for the same place, he and Meighan, of
Headquarters--Kenleigh's apartment, that was a little way further on
there along the Avenue.

A short distance behind the other, but on the opposite side of the
street, Jimmie Dale followed the detective. There was hardly any use now
in going to Kenleigh's, for, if the detective was really bound for
there, it made his, Jimmie Dale's, errand useless--the summoning of the
Headquarters' man was _prima facie_ evidence that the robbery had
already been committed. And yet a certain grim curiosity remained. Just
how had it been done? And besides, she had said, "half-past one at
Virat's," so there was time to spare. The distorted lips of Larry the
Bat thinned ominously. No; it was not useless even now. He had a very
strong personal interest in all that had taken place--Virat would be the
less likely to slip through his fingers, or through the fingers of the
law, for the information that the scene of the robbery might supply!

Meighan disappeared suddenly inside an apartment house, which Jimmie
Dale recognised as a rather fashionable one, devoted exclusively to
bachelors' quarters, Jimmie Dale quickened his step, walked on to the
next corner, crossed the street, and came back along the block. As he
approached the apartment-house entrance, voices reached him from the
vestibule, and then he heard the closing of a door.

"Ground floor--left," murmured Larry the Bat to himself. He smiled
facetiously. "Saves an interview with the janitor!"

He glanced sharply around him in all directions--and the next instant
was inside the vestibule--and in another, without a sound, was crouched
close against the apartment door. A delicate little steel picklock was
working now, the deft fingers manipulating it silently, and then
stealthily he pushed the door open a crack. A man's voice, agitated,
came to him from within: "... Perhaps twenty minutes, I don't know--the
length of time it took you to get here. I was dining out. I 'phoned
Headquarters the instant I came in."

Jimmie Dale pushed the door further open, slipped through, and left the
door just ajar behind him. He was in the hallway of a very small
apartment, of not more than two or three rooms, he judged. Diagonally
ahead of him a light streamed out from an open door. He stole toward
this, and, pressed close against the jamb of the door, peered in.

It was a sort of sitting-room, or den, cosily furnished with deep,
comfortable lounging chairs. There was a flat-topped desk in the centre,
a telephone on the desk; and at the rear of the room a connecting door,
leading presumably to the bedroom, was open. A clean-shaven, dark-eyed
man of perhaps thirty-five, Kenleigh obviously, was pacing nervously up
and down. His face was pale, his hair ruffled; and, in his distraction,
apparently, he had forgotten to remove the cloak which he was wearing
over his evening clothes. In the far corner of the room, Meighan, the
detective, knelt upon the floor amidst a scene of grotesque disorder.
The door of a very small safe had been "souped," and now sagged open.
Books and papers littered the floor, and were strewn over a mattress
that, evidently dragged from the inner room, had been swaddled around
the safe to deaden the sound of the explosion.

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