The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale/Chapter 15
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, he 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.
A curious, muffled, metallic thump, mingled with a quick, low-breathed, triumphant oath, came suddenly from the inner room—and then Laroque's voice, eager, the words clipped off as though in feverish elation:
"There she is! One nice little job—eh? Well, come on—shoot your light into her, and let's take a look at the Christmas tree!"
The flashlight's ray flooded the interior of the open safe. Laroque, on his knees, laughed suddenly, and thrust his hand inside.
"What did I tell you, eh?" he chuckled. "I got the straight tip, eh? Four thousand, if there's a cent!"
Laroque began to remove what were evidently packages of banknotes from the safe—but Jimmie Dale was no longer watching the scene. He had edged suddenly back into the doorway of the hall, and was listening now intently. A footstep—he could have sworn he had caught the sound of a footstep—seemed to have come from just outside the front window. But all was still again. Perhaps he had been mistaken. No! Slight as was the sound, he heard, unmistakably now, a key grate in the lock—and then, stealthily, the front door began to open.
A bewildered look came into Jimmie Dale's face, as he retreated further back into the hallway itself now. It was probably Sonnino; but why did Sonnino come stealing into his own house like—well, like any one of the three predatory guests already there before him? And then Jimmie Dale's face cleared. Of course! From the window the glow of the flashlight in the inner room could be seen. Sonnino was forewarned, and undoubtedly—forearmed!
The front door closed softly, so softly that had Jimmie Dale, supersensitive as his hearing was, not been intent upon it, it would have escaped him. The glow from the inner room, faint as it was, threw into shadowy relief a man's form tiptoeing forward—and then a board creaked.
"What's that!" came in a wild whisper from Clarie Archman.
"Got 'em again!" Laroque snapped back. "You make me tired!"
"Let's get out of here! Let's get out of here—quick!" Clarie Archman's voice, not so low now, held a tone of frantic appeal.
"Nix!" said Laroque, in a vicious sneer. "Not till the job's done! D'ye think I'm going to spend half an hour cracking a safe and take a chance of missing any bets? We've got the coin all right, but there ought to be one or two of Sonnino's sparklers lying around in some of these drawers, and"
There was a click of an electric-light switch, a cry from Clarie Archman, the inner room was ablaze with light, and—Jimmie Dale had edged forward again out of the hallway—Sonnino, revolver in hand, was standing just over the threshold facing Gentleman Laroque and the assistant district attorney's son.
Then silence—a silence of seconds that were as minutes. And then Gentleman Laroque laughed gratingly.
"Hello, Sonnino!" he said coolly. "A little late, aren't you? You've kept me stalling for the last five minutes. Know my friend—Mr. Martin Moore, alias Mr. Clarie Archman? Clarie, this is Signor Niccolo Sonnino, the proprietor of this joint."
And then to Jimmie Dale, where before his mind had groped in darkness to reconcile apparently incongruous details, in a flash there came the light. The "plant" was a little more intricate, a little more cunning, a little more hellish—that was all!
The boy, white to the lips, was swaying on his feet, grasping at the table in the centre of the room. He looked from one to the other, a miserable, dawning understanding in his eyes.
"You—you know my name?" His voice was scarcely audible.
"Sure!" said Laroque—and yawned insolently.
"So!" purred Sonnino, in excellent English. "Is it so! A thief! The son of the so-honest Mister Attorney—a thief!"
"It's a lie!" The boy's hands, clenched, were raised above his head, and then shaken almost maniacally in Gentleman Laroque's face. "It's a lie! I—I don't understand, but—but you two, you devils, are together in this!"
"Sure!" retorted Laroque, as insolently as before—and flung the other's hands away. "Sure, we are!"
"It's a lie!" said the boy again. "I was in a hole. I needed money. You told me you knew a man who would lend it to me. That's why I came here with you, and then—and then you held me here with your revolver, and began to open that safe."
"Sure!" returned Laroque, for the third time. "Sure—that's right! Well, what's the answer?"
"This!" cried the boy wildly. "I don't know what your game is, but this is my answer! Do you think I would have touched that money, or have let you—once I got out of here where I could have got help! I'm not a thief—whatever else I may be. That's my answer!"
Niccolo Sonnino's smile was oily.
"It is a little late, is it not?" he leered. "Listen, my little young friend; I will tell you a story. You work for a bank, eh? The bank does not like its young men to speculate—yes? But why should you not speculate a little, a very little, if you like—if you get the very private and good tips, eh? It is not wrong—no, certainly, it is not wrong. But at the same time the bank must not know. Very well! They shall not know—no one shall know. You are not the young Mr. Archman any more, you are—what is the name?—Martin Moore. But Martin Moore must have an address, eh? Very well! On Sixth Avenue there is a little store where one rents boxes for private mail, and where questions are never asked—is it not so, my very dear young friend?"
The boy was staring in a demented way into Sonnino's face, but he did not speak.
"Aw, hand it to him straight!" Gentleman Laroque broke in roughly. "I don't want to hang around here all night. Here, Archman, you listen to me! We piped you off on that lay about two weeks ago—and it looked good to us, and we played it for a winner, see? You got introduced to me, and found me a pretty good sort, and we got thick together—you know all about that. Also, you get introduced to some new brokers, who said they'd take good care of your margins—maybe they only ran a bucket-shop, but you didn't know it! All right! You got snarled up good and plenty. Yesterday you were wiped out, and three thousand dollars to the bad besides, and they were yelling for their money and threatening to expose you. They gave you until to-morrow morning to make good. You told me about it. I told you this morning I thought I knew a man who would lend you the coin, and"—he laughed mockingly, and jerked his hand toward the safe—"well, I led you to it, didn't I?"
"I—I don't understand," the boy mumbled helplessly.
"Don't you!" jeered Laroque. "Well, it looks big enough for a blind man to see! We've got this robbery wished on you to a fare-thee-well! A young man who speculates, who uses an assumed name, and runs a private letter box on Sixth Avenue, and has forty-eight hours in which to square up his debts or face exposure, has a hell of a chance with a jury—not!"
The boy circled his lips with the tip of his tongue.
"But why—why?" he whispered. "I—I never did anything to you."
"Sure, you didn't!" Laroque's tones were brutally amiable now. "It's your father. We've an idea that maybe he won't be so keen about going ahead with that little investigation of the private clubs after we've put a certain little proposition about his son up to him."
"No, no! No—you won't!" Clarie Archman's voice rose suddenly shrill, beyond control. "You won't! You can't! You're in it yourselves"—he pointed his finger wildly at one and then the other of the two men—"you—and you!"
"Think so?" drawled Laroque. "All right, you tell 'em so—tell the jury about it, tell your father, who is such a shark on evidence, about it. Sure, I'm in on it with you—but you don't know who I am. They'll have a hot time finding J. Barca, Esquire! I'm thinking of taking a little trip to Florida for my health, and my valet's got my grip all packed! Savvy? And now listen to Sonnino. Sonnino's a wonder in the witness box. Niccolo, tell the jury what you know about this unfortunate young man."
Sonnino, a wicked grin on his face, made a dramatic flourish with the hand that held the revolver.
"Well, I was asleep upstairs. I wakened. I thought I heard a noise downstairs. I listened. Then I got up, and went down the stairs quiet like a mouse. I turned on the light quick—like this"—he snapped his fingers. "Two men have broken open my safe, and they have my money, a lot of money, for I keep all my money there; I do not bank—no. They rush at me, they knock me down, they make their escape, but I recognise one of them—it is Mister the young Archman, who I have many times seen at The Sphinx Café—yes. Well, and then on the floor I find a letter." He grinned wickedly again. "Have you the letter that I find—Mister Barca?"
"Sure," said Gentleman Laroque—and reached into his pocket. "It was addressed to Martin Moore on Sixth Avenue, wasn't it?"
"My God!" It came in a sudden, pitiful cry from the boy, and his hand involuntarily went to his own pocket. "You—you've got that letter!"
"Do you think you're up against a piker game!" exclaimed Laroque maliciously. "Well then, forget it! You didn't have this in your pocket half an hour before it was lifted by one of the slickest poke-getters in the whole of little old New York." He was taking a letter from its envelope and opening out the sheet. "That's the kind of a crowd that's in on this, my bucko! Listen, and I'll read the letter. It looked innocent enough when you got it, in view of what I told you about knowing a man who would lend you the money. But pipe how it sounds with Sonnino's safe bored full of holes. Are you listening? 'It's all right. Niccolo Sonnino has got his safe crammed full to-night. Meet me at Bristol Bob's at eleven. J. Barca.'"
There was silence in the room. Clarie Archman had dropped into a chair, and had buried his face in his arms that were out-flung across the table.
Then Laroque spoke again:
"Do you see where you stand—Clarie? Tell your story—and it's the story that sounds like a neat 'plant' of your lawyer's to get you off. You only get in deeper with the jury for trying to trick them, see? Here's the evidence—and it's got you cold. Sonnino recognises you. The letter is identified at the Sixth Avenue place, and you are identified as the guy that's been travelling under the name of Martin Moore. J. Barca has flown the coop and can't be found, and—well, I guess you get it, don't you?"
"What—what do you want?" The boy did not lift his head.
"We want your father to let up, and let up damned quick," said Laroque evenly. "But we'll give you a chance to get out from under, and you can take it or leave it—it doesn't matter to us. Your father's got the papers and the affidavits in the 'Private Club' case in his safe at home to-night, and a lot of those affidavits he can never replace—we've seen to that! All right! You've got the combination of the safe. Go home and get that stuff and bring it here. If it's here by four o'clock—that gives you about three hours—you're out of it. If it isn't, then your father gets inside information that the gang is wise to the fact that his son pulled a break tonight, but that they can keep Sonnino's mouth shut if he throws up the sponge, and that if he doesn't call it off with the 'Private Club Ring,' if he's so blamed fond of prosecuting, he'll get a chance to prosecute his own son—as a thief!"
The boy did not move.
"And just one last word," added Laroque sharply. "Don't make the mistake of thinking that if you refuse to get the affidavits it puts a crimp in us. It's only because we're playing white with you, and to give you a chance, that you're getting any choice at all. We didn't intend to give you one, but we don't want to be too rough on you, so if you want to get out that way, and will agree to keep on queering your father's game if he starts it over again, all right. But you want to understand that we hold just as big a club over your father's head the other way."
"White! Playing white! Oh, my God!" Clarie Archman had lurched up from the chair to his feet. His face, haggard and drawn, was the face of one damned.
"Good-night!" said Laroque callously. "You know the way out! You've got till four o'clock. If you're not back here then" He shrugged his shoulders significantly. "You see, I'm not even asking you what you are going to do. We don't care. It's up to you. Either way suits us. And now—beat it!"
Jimmie Dale drew back for a second time that night into the hallway. A step, slow, faltering, unsteady, like that of a man blinded, passed out from the inner room, and passed on down the length of the front room—and the door opened and closed. Clarie Archman, with God alone knew what purpose in his heart, was gone.
From the thin metal case, by means of the tiny tweezers, Jimmie Dale took out a gray seal, laid the seal on his handkerchief, folded the handkerchief carefully, placed it in his pocket—and crept forward toward the inner door again. The two men were bending over the table, over the money on the table, dividing it. Jimmie Dale's lips were mercilessly thin; a fury, not the white, impetuous heat of passion, but a fury that was cold, deadly, implacable, possessed his soul. He crept nearer—still nearer.
"The crowd that put this up says we keep it between us for our work," said Laroque shortly. "A third for you, the rest for me. You sure you put all they gave you in the safe—Niccolo?" He screwed up his eyes suspiciously. "You sure you ain't trying to hold anything out on me? If you are, I'll make you"
The words died short on his lips—his jaw sagged helplessly.
Jimmie Dale was standing in the doorway.
"Niccolo, drop that revolver!" said Jimmie Dale softly. His automatic held a bead on the two men.
The revolver clattered to the table top. Neither of the men spoke—only their faces worked in a queer, convulsive sort of way, as they gazed in startled fascination at Jimmie Dale.
"Thank you!" said Jimmie Dale politely. He stepped briskly into the room, shoved Sonnino unceremoniously to one side, shoved his revolver muzzle none too gently into Laroque's ribs, and went through the latter's clothes. "Yes," he said, "I thought quite possibly you might have one." He pocketed Laroque's revolver, and also Sonnino's from the table. "And now that letter—thank you!" He whipped the letter from Laroque's inside coat pocket and transferred it to his own, then stepped back, and smiled—but the smile was not inviting. "I've only about five minutes to spare," murmured Jimmie Dale. "I'm in a hurry, Niccolo. I see some wrapping paper and string over there on top of the safe. Get it!"
The man obeyed mechanically, in a stupefied sort of way, and placed several of the sheets and a quantity of string upon the table. Laroque, silent, sullen, under the spell of Jimmie Dale's automatic, watched the proceedings without a word.
"Now," said Jimmie Dale, and an icy note began to creep into the velvet tones, "you two are going to make the first charitable contribution you ever made in your lives—say, to one of the city hospitals. Make as neat and as small a parcel of that money as you can, Niccolo."
"Not by a damned sight!" Laroque roared out suddenly. "Who the blazes are you! Curse you, I" He shrank hastily back before the ominous outthrust of Jimmie Dale's automatic.
"Wrap it up, Niccolo, and tie a string around it!" snapped Jimmie Dale.
And again, but snarling, cursing now, the man obeyed.
Jimmie Dale's hand went into his pocket, and came out with his handkerchief. He carried the handkerchief to his mouth, moistened the adhesive side of the gray paper seal, and pressed the handkerchief down upon the top of the parcel.
"It would hardly do for any one to know where the money really came from—would it?" observed Jimmie Dale, and smiled uninvitingly again.
The two men were leaning, straining forward, their eyes on the diamond-shaped gray seal—and into their faces there crept a sickly fear.
"The Gray Seal!" Sonnino stumbled the words.
"Put an outside wrapper around that package!" instructed Jimmie Dale coldly. He watched Sonnino perform the task with trembling fingers; and then, placing the package under his arm, Jimmie Dale backed to the door. There was a key in the lock on the inner side. He transferred it coolly to the outer side—and his voice rasped suddenly with the fury that found vent at last. "You are a pair of hell hounds," he said between his teeth; "but you are angels compared with the gang that hired you for this. Well, the game is up! David Archman will settle with them when they face the investigation—and I will settle with you! One night, a year ago, in last January, a certain Fourth Avenue bank was looted of eighteen thousand dollars—do you remember, Laroque? Ah, I see you do! The police are still looking for the man who pulled that job. What would you say, Laroque, would be the sentence handed out for that little affair to a man with, say, your past record?"
Laroque's lips were twitching; his face had gone gray.
"Fourteen years would be a light sentence, wouldn't it?" resumed Jimmie Dale, an even colder menace in his voice. "And you remember Stangeist, and the Mope, and Australian Ike, don't you, Laroque—you remember they went to the death house in Sing Sing—and you remember that the Gray Seal sent them there? Yes, I see you do; I see your memory is good to-night! Listen, then! I have heard it said that Gentleman Laroque, with his gangsters behind him, would stop at nothing where Gentleman Laroque's own skin was concerned. I have heard it said that where Gentleman Laroque was known he was feared. Very well, Laroque, it is your turn to choose. You can choose between yourself and this 'Private Club Ring' who have purchased your services in this game to-night. I fancy you can find a means of inducing Sonnino here to keep his mouth shut; and I fancy that of the two evils—holding young Archman as a club over his father, or of your employers facing their trial and conviction—you can convince the 'Private Club Ring' that the lesser, the lesser as regards your risk, say, is to face that trial and conviction. Do I make myself plain—Laroque? It is simply a question of not a word being said of what has happened to-night—or fourteen years in Sing Sing for you! I do not think you will find the task difficult when you add, to whatever arguments of your own you may see fit to employ, the fact that the Gray Seal, if your principals make a move, will expose them for this night's work on top of what they will already have to answer for. Well—Laroque?"
There was silence for a minute. Sonnino, cringing, the suavity, the oiliness of manner gone, a man afraid, kept his eyes on the table, and kept passing his hands one over the other. Laroque was the gambler—a twisted smile was forced to his lips.
"You win," he said hoarsely. "You can take it from me, I'll go up the river for fourteen years for no one—I'll take blasted good care of that! But you"—a rage, ungovernable and elemental, found voice in a sudden torrent of blasphemous invective—"you—we'll get you yet! Some day we'll get you, you cursed snitch, you"
"Good-night!" said Jimmie Dale grimly, and, stepping swiftly back over the threshold, shut and locked the door.
He gained the street, gained his car in front of The Sphinx—and, twenty minutes later, after a break-neck run in which Benson for the second time that night defied all speed laws, Jimmie Dale alighted from his car at a street corner well uptown, dismissed Benson for the night, retraced his way half the distance back along the block, disappeared into a lane, and presently, taking a high fence with the agility of a cat in spite of, his encumbering package, dropped noiselessly down into a backyard.
It was well known ground to Jimmie Dale—as a boy he had played here in the Archman's backyard, played here with Clarie Archman. His face masked again, he moved swiftly toward the rear of the house. There was still Clarie Archman. What would the boy do? Jimmie Dale's hand, a picklock in it again, clenched fiercely. It was a hell's choice they had given the boy—to rob his father, or go down himself, and drag his father with him, in ruin and disgrace! What would the boy do? Jimmie Dale was working silently at the back door now. It opened, and he stepped inside. He was here well ahead of the other, there was no possibility, granting even the start the boy had had, that Clarie Archman could have made the trip uptown in the same time. It was more likely that the boy might even linger a long while in misery and indecision before he came home. That was why he, Jimmie Dale, had dismissed Benson and the car for the night, and
With a mental jerk, Jimmie Dale focused his mind on his immediate surroundings. It was dark; there were no lights in any part of the house, but he needed none, not even his flashlight—he knew the house as well and as intimately as his own. He was in the rear hall now, and now he opened a door, paused cautiously as the dull yellow glow from a dying grate fire illuminated the room faintly, then stepped inside. It was the Archman library, the room where David Archman did a great deal of his work at night A desk stood at the lower end of the room; and in the corner near the portièred windows was the lawyer's safe.
Jimmie Dale closed the door, moved toward the window, drew the portieres aside, released the window catch, silently raised the window itself—it was only a drop a few feet to the yard! And then Jimmie Dale sat down at the desk.
A clock somewhere in the house struck a single note—that would be halfpast one. Time passed slowly, interminably. The clock struck again—two o'clock. And then suddenly Jimmie Dale rose from his chair, and slipped into the window recess behind the portières. The front door closed, a step came along the hall, the library opened, closed again—and Clarie Archman, his face as the flickering firelight played upon it, like a face of death, came forward into the room.
For a moment the boy held motionless beside the desk, his eyes fixed in a sort of horrible fascination upon the safe—and then, slowly, he moved toward it, and dropped on his knees before it, and his fingers began to twirl the knob of the dial. His fingers shook, and he was a long time at his task—and then the handle turned, and the safe was unlocked, but Clarie Archman did not open the door. Instead, he drew back suddenly, and rose swaying to his feet, and covered his face with his hands.
"I can't! Oh, my God, I—I can't!" he moaned. He lowered his hands after a moment, and gazed around him unseeingly, a queer, ghastly look came into his face. "I—I guess—I guess there's only one—one way to—to beat them," he whispered. "One way to beat them, and"
The package in Jimmie Dale's hand dropped suddenly to the floor, he wrenched the portières aside, and, with a low, sharp cry, sprang forward. The boy had taken a revolver from his pocket, and was lifting it to his head. Jimmie Dale struck up the other's hand—but in time only to deflect the shot; too late to prevent it being fired. There was a flash in mid-air, the roar of the report went racketing through the silent house, and the revolver, spinning from the other's hands, struck against the wall across the room.
And then Jimmie Dale had the boy by the shoulders, and was shaking him violently. Clarie Archman was like one stunned, numbed, and bereft of his senses.
"It's all right—you're clear! Do you hear—try and understand—you're clear!" Jimmie Dale whispered fiercely. "Here's your letter!" He thrust it into the other's hand. "Destroy it! Those men—Sonnino—Barca—will say nothing. You don't owe anybody any money—that bucket-shop was in the game with the rest, and—" Cries, voices, were coming from above now; and Jimmie Dale, like a flash, turned from the boy, leaped for the safe, wrenched the door open, reached in with both hands, and, snatching up an armful of the contents, spilled books and papers on the floor. He was back beside the boy in an instant. "Listen! You heard some one in here as you entered the house—you came into the room—you caught me in the act—you fired—you missed. And now—fight! Fight—pull yourself together—fight. They are coming!"
He caught the boy around the waist, and the two, locked together, reeled this way and that about the room. A chair, deliberately kicked over by Jimmie Dale, crashed to the floor. The cries drew nearer. Footsteps came racing madly down the stairs—and then the door of the library burst open, and David Archman, in pajamas, dashed through the doorway, and without a second's hesitation, made for the two struggling forms—and Jimmie Dale, releasing his hold upon the boy, suddenly sent the other staggering backwards full into David Archman, checking David Archman's rush—and, turning, sprang for the window, snatched up his package, hurled himself over the sill, dropped to the ground, and, racing for the fence, climbed it, and made the lane, just as a shot, from David Archman, no doubt, was fired from the window.
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."