Part 2 (2/2)

Out on the street dashed Jimmie Dale, whipping the mask from his face--and glanced like a hawk around him. For all the racket, the neighbourhood had not yet been aroused--no one was in sight. From just overhead came the rattle of a downtown elevated train. In a hundred-yard sprint, Jimmie Dale raced it a half block to the station, tore up the steps--and a moment later dropped nonchalantly into a seat and pulled an evening newspaper from his pocket.

Jimmie Dale got off at the second station down, crossed the street, mounted the steps of the elevated again, and took the next train uptown.

His movements appeared to be somewhat erratic--he alighted at the station next above the one by which he had made his escape. Looking down the street it was too dark to see much of anything, but a confused noise as of a gathering crowd reached him from what was about the location of the secondhand store. He listened appreciatively for a moment.

”Isn't it a perfectly lovely night?” said Jimmie Dale amiably to himself. ”And to think of that cop running away with the idea that I didn't see him when he hid in a doorway after I pa.s.sed the corner! Well, well, strange--isn't it?”

With another glance down the street, a whimsical lift of his shoulders, he headed west into the dilapidated tenement quarter that huddled for a handful of blocks near by, just south of Was.h.i.+ngton Square. It was a little after one o'clock in the morning now and the pedestrians were casual. Jimmie Dale read the street signs on the corners as he went along, turned abruptly into an intersecting street, counted the tenements from the corner as he pa.s.sed, and--for the eye of any one who might be watching--opened the street door of one of them quite as though he were accustomed and had a perfect right to do so, and went inside.

It was murky and dark within; hot, unhealthy, with lingering smells of garlic and stale cooking. He groped for the stairs and started up.

He climbed one flight, then another--and one more to the top. Here, treading softly, he made an examination of the landing with a view, evidently, to obtaining an idea of the location and the number of doors that opened off from it.

His selection fell on the third door from the head of the stairs--there were four all told, two apartments of two rooms each. He paused for an instant to adjust the black silk mask, tried the door quietly, found it unlocked, opened it with a sudden, quick, brisk movement--and, stepping in side, leaned with his back against it.

”Good-morning,” said Jimmie Dale pleasantly.

It was a squalid place, a miserable hole, in which a single flickering, yellow gas jet gave light. It was almost bare of furniture; there was nothing but a couple of cheap chairs, a rickety table--unp.a.w.nable. A boy, he was hardly more than that, perhaps twenty-two, from a posture in which he was huddled across the table with head buried in out-flung arms, sprang with a startled cry to his feet.

”Good-morning,” said Jimmie Dale again. ”Your name's Hagan, Bert Hagan--isn't it? And you work for Isaac Brolsky in the secondhand shop over on West Broadway--don't you?”

The boy's lips quivered, and the gaunt, hollow, half-starved face, white, ashen-white now, was pitiful.

”I--I guess you got me,” he faltered ”I--I suppose you're a plain-clothes man, though I never knew d.i.c.ks wore masks.”

”They don't generally,” said Jimmie Dale coolly. ”It's a fad of mine--Bert Hagan.”

The lad, hanging to the table, turned his head away for a moment--and there was silence.

Presently Hagan spoke again. ”I'll go,” he said numbly. ”I won't make any trouble. Would--would you mind not speaking loud? I--I wouldn't like her to know.”

”Her?” said Jimmie Dale softly.

The boy tiptoed across the room, opened a connecting door a little, peered inside, opened it a little wider--and looked over his shoulder at Jimmie Dale.

Jimmie Dale crossed to the boy, looked inside the other room--and his lip twitched queerly, as the sight sent a quick, hurt throb through his heart. A young woman, younger than the boy, lay on a tumble-down bed, a rag of clothing over her--her face with a deathlike pallor upon it, as she lay in what appeared to be a stupor. She was ill, critically ill; it needed no trained eye to discern a fact all too apparent to the most casual observer. The squalor, the glaring poverty here, was even more pitifully in evidence than in the other room--only here upon a chair beside the bed was a cl.u.s.ter of medicine bottles and a little heap of fruit.

Jimmie Dale drew back silently as the boy closed the door.

Hagan walked to the table and picked up his hat.

”I'm--I'm ready,” he said brokenly. ”Let's go.”

”Just a minute,” said Jimmie Dale. ”Tell us about it.”

”Twon't take long,” said Hagan, trying to smile. ”She's my wife. The sickness took all we had. I--I kinder got behind in the rent and things.

They were going to fire us out of here--to-morrow. And there wasn't any money for the medicine, and--and the things she had to have. Maybe you wouldn't have done it--but I did. I couldn't see her dying there for the want of something a little money'd buy--and--and I couldn't”--he caught his voice in a little sob--”I couldn't see her thrown out on the street like that.”

”And so,” said Jimmie Dale, ”instead of putting old Isaac's cash in the safe this evening when you locked up, you put it in your pocket instead--eh? Didn't you know you'd get caught?”

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