Part 18 (1/2)

”Open the door!” It was Kline's voice.

Jimmie Dale's eyes were closed, and he was breathing regularly, though just a little slower than in natural respiration.

”Break it down!” ordered Kline tersely.

There was a rush at it--and it gave. It surged inward, knocked against the chair, upset the latter, something tinkled to the floor--and four officers, with Kline at their head, jumped into the room.

Jimmie Dale never moved. A flashlight played around the room and focused upon him--and then he was shaken roughly--only to fall inertly back on the bed again.

”I guess this is all right, Mr. Kline,” said one of the officers. ”It's Larry the Bat, and he's doped to the eyes. There's the stuff on the floor we knocked off the chair.”

”Light the gas!” directed Kline curtly; and, being obeyed, stooped to the floor and picked up a hypodermic syringe and a small bottle. He held the bottle to the light, and read the label: LIQUOR MORPHINAE. ”Shake him again!” he commanded.

None too gently, a policeman caught Jimmie Dale by the shoulder and shook him vigorously--again Jimmie Dale, once the other let go his hold, fell back limply on the bed, breathing in that same, slightly slowed way.

”Larry the Bat, eh?” grunted Kline; then, to the officer who had volunteered the information: ”Who's Larry the Bat? What is he? And how long have you known him?”

”I don't know who he is any more than what you can see there for yourself,” replied the officer. ”He's a dope fiend, and I guess a pretty tough case, though we've never had him up for anything. He's lived here ever since I've been on the beat, and that's three years or--”

”All right!” interrupted Kline crisply. ”He's no good to us! You say there's an exit from this house into that saloon at the back?”

”Yes, sir but the fellow, whoever he is, couldn't get away from there.

Heeney's been over on guard from the start.”

”Then he's still inside there,” said Kline, clipping off his words.

”We'll search the saloon. Nice night's work this is! One out of the whole gang--and that one with the compliments of the Gray Seal!”

The men went out and began to descend the stairs.

”One,” said Jimmie Dale to himself, still motionless, still breathing in that slow way so characteristic of the drug. ”Two. Three. Four.”

The minutes went by--a quarter of an hour--a half hour. Still Jimmie Dale lay there--still motionless--still breathing with slow regularity.

His muscles began to cramp, to give him exquisite torture. Around him all was silence--only distant sounds from the street reached him, m.u.f.fled, and at intervals. Another quarter of an hour pa.s.sed--an eternity of torment. It seemed to Jimmie Dale, for all his will power, that he could not hold himself in check, that he must move, scream out even in the torture that was pa.s.sing all endurance. It was silent now, utterly silent--and then out of the silence, just outside his door, a footstep creaked--and a man walked to the stairs and went down.

”Five,” said Jimmie Dale to himself. ”The sharpest man in the United States secret service.”

And then for the first time Jimmie Dale moved--to wipe away the beads of sweat that had sprung out upon his forehead.

CHAPTER V

THE AFFAIR OF THE PUSHCART MAN

Larry the Bat shambled out of the side door of the tenement into the back alleyway; shambled along the black alleyway to the street--and smiled a little grimly as a shadow across the roadway suddenly s.h.i.+fted its position. The game was growing acute, critical, desperate even--and it was his move.

Larry the Bat, disreputable denizen of the underworld, alias Jimmie Dale, millionaires' clubman, alias the Gray Seal, whom Carruthers of the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS called the master criminal of the age, shuffled along in the direction of the Bowery, his hands plunged deep in the pockets of his frayed and tattered trousers, where his fingers, in a curious, wistful way, fondled the keys of his own magnificent residence on Riverside Drive. It was his move--and it was an impa.s.se, ironical, sardonic, and it was worse--it was full of peril.

True, he had outwitted Kline of the secret service two nights before, when Kline had raided the counterfeiters' den; true, he had no reason to believe that Kline suspected HIM specifically, but the man Kline wanted HAD entered the tenement that night, and since then the house had been shadowed day and night. The result was both simple and disastrous--to Jimmie Dale. Larry the Bat, a known inmate of the house, might come and go as he pleased--but to emerge from the Sanctuary in the person of Jimmie Dale would be fatal. Kline had been outwitted, but Kline had not acknowledged final defeat. The tenement had been searched from top to bottom--unostentatiously. His own room on the first landing had been searched the previous afternoon, when he was out, but they had failed to find the cunningly contrived opening in the floor under the oilcloth in the corner, an impromptu wardrobe, that would proclaim Larry the Bat and Jimmie Dale to be one and the same person--that would inevitably lead further to the establishment of his ident.i.ty as the Gray Seal. In time, of course, the surveillance would cease--but he could not wait. That was the monumental irony of it--the factor that, all unknown to Kline, was forcing the issue hard now. It was his move.

Since, years ago now, as the Gray Seal, he had begun to work with HER, that unknown, mysterious accomplice of his, and the police, stung to madness both by the virulent and constant attacks of the press and by the humiliating prod of their own failures, sought daily, high and low, with every resource at their command, for the Gray Seal, he had never been in quite so strange and perilous a plight as he found himself at that moment. To preserve inviolate the ident.i.ty of Larry the Bat was absolutely vital to his safety. It was the one secret that even she, who so strangely appeared to know all else about him, he was sure, had not discovered--and it was just that, in a way, that had brought the present impossible situation to pa.s.s.