Part 24 (1/2)

Jimmie Dale leaned against the vestibule door--there was a faint click--a little steel instrument was withdrawn from the lock--and Jimmie Dale stepped into the hall, where a gas jet, turned down, burned dimly.

The door of the ground-floor apartment was at his right, Jimmie Dale reached up and turned off the light. Again those slim, tapering, wonderfully sensitive fingers worked with the little steel instrument, this time in the lock of the apartment door--again there was that almost inaudible click--and then cautiously, inch by inch, the door opened under his hand. He peered inside--down a hallway lighted, if it could be called lighted at all, by a subdued glow from two open doors that gave upon it--peered intently, listening intently, as he drew a black silk mask from his pocket and slipped it over his face. And then, silent as a shadow in his movements, the door left just ajar behind him, he stole down the carpeted hallway.

Opposite the first of the open doorways Jimmie Dale paused--a curiously hard expression creeping over his face, his lips beginning to droop ominously downward at the corners. It was a little sitting room, cheaply but tastefully furnished, and a young woman, Bookkeeper Bob's wife evidently, and evidently sitting up for her husband, had fallen sound asleep in a chair, her head pillowed on her arms that were outstretched across the table. For a moment Jimmie Dale held there, his eyes on the scene--and the next moment, his hand curved into a clenched fist, he had pa.s.sed on and entered the adjoining room.

It was a child's bedroom. A night lamp burned on a table beside the bed, and the soft rays seemed to play and linger in caress on the tousled golden hair of a little girl of perhaps two years of age--and something seemed to choke suddenly in Jimmie Dale's throat--the sweet, innocent little face, upturned to his, was smiling at him as she slept.

Jimmie Dale turned away his head--his eyelashes wet under his mask.

”BENEATH THE MATTRESS OF THE CHILD'S BED,” the letter had said. His face like stone, his lips a thin line now, Jimmie Dale's hand reached deftly in without disturbing the child and took out a package--and then another. He straightened up, a bundle of crisp new hundred-dollar notes in each hand--and on the top of one, slipped under the elastic band that held the bills together, an unsealed envelope. He drew out the latter, and opened it--it was a second-cla.s.s steams.h.i.+p pa.s.sage to Vera Cruz, made out in a fict.i.tious name, of course, to John Davies, the booking for next day's sailing. From the ticket, from the stolen money, Jimmie Dale's eyes lifted to rest again on the little golden head, the smiling lips--and then, dropping the packages into his pockets, his own lips moving queerly, he turned abruptly to the door.

”My G.o.d, the shame of it!” he whispered to himself.

He crept down the corridor, past the open door of the room where the young woman still sat fast asleep, and, his mask in his pocket again, stepped softly into the vestibule, and from there to the street.

Jimmie Dale hurried now, spurred on it seemed by a hot, insensate fury that raged within him--there was still one other call to make that night--still those remaining and minute details in the latter part of her letter, grim and ugly in their portent!

It was close upon one o'clock in the morning when Jimmie Dale stopped again--this time before a fas.h.i.+onable dwelling just off Central Park.

And here, for perhaps the s.p.a.ce of a minute, he surveyed the house from the sidewalk--watching, with a sort of speculative satisfaction, a man's shadow that pa.s.sed constantly to and fro across the drawn blinds of one of the lower windows. The rest of the house was in darkness.

”Yes,” said Jimmie Dale, nodding his head, ”I rather thought so. The servants will have retired hours ago. It's safe enough.”

He ran quickly up the steps and rang the bell. A door opened almost instantly, sending a faint glow into the hall from the lighted room; a hurried step crossed the hall--and the outer door was thrown back.

”Well, what is it?” demanded a voice brusquely.

It was quite dark, too dark for either to distinguish the other's features--and Jimmie Dale's hat was drawn far down over his eyes.

”I want to see Mr. Thomas H. Carling, cas.h.i.+er of the Hudson-Mercantile National Bank--it's very important,” said Jimmie Dale earnestly.

”I am Mr. Carling,” replied the other. ”What is it?”

Jimmie Dale leaned forward.

”From headquarters--with a report,” he said, in a low tone.

”Ah!” exclaimed the bank official sharply. ”Well, it's about time! I've been waiting up for it--though I expected you would telephone rather than this. Come in!”

”Thank you,” said Jimmie Dale courteously--and stepped into the hall.

The other closed the front door. ”The servants are in bed, of course,”

he explained, as he led the way toward the lighted room. ”This way, please.”

Behind the other, across the hall, Jimmie Dale followed and close at Carling's heels entered the room, which was fitted up, quite evidently regardless of cost, as a combination library and study. Carling, in a somewhat pompous fas.h.i.+on, walked straight ahead toward the carved-mahogany flat-topped desk, and, as he reached it, waved his hand.

”Take a chair,” he said, over his shoulder--and then, turning in the act of dropping into his own chair, grasped suddenly at the edge of the desk instead, and, with a low, startled cry, stared across the room.

Jimmie Dale was leaning back against the door that was closed now behind him--and on Jimmie Dale's face was a black silk mask.

For an instant neither man spoke nor moved; then Carling, spare-built, dapper in evening clothes, edged back from the desk and laughed a little uncertainly.