Part 48 (1/2)

”You appear to be taken with that picture,” observed a pleasant voice.

”Perhaps you recognise it from there? It is a Corot.”

Jimmie Dale, with a well-simulated start, sat up--and, with another quite as well simulated, stared at the masked man. The other had laid down his book, and swung around in his chair to face the couch. Jimmie Dale stood up a little shakily.

”Look here!” he said awkwardly. ”I--I don't quite understand. I remember that my taxi got into a smash-up, and I suppose I have to thank you for the a.s.sistance you must have rendered me; only, as I say”--he looked in a puzzled way around the room, and in an even more perplexed way at the mask on the other's face--”I must confess I am at a loss to understand quite the meaning of this.”

”Suppose that instead of trying to understand you simply accept things as you find them.” The voice was soft, but there was a finality in it that its blandness only served to make the more suggestive.

Jimmie Dale drew himself up, and bowed coldly.

”I beg your pardon,” he said. ”I did not mean to intrude. I have only to thank you again, then, and bid you good-night.”

The lips beneath the mask parted slightly in a politely deprecating smile.

”There is no hurry,” said the man, a sudden sharpness creeping into his tones. ”I am sorry that the rule I apply to you does not work both ways.

For instance, I might be quite at a loss to account for your presence in that taxicab.”

Jimmie Dale's smile was equally polite, equally deprecating.

”I fail to see how it could be of the slightest possible interest to you,” he replied. ”However, I have no objection to telling you. I hailed the taxi at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place, told the chauffeur to drive me to the St. James Club, and--”

”The St. James Club,” broke in the other coldly, ”is, I believe, north, not SOUTH of Waverly Place--and on Broadway not at all.”

Jimmie Dale stared at the other for an instant in patient annoyance.

”I am quite well aware of that,” he said stiffly. ”Nevertheless I told the man to drive me to the St. James Club. We came across Waverly Place, but on reaching Broadway, instead of turning uptown, he suddenly whirled in the other direction and sent the car flying at full speed down Lower Broadway. I shouted at the man. I don't know yet whether he was drunk or crazy or”--Jimmie Dale's eyes fixed disdainfully on the other's mask--”whether there might not, after all, have been method in his madness. I can only say that before we had gone more than two or three blocks, a wild effort on his part to avoid a collision with an auto swinging out from a side street resulted in an even more disastrous smash with another on the other side, and I was knocked senseless.”

”'Victim,' I presume, is the idea you desire to convey,” observed the other evenly. ”You were quite the victim of circ.u.mstances, as it were!”

Jimmie Dale's eyebrows lifted slightly.

”It would appear to be fairly obvious, I should say.”

”Very clever!” commented the man. ”But now suppose we remove the b.u.t.tons from the foils!” His voice rasped suddenly. ”You are quite as well aware as I am that what has happened to-night was not an accident. Nor--in case the possibility may have occurred to you--are the police any the wiser, save for the existence of two wrecked cars on Lower Broadway, and another which escaped, and for which doubtless they are still searching a.s.siduously. The owners.h.i.+p of the taxicab you so inadvertently entered they will have no difficulty in establis.h.i.+ng--you, perhaps, however, are in a better position than I am to appreciate the fact that the establishment of its owners.h.i.+p will lead them nowhere. As I understand it, the man who drove you to-night obtained the loan of the cab from one of the company's chauffeur's in return for a hundred-dollar bill. Am I right?”

”In view of what has happened,” admitted Jimmie Dale simply, ”I should not be surprised.”

There was a sort of sardonic admiration in the other's laugh.

”As for the other car,” he went on, ”I can a.s.sure you that its owners.h.i.+p will never be known. When the nearest patrolman rushed up, there were no survivors of the disaster, save those in the third car which he was powerless to stop--which accounts for your presence here. You will admit that I have been quite frank.”

”Oh, quite!” said Jimmie Dale, a little wearily. ”But would you mind telling me what all this is leading to?”

The man had been leaning forward in his chair, one hand, palm downward, resting lightly on the desk. He s.h.i.+fted his hand now suddenly to the arm of his chair.

”THIS!” he said, and on the desk where his hand had been lay the Tocsin's gold signet ring.

Jimmie Dale's face expressed mild curiosity. He could feel the other's eyes boring into him.

”We were speaking of owners.h.i.+p,” said the man, in a low, menacing tone. ”I want to know where the woman who owns this ring can be found to-night.”

There was no play, no trifling here; the man was in deadly earnest. But it seemed to Jimmie Dale, even with the sense of peril more imminent with every instant, that he could have laughed outright in savage mockery at the irony of the question. Where was she? Even WHO was she?