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Frank Lucius Packard

Jimmie Dale And The Missing Hour

Published by Good Press, 2022

goodpress@okpublishing.info

EAN 4066338089311

Table of Contents

Prologue In The Years Before

Chapter 1 The Rain Check

Chapter 2 The Missing Hour

Chapter 3 Into The Shadows Again

Chapter 4 Whispers Of The Underworld

Chapter 5 The Dragnet

Chapter 6 At Two In The Morning

Chapter 7 Guarded Voices

Chapter 8 By Special Messenger

Chapter 9 Fragments

Chapter 10 The Tocsin’s Story

Chapter 11 The House Next Door

Chapter 12 The Last Card

Chapter 13 What The Morning Brought

Chapter 14 “X” Marks The Spot

Chapter 15 The Fourth Night

Chapter 16 The Showdown

Chapter 17 The Kernel Of The Case

THE END

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Prologue In The Years Before

Table of Contents

JIMMIE DALE drew suddenly back into the shadows, and the next instant was crouched, beneath the front door steps, at the basement entrance to one of a row of rather pretentious brownstone houses. It was late. The street was deserted—save for that solitary figure who had just turned the corner half a block away and was coming in this direction.

This house here was his, Jimmie Dale’s, immediate objective, and he had not a moment to lose—but now he waited. Much less than half an hour ago, for he had made all speed uptown, someone in the press around him on the Bowery had thrust that envelope into his hand. Who? He did not know. The Tocsin herself this time? He did not even know who the Tocsin was—he knew only that it was another “call to arms” from her to the Gray Seal. And this one tonight, it would seem, so far as the element of time was concerned, was more urgent than any he had ever received before. He had not dared risk the quarter of an hour at least that it would have taken him to go to the Sanctuary, remove his make-up, and change from the disreputable attire of Larry the Bat to the well-cut tweeds of Jimmie Dale—which latter would have been infinitely more in keeping with his visit to this decidedly exclusive residential neighborhood!

But still Jimmie Dale waited—silent and motionless. Larry the Bat, well known as a denizen of the underworld, would be hard put to it, if seen, to explain his presence in this locality so foreign to his usual haunts, even if he were not caught in any untoward act! He fretted impatiently. The snail-like way in which that cop out there was approaching, sauntering in leisurely fashion along his beat, was maddening.

The footsteps drew nearer, louder, rang on the pavement a few feet away from Jimmie Dale’s crouched form, passed by, and continued on along the street, gradually growing fainter in the distance.

And then Jimmie Dale, millionaire clubman, alias the Gray Seal, alias Larry the Bat, peer of the inglorious realm of Gangland, was in action.

From beneath his tattered vest, from that curious leather girdle around his waist, whose numerous stout-sewn upright pockets contained a finely tempered, compact, powerful burglar’s kit, he drew out a slender, blued-steel little instrument. And now, as he pressed close against the basement door, the little instrument slipped into the keyhole, and his slim, tapering fingers, whose tips were as a sixth sense to Jimmie Dale, and none the less sensitive now as the grimy digits of Larry the Bat, were at work.

Came then a faint rasp of metal. The door opened silently, closed as silently—and Jimmie Dale stood in pitch blackness within the house.

For a moment he remained motionless, listening. There was no sound. Then from the girdle came a small flashlight. Its ray winked through the black. Yes, there ahead of him were the stairs. He moved swiftly forward and began to mount them.

Was he in time? If so, how much time had he to spare? “The wall safe,” the Tocsin had written, “in the library behind the big Corot. First floor-right-rear.” It took time for even the Gray Seal to open a wall safe, or any other kind of a safe!

He made no sound. Why should he? Jimmie Dale’s lips parted in a smile that was almost one of apology—to the carpeted stairs. These were not the bare rickety treads of the Sanctuary where, more than once in the years gone by, it had literally meant the difference between life and death to him that there should emanate no single telltale creak out of the ambushed chorus that lay in wait to give blatant tongue in unison at little more provocation than the footfall of a cat!

It was as though a shadow scarcely darker than the surrounding darkness flitted up the stairs and along the hallway above. A minute more and Jimmie Dale had opened the library door and stepped into the room. Here, with the door left open behind him, he listened again. Nothing! Certainly no one of the household appeared to have been disturbed. The first few words of the Tocsin’s letter formulated themselves in his mind once more. The letter had begun as every letter she had ever written to him had begun:

“Dear Philanthropic Crook: “It may already be too late, in which case . . .

His mental rehearsal of the letter ended as abruptly as though the letter itself had ended in the same way. His flashlight, playing inquisitively around the library, had become suddenly arrested, its white ray focused on the wall opposite the door and near the lower end of the room.

It was too late. A large painting had been taken down and now stood on the floor propped against the wall; and, where the picture had hung, the door of a wall safe was swung out wide open.

Jimmie Dale’s lips firmed into a straight line. Not so good! There rang suddenly, premonitorily, in his ears the slogan of the police and the underworld alike: “Death to the Gray Seal!” With that safe already opened, there was perilous work ahead of him—before daylight came. And if he lost the throw of the dice? Whether trapped by the police or the underworld, and the identity of the Gray Seal was thereby disclosed, the end would be the same—only perhaps the chair up the river there at Sing Sing would be the more merciful death. He shrugged his shoulders. Great as its commercial value might be, he had not come here to save a necklace of first-water diamonds—he had come here to save, if possible, a man’s life.

Well, then, the note! The Tocsin had said that if the necklace were gone the note would be here.

He stepped across the room, and his flashlight bored into the interior of the wall safe. The safe contained what appeared to be a number of documents such as insurance policies and the like, nothing else—except an embossed monogrammed correspondence card that had ostentatiously been placed in full view just inside the door of the safe.

Jimmie Dale picked up the card—obviously one of Mrs. Braemer’s own—and, utilizing the ray of his flashlight, began to read the closely written lines that were penned upon it:

“Dear Mother:

“I’ve taken the necklace. Better call it a day. I won’t bother you any more. There’s no love lost between us anyway. You know I’m a bit of a rotter, but you don’t know how much of a rotter I am. I wouldn’t advise you to try to find out—it would only bring scandal to the holy Braemer name!

“You’ve been pretty tight with money”—Jimmie Dale turned over the card—“and I’m in a jam. This is the way out—and a cheap way out for you. After all, I’m entitled to something by way of patrimony. I’ll call this quits. I don’t exist any more. You can tell any story you like to account for my disappearance—no one will be able to contradict you, as neither you nor anyone else, particularly the police, will ever hear from me again. I hope you won’t shed too many tears—for the necklace—I know you won’t shed any for me.

“Tom.”

Jimmie Dale lost not an instant—there was not an instant to lose. There would be ample time for his mind to run riot on the way downtown. He thrust the card into his pocket, and, leaving the door of the wall safe wide open as he had found it, left the house, as he had come—like a swift-moving shadow.

And five minutes later Larry the Bat was staring out through the window of a subway express at the black walls that rushed past him.

He gave free rein to his thoughts now.

He knew something—as a matter of fact, a great deal—about the Braemers. The Braemer family had, to some extent, moved in his own social orbit. Thomas Braemer, the husband and father, had died some ten years ago, leaving his entire estate, which involved a very considerable sum of money, to his widow. The son, Thomas, the “Tom” of the correspondence card, now in his early twenties, had from boyhood shown vicious tendencies, and Mrs. Braemer, a woman of sterling qualities, aware of these tendencies, had kept what check she could upon the lad from the time of her husband’s death. But Mrs. Braemer did not know the half of it, as the note on the correspondence card had intimated. The boy had pretty well gone the limit. The underworld had a far more intimate conception of the depths to which the boy had fallen than the boy’s mother had. Larry the Bat, for instance, knew Tom Braemer for what Tom Braemer really was—Jimmie Dale knew Tom Braemer only from the standpoint of what might be called Tom Braemer’s social status. A tough break for Mrs. Braemer and the boy! Tom Braemer had become what Larry the Bat was credited with being: a dope fiend, a frequenter of the lowest and cheapest—since his mother, with justification, kept him short of money—pipe joints below the Dead Line. Larry the Bat had time and again seen Tom Braemer in one or another of these dives.

Jimmie Dale’s dark eyes grew hard. He spoke suddenly, bitterly under his breath:

“Food for the wolves!”

His thoughts swerved abruptly. That letter of the Tocsin—that he had torn into tiny shreds and cast away after having memorized it, just as he had precautiously torn up and cast away all of her former letters.

“Spike Dorlan,” she had said.

He knew Spike Dorlan. Who in the Bad Lands did not? Spike, czar and autocrat of the so-called Vulture Gang to which he had given birth, and which paid him unswerving allegiance, both by reason of each member’s individual fears, since death was the penalty for disloyalty, and likewise because of the goodly dividends that were paid out under Spike’s unholy leadership, was a killer of the worst type. To Spike, a human life blotted out, if that should chance to advance his interests in any degree, was merely a commonplace detail. He took that life—or his gang did it for him—casually. Spike’s activities were not wholly unsuspected by the police, but Spike was eminently resourceful in a vicious way; and the low cunning, in which art he was a past master, with which he staged his coups had so far enabled him to thumb his nose at the law—which was still another reason why his followers swore by him to a man.

“Death to the Gray Seal!” That ugly slogan was jangling through Jimmie Dale’s mind again. Death at the hands of the police for the “crimes,” even of murder, that he had taken upon himself to save the innocent; death at the hands of the underworld because the Gray Seal, still mysterious and unknown, but once the idol of those who shunned the daylight and lived outside the law, had squealed and sent the rats who justly deserved it to their doom at the hands of the authorities!

And now tonight! There was no more treacherous hive in gangland than the tenement where Spike Dorlan had his headquarters and abode. The pitcher that went to the well! Would it go once too often—before the identity of the Tocsin, the woman, always in danger herself, and whom he had come to love more than life itself, still remained a mystery to him?

His mind probed suddenly back into the years that were gone. That night in Maiden Lane when he had been obliged to carry away with him that string of pearls (afterwards returned, of course) in his sudden dash to escape from Marx’s, the big jewelry store, whose safe he had opened! It had all begun out of a spirit of pure adventure, suggested doubtless through his connection with his father’s business—the business of manufacturing safes—his gray-seal device employed as a guarantee that no innocent bystander of the underworld should be accused of, or suffer for, the series of apparent crimes that were being committed to the dismay and mystification of the police.

How had she known about that string of pearls, and, above all, who he was?

Larry the Bat, gathering his smudgy, unwashed forehead into heavy puckers, shook his head. He did not know. The only intimate thing he knew about her, if even this could be termed intimate, was that just recently, about a month ago, he had found her gold signet ring in the finger of her glove, which latter she had dropped on the floor of his parked car while he was dining one night at Marlianne’s. She had not meant to drop her glove there, much less her ring—he was well enough aware of that—but she had dropped them just the same in her hurry to escape from him unseen as he had emerged from the restaurant.

Sonnez le Tocsin was the scroll that he had read beneath the crest on the ring—the crest itself a bell surmounted by a bishop’s miter. French! Was that in any way significant—an indication of her nationality? A twisted smile pulled down the corners of his mouth. The scroll on even the British coat of arms was in French!

Sonnez le Tocsin! Ring the Tocsin! Sound the alarm! He had called her the Tocsin since then. It seemed so immeasurably apt. Never since that first letter in which she had told him she knew of his escapade at Marx’s in Maiden Lane, and had written—the words lived always in his memory—that “the cleverness, the originality of the Gray Seal as a crook lacked but one thing, and that one thing was that his crookedness required a leading string to guide it into channels that were worthy of his genius,” had any communication received from her been but another call to arms and to sound again the alarm.

He had perforce accepted her ultimatum that in future “she would plan the coups, and he would act at her dictation and execute them; or else, how did twenty years in Sing Sing for that little Maiden Lane affair appeal to him?”—and he had answered “Yes” in the personal column of the next morning’s News-Argus, as she had instructed. His acceptance, however, needless to say, had been accompanied by a mental reservation that he could, and always would, queer any shady work whereby she might attempt to exploit him.

But there had been no shady work for the Gray Seal to do—only some poor devil pulled out of a jam; some man, falsely accused, proved innocent, and the guilty brought to book; some solitary human to bless, while New York’s millions cursed, the name of the Gray Seal. How had she found him out that night in Maiden Lane? The question would never down. How did she come by all this inside knowledge that inspired her notes? He did not know.

Would he ever know?

Larry the Bat emerged from the subway and slunk deep into the East Side. He halted finally in front of a down-at-the-heels, three-story tenement on an ill-lighted cross street. This was Spike Dorlan’s lair—in the top flat.

He glanced sharply up and down the street. In view of what he proposed to do, it would be practically equivalent to his death warrant were Larry the Bat recognized or known to have been here at this hour tonight. There was no one in sight.

The front door was unlocked—the tenants of this hovel-like place did not carry pass-keys! Jimmie Dale stepped inside and began a silent progress up the stairs that, unlike those of the Braemer mansion of a little while before, were as potentially a bedlam of outcries as were those of the Sanctuary itself.

He gained the hallway above. It was utterly dark—except that, here and there, from warped, ill-fitting doorsills, there showed a faint and irregular thread of light. There were sounds—voices muffled behind closed doors; an occasional cough; the clink of a glass. Daylight here was the accepted time for sleep! There were smells—garlic predominated. The place was airless, musty.

Jimmie Dale stole along the hallway of the second floor and began his ascent to the top landing. Reaching this, he halted and nodded in grim satisfaction to himself. He had never been honored with an entrée to Spike Dorlan’s hangout, but the Toscin had never failed in even the most minute of details—those details that had so often bridged the narrow margin between life and death. Directly facing the head of the stairs was the gang leader’s bedroom. No light, either from keyhole or sill, showed from it. The adjoining room to the left was Spike Dorlan’s antechamber where he gave audience, when the spirit moved him, to those who, under his despotic leadership, had risen to the rank, if it could be called a rank, of satraps of the underworld—and from beneath the sill of this door there seeped one of those faint, irregular threads of light that he had noted, from under other sills, on his way up from the ground floor.

Again Jimmie Dale nodded sharply to himself. It was still in the early hours of the morning; and, though he had arrived too late at the Braemer mansion, it would seem now that he could not have been very far outstripped in his race to forestall Spike Dorlan’s successfully vicarious raid on Mrs. Braemer’s wall safe—vicarious because certainly Spike Dorlan, who modestly avoided the footlights, would have delegated the job to an expert emissary. Spike Dorian was still up—and, no doubt, was gloating, at the present moment, over the wretched plunder that his aforesaid emissary had brought him.

Perhaps even the emissary himself was still here.

Jimmie Dale moved across the hall. His ears nestled against the panel of the door. There were no voices from within; but there was the sound of presence . . . faint, almost indefinable . . . little noises . . . movement as of one shifting one’s position in a chair . . . breathing—Spike Dorlan, past middle age and corpulent, was inclined to be a trifle stertorous.

A minute passed, and yet another—and then Jimmie Dale moved. Spike Dorlan was alone in there.

From one of the pockets in the girdle beneath his vest Jimmie Dale took out a black silk mask and slipped it over his face—as his eyes searched through the darkness of the hallway in both directions. There was no sign of light anywhere, save only this meager glow that escaped from under the sill of Spike Dorlan’s door.

And now Jimmie Dale knelt down at the threshold, and from a pocket in the girdle there came, this time, a thin metal case, like a cigarette case. The light, pitiful as it was, was adequate—for Jimmie Dale was working now by almost the sense of touch alone. From the case, with a pair of tiny tweezers that reposed inside the cover, he lifted out one of the diamond-shaped gray seals, adhesive on its under side, that lay within between protecting sheets of oil paper—the insignia of the Gray Seal that had been so many times microscopically searched in vain by the police for fingerprints! He took a none too clean piece of cotton, which did duty for Larry the Bat’s handkerchief, from his jacket pocket, laid the gray seal upon it, and carefully folding the handkerchief, put it back again in his pocket.

Then he stood up. Was the door locked? He tested it noiselessly—and an ironic little smile twisted at the corners of his mouth for a fleeting instant. Spike Dorlan, once ensconced therein, appeared to be imbued with a sublime optimism anent the security afforded him by his own domain! Or perhaps there was another reason why the door was unlocked. Not that it mattered either way—save for the extra moment or so that it would take to open it!

Jimmie Dale’s face was safe from recognition behind the black silk mask, but there remained the chance that the tattered attire of Larry the Bat, if seen, might possibly be identified, and if so—. His lips were suddenly a straight line. Oh, yes, he could hear the howls of the underworld like a pack of ravening wolves at his heels! But “chance” had no place in the Gray Seal’s vocabulary. Spike Dorlan would be favored with no such clue.

“The wall switch,” she had written, “the type that pushes in and out, is just inside the jamb of the door on the left-hand side, shoulder high from the floor.”

Jimmie Dale’s hands sought his pockets again—for the small flashlight and his automatic. For the fraction of a second he stood there poised—and then his movements were lightning like in their rapidity.

In his left hand he held the flashlight, but with two free fingers he turned the door knob, pushed the door just far enough open to allow the back of his hand to sweep up and down the wall beside the door jamb—and the light in the room went out. But instantly in its place the ray of the flashlight, held a little nearer to his body in order to disclose the outflung automatic in his right hand, stabbed through the blackness.

Jimmie Dale was in the room. His shoulders closed the door softly behind him.

There had come a startled oath. Spike Dorlan had half risen from the chair where he had been sitting at a table near the center of the room—he had had no time to do more than that—and his fingers, curled like claws, were still reached out as though to snatch up a string of diamonds from the table that glistened now in the flashlight’s gleam.

“Leave that alone!” It was not Larry the Bat who spoke in the vernacular out of the corner of his mouth; it was Jimmie Dale’s crisp, cultured voice. “I might like to examine it myself!”

Spike Dorlan hastily withdrew his hands. Jimmie Dale advanced to the table.

“Put your hands above your head and turn around with your back to me!” he ordered.

The man in a dazed way hesitated, but the prod of Jimmie Dale’s automatic brought obedience.

Jimmie Dale laid the flashlight on the table—and his deft fingers searched the other’s person. He extracted a gat from Spike Dorlan’s hip pocket and transferred it to his own.

“Now sit down!” he instructed curtly, as he picked up the flashlight from the table.

Once more Spike Dorlan obeyed; but, finding his voice in some measure, gave vent to a guttural curse this time.

Jimmie Dale surveyed the other unhappily. Spike Dorlan, like most of his ilk, was yellow at heart. To kill unconcernedly while he sneered was one thing; to face death himself with any degree of unconcern was another. The pendulous jowls, none too cleanly shaven, quivered; in the beady black eyes, much too small for the flabby face, was unmistakable fear.

But, lacking personal courage, Spike Dorlan did not lack wits—Spike Dorlan’s gang had many a time had evidence of that. He snarled now.

“What t’hell does this mean?” he blustered. “And who t’hell tipped you off?”

Jimmie Dale shook his head.

“I don’t know who tipped me off. I wish I did,” he murmured wistfully; and then his voice hardened: “But as for what it means, I’ll tell you.” Again he laid his flashlight down—but propped it now against a cigar box on the table so that the ray fell full on Spike Dorlan’s face. “First this”—he picked up the diamond necklace and thrust it into his pocket. “And next”—he laid the correspondence card on the table—“this!”

He tilted the flashlight so that Spike Dorlan might see clearly, then tilted it back so that it played on the other’s face once more.

Spike Dorlan’s tongue was circling his lips. “Who are you?” he demanded hoarsely. “Damn you, who are you, anyway?”

“I’ll tell you that, too—though you could hardly have expected an answer,” Jimmie Dale replied as he took his handkerchief from his pocket, lifted it to his lips, then pressed it down upon the table—and drew the handkerchief away. Under the flashlight, its ray conveniently tilted again, the moistened adhesive side adhering firmly to the table, the diamond-shaped gray seal was exposed to Spike Dorlan’s staring eyes. “I apologize for this on two counts,” confessed Jimmie Dale contritely. “In the first place because I have been wantonly plagiarizing myself, having done this exact thing several times before; in the second place because I realize that it is unpardonably melodramatic—but my excuse is that on former occasions, as well as the present one, necessity has compelled.”

Spike Dorlan did not appear to have heard. His face was sallow.

“The Gray Seal!” His voice was a shaken whisper. “Almighty Gawd!”

“You flatter me!” returned Jimmie softly, as with the forefinger of his free hand he edged the correspondence card a little nearer to the other. “A clever bit of forgery, Spike. I doubt if, in the ordinary course of events, it would ever have been questioned. Jake Winler”—a deadly menace had come creeping into Jimmie Dale’s quiet voice—“got out of Sing Sing a month ago. One of the slickest penmen in the country—and one of your mob!”

Spike Dorlan was obviously striving to get a grip on himself. One pudgy hand passed through his hair. He stopped licking his lips.

“Well, what about it?” he inquired ingratiatingly.

Jimmie Dale leaned suddenly across the table—the muzzle of his automatic thrust within almost an inch of the other’s eyes.

“Don’t try to stall!” he warned in an ugly monotone. “You’re playing against a royal flush. Is Tom Braemer, that kid you’ve framed, still alive?”

Spike Dorlan drew hastily back in his chair. Fear was in his eyes again.

“Yes—sure!” he gulped. “Sure, he is! Honest to Gawd, that’s straight. You can see for yourself that there’d be no use bumping him off unless we’d got the sparklers—and I never got them until a few minutes ago. You can see that for yourself, can’t you?”

“That was what I was banking on,” stated Jimmie Dale in the same uncompromising tone. “I hope you’re telling the truth—for his sake, and yours.”

“I’m handing you the straight goods,” asserted Spike Dorlan earnestly.

“I hope so!” Jimmie Dale’s voice was icy. “If you are, and the kid is returned safely to his home, all you lose are these few thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds—and without the police nosing in. I’ll promise you that much to make it worth your while—to save his life. On the other hand, if anything has already happened to him, or happens, I’ll see that the police are wised up, and that you go to the chair for it. You remember what happened to Stangeist, the Mope, Australian Ike, and Clarie Dean, don’t you?”

Spike Dorlan’s fear seemed suddenly to be engulfed in a wave of passion. He struck his clenched hand down on the table.

“Yes!” he snarled. “You squealed on them. You sent them, and others too, to the hot seat to burn. That’s all you are—a dirty, double-crossing squealer! But your number’s up, and some day we’ll get you! Don’t fool yourself there! You can come here and grab that necklace after I’ve done all the work, and then tell me where I get off. You’re the worst thief of the lot of us, and you’ve bumped off quite a few guys yourself. You’ve got a hell of a nerve! To hear you spiel you’d think you’re the only one had the right to cannon a bird, or —”

An ungentle thrust in the chest from the muzzle of Jimmie Dale’s automatic put an abrupt end to Spike Dorlan’s outburst.

“Quite a tirade!” commented Jimmie Dale dispassionately. “But I see that you have grasped the point. Where I have sent others, I can send you. Ever seen that room up the river? Take a salutary look at it some day—before you are the guest of honor! If Tom Braemer dies, you die—while the state’s witnesses look on!”

Spike Dorlan’s tongue was once more circling his lips.

Jimmie Dale regarded the gangster for an instant in silence, then he spoke again, as he pocketed the correspondence card.

“You are a cur,” he rasped scathingly, “a despicable cur! Young Tom Braemer was your meat. According to your frame-up, he steals the necklace from his mother, leaves a signed confession behind, disappears—and is never heard of again. How could he ever be heard of again if his disappearance is based on the hoary premise that dead men tell no tales? In the investigation that would follow, the depths to which he has fallen would be unearthed by the police, his theft and disappearance under such circumstances would be logical to a degree, no suspicion would be aroused that things were not as they seemed, the affair would be hushed up for the sake of his mother and the family name, you would be left in possession of your miserable loot without fear of exposure—and all it would cost you would be a man’s life! But Tom Braemer did not steal that necklace. You stole it. And you—”

The flashlight, in Jimmie Dale’s left hand again, was searching Spike Dorlan’s face. Into the gangster’s eyes had come—and vanished—a momentary gleam of cunning. But Jimmie Dale had heard it, too—the creak of the decrepit staircase, the heavy tread of men’s mounting footsteps. He counted. Three of them, at least—more likely four.

And then, in no more than the space of time it would take a watch to tick, Jimmie Dale circled the table to Spike Dorlan’s side.

“Some of your crowd, eh?” he shot out in a whisper. “Coming here for last-minute orders as to whether Tom Braemer is ‘for it,’ or not?” The muzzle of his automatic prodded viciously at the pit of the other’s stomach. “Answer!”

“Yes,” mumbled Spike Dorlan.

“Stand up!” ordered Jimmie Dale peremptorily. “And, if you make a sound, you go out first! Understand?”

Spike Dorlan rose to his feet. Jimmie Dale’s flashlight pointed the way—through the open connecting door into the bedroom.

The insistent prodding of the automatic’s muzzle indicated the further direction that was to be taken. The two men halted at the bedroom door that opened on the hall. Jimmie Dale unlocked it silently.

The footsteps were clattering now on the hallway without—moving toward the sitting-room door, Spike Dorlan’s “audience chamber.” The chances were perhaps an even break—perhaps only one in ten. But there was no other way.

Spike Dorlan’s myrmidons seemed to be clustered around the sitting-room door now—they were knocking upon it.

“Remember!” Jimmie Dale’s lips were pressed against the gangster’s ear. “Tom Braemer at home, and alive, by daylight—or you smoke!”

Spike Dorlan was given no chance to reply. With every ounce of his strength behind the blow, Jimmie Dale’s fist crashed to the other’s chin, and the man, hurtling backward into the room, went down under the blow.

Jimmie Dale tore the door open and darted out into the hall. A dark shape, a straggler from his fellow gangsters obviously, loafed in the way; but before Jimmie Dale’s headlong rush the man toppled over with a startled yelp.

Jimmie Dale, in the darkness now, took the stairs two and three at a time. But, when no more than halfway down the upper flight, came Spike Dorlan’s screaming voice, punctuated with hysterical and frantic oaths:

“The Gray Seal! Get him! Get the—! It’s the Gray Seal! Give him the works!”

Came then a chorus of blasphemous yells, the tongue flames of revolver shots lancing through the blackness down the stairway from above—the thud of feet in pursuit.

Jimmie Dale gained the hallway of the second floor. Doors, in this tenement of sleepless night, flew open avidly because of the commotion—and closed hastily as Jimmie Dale’s automatic barked a passage for himself along the hall.

He reached the head of the stairway leading to the ground floor, leaped downward, and, near the bottom, tripped—to plunge head foremost the rest of the way as something, a chair, he thought subconsciously, was hurled down in front of him from over the banister above.

He picked himself up, fighting desperately against giddiness and nausea. There was not only his own life at stake, but another’s. If they got him now, and he went out like a snuffed candle as he surely would, they would get back the necklace, Spike Dorlan would be “sitting pretty,” and Tom Braemer would never be heard of again.

His left arm hung limpless. He thrust his automatic into his pocket, tore the mask from his face, jumped for the front door, wrenched it open, and dashed out into the street.

Coming down the stairs, though a flight behind him, Spike Dorlan’s gangsters had been in full cry. He had at least that much start, that much lead. Nerve force alone sustaining him, he swerved into an alleyway as they now came pouring out of the tenement, and their yells echoed from the street.

On he ran—another alleyway—then a cross street—another alleyway again. None knew the East Side with its intricate ramifications as Jimmie Dale knew it. On he forced himself to run until all sound of pursuit had died away. He had thrown them off the trail—but none too soon, for despite his every effort now his pace had begun to slacken woefully.

He slumped down finally on a doorstep. He was hurt—and badly hurt. The last vestige of his strength seemed to have ebbed away. His left arm was useless. His head ached and throbbed mercilessly. The street swam before his eyes. He wasn’t going to faint, was he?

He lashed himself mentally. Above all and everything else he must retain his senses. Larry the Bat must not be found here with that telltale necklace in his pocket—whether by the police, Spike Dorlan’s mob, or by anyone else. He must get somewhere—to cover and safety. It was too far to the Sanctuary—he had not strength enough for that.

And then suddenly uplift surged upon him. Luck that he should have come this way! He knew where he was; for, notwithstanding his twistings and turnings, he had never lost his bearings from the moment he had fled from Spike Dorlan’s tenement. Down that alleyway almost directly across the street was one of the entrances to Lan Chi’s pipe joint—where Larry the Bat, supposed dope fiend, was always a welcome guest.

Jimmie Dale staggered to his feet. Thank God for the hour and the empty street! A bunk where he could rest and get his strength back; a pipe—that he would not smoke! He could even drift off into unconsciousness there with impunity if a fainting spell actually overtook him. His condition would be attributed to his bout with opium.

He made his way unsteadily across the street, disappeared in the mouth of the alleyway—and a minute or so later was standing in one of the half-dozen small cubicle-like enclosures that were thinly partitioned off from one another in Lan Chi’s subcellar.

Larry the Bat was an honored client. Lan Chi himself was in attendance; but Lan Chi, who had long since graduated from pidgin English, was apologetic.

“Full house tonight,” he explained obsequiously. “Have to make double. I go get you pipe.”

“All right,” responded Larry the Bat mechanically as Lan Chi shuffled away.

A lamp suspended from the ceiling gave a modicum of light. There were two bunks here, and, as Lan Chi had intimated, one was already occupied. Not so good! But he had no choice in the matter. He was in no condition to go elsewhere. He felt weak, and his head was going around, but he must see who was in that bunk there. He stepped over to it and peered down.

The occupant waved his long-stemmed pipe dreamily.

“Hello, Larry!” he said.

“Oh, it’s youse, eh? Hello, Sonny!” responded Larry the Bat cordially, as he retreated to his own bunk and threw himself down upon it.

Lan Chi reappeared, bringing an offering to the god of poppy and vanished.

Larry the Bat, reputedly confirmed dope fiend, had never taken a whiff of opium in his life; and now, more through force of habit than anything else, he toyed with his pipe in pretense—with the artistry of long practice. His mind was ragged. It seemed to work in snatches. He was all in for the moment, but he’d be fit enough again after a few hours’ rest. His arm wasn’t broken—he was sure of that. That was Sonny Gartz over there in that bunk. He, Jimmie Dale, had hoped to be alone in here. Nothing to fear from Sonny, though. Young Sonny Gartz was still one of the lesser breed in the underworld; not a specialist in any particular line of criminal activity as yet, but with the promise of big things ahead—if a bullet or the police did not get him on the way up! And meanwhile Sonny was known everywhere throughout the purlieus of the Bad Lands as being a square guy and on the level. He, Jimmie Dale, could even fall into a coma here, and that necklace in his pocket would still be safe so far as Sonny Gartz was concerned.

A coma? What was the matter with him? Perhaps it wasn’t only that smash on his head and the hurt of his injured arm. The entire cellar here reeked with the sweet, sickish fumes of opium. Perhaps that had a lot to do with it now. It was coming over him again—that same premonitive sensation he had experienced out there on the street, only intensified—as though he were slipping over the edge of an abyss and falling, slowly at first, then faster and faster, with a swift whirling motion—down into nothingness.

When Jimmie Dale opened his eyes again it was with the vague consciousness that he was being shaken roughly, and that a voice was screaming in his ear.

“Come on, Larry!” the voice seemed to scream. “For Gawd’s sake, come on! Youse have got to beat it—quick!”

Jimmie Dale struggled weakly upon his elbow —and fell back on the bunk again. His limbs were without vigor; and, apart from his whirling head, his lungs seemed to be strangely choked, and he gasped for breath. That was Sonny Gartz screaming at him, wasn’t it? He stared at the form that bent over him. Yes, that was Sonny, all right, but Sonny appeared to be idiotically enveloped in a cloud of some sort of smoke—like one of those pictured jinns of schoolboy days emerging from the neck of a bottle!

“Wot’s the matter, Sonny?” he muttered.

Again he felt himself being shaken, but this time more violently and insistently than before.

“Jeese, Larry, snap out of it!” Sonny’s scream was frantic now, rising in its pitch. “De dump’s on fire. It’ll be a bloody furnace in a minute. Get up out of dat! Damn youse, get up out of dat, or de two of us is gone!”

For a moment the stupor cleared partially away from Jimmie Dale’s brain. The subcellar was on fire . . . Those yellow waves were flames . . . The thin partition . . . Those clouds were smoke from the blazing woodwork . . . It was death, of course, to be trapped in here. He half wrenched, half threw himself from the bunk and gained his feet. Perhaps it was too late already . . . He heard cries and shrieks of terror . . . Sonny was a fool not to run for it when every second counted . . . What was Sonny waiting for . . .?

Jimmie Dale groped out with his hands, took a step forward—and pitched to the floor.

But he still clung desperately to a thread of consciousness. He heard Sonny Gartz curse in hysterical, insane desperation. He realized that he was being carried in Sonny’s arms. Then scorching heat . . . Always screams and hideous cries . . . A falling timber, blazing, that struck them both, blocking the way . . . On again, stumbling, swaying . . . Sonny retching as he breathed . . Smoke, curtains of it, acrid, suffocating . . .

And then a lapse into unconsciousness again—and then the realization of open space, of cool, fresh, life-giving air.

His senses revived. He lifted his head and looked around him. It was half light. He was lying on the ground close up against a board fence; Sonny Gartz sat beside him. From the distance, muffled, came the clang of a bell, shouts, the separately indeterminate sounds as of an excited, milling throng.

“Feelin’ better, eh?” inquired Sonny Gartz solicitously.

“Yes,” said Larry the Bat. “Where are we?”

“Around de corner in Ike Cohen’s junk yard. Listen to de crowd! Dere’s about half a dozen tenements fer a bonfire, an’ half de fire brigade, an’ a million cops down dere. I got out by a way youse would’ve known yerself if youse hadn’t had a coupla pipes too many, an’ I was afraid of a pinch, but I couldn’t get youse any furder dan dis. I guess youse got a bad arm from dat hunk of rafter dat fell on us, but youse’ll be all okay when de dope wears off—an’ I’ll get youse over to yer own dump as soon as youse can stagger around enough to make a getaway an’ grab a taxi or something.”

Jimmie Dale stared at the other for a long minute. He was miserably weak and sick, but his mind was functioning again. At mention of the police he had mechanically thrust his hand into his pocket, not through mistrust of Sonny Gartz, but at the thought of what a “pinch” by the police would have meant with that necklace found in his possession—and also the sudden fear that it might have dropped out of his pocket as Sonny had carried him to safety. But it was quite safe. His fingers, in his pocket, were still clutched around it.

Jimmie Dale’s thoughts swerved. What, after all, did the necklace matter compared with what this man had done? In the most literal sense his life had been saved by Sonny Gartz; and in the most literal sense Sonny Gartz had not hesitated to risk his own life in so doing. His eyes roved over the other. Sonny Gartz’s face was blistered and scorched, his hands were bleeding, his clothes torn.

“Youse did a swell thing for me, kid,” said Larry the Bat—and Larry the Bat’s voice was husky with emotion.

“Aw, ferget it!” growled Sonny Gartz awkwardly.

By sheer force of will, for the second time that night, Jimmie Dale rose to his feet.

“Nix!” said Larry the Bat, as he reached out his hand. “It ain’t one of dose things dat I fergits. Maybe some day I can do something fer youse.”

Sonny Gartz laughed to hide embarrassment.

“Maybe youse can—youse never knows,” he said. “Well, den, make it a rain check, Larry.”

“It’ll be good any time, Sonny—an’ dat goes all de way,” said Larry the Bat simply.

“All right,” said Sonny Gartz. “Youse’re on yer feet again—let’s go!” . . .

But that was in the years before. . . .

Chapter 1 The Rain Check

Table of Contents

IT WAS late evening. His dinner clothes replaced by a comfortable dressing gown, Jimmie Dale sat at his flat-topped rosewood desk in his home on Riverside Drive. There were letters to write, and one, half finished, lay before him—but he was no longer writing.

He had permitted himself quite shamelessly, but not wholly without justification, to fall into a reverie. His life of the yesterdays and his life of the tomorrows had come at last now to a final parting of the ways. He nodded his head impatiently. Yes, of course, he knew quite well that he had told himself this same thing before on other occasions, only to find himself at almost the next instant pitted against the underworld again—but this time, certainly, all that was definitely at an end!

His eyes roved over the luxurious but rather curiously appointed room that he called his den, and which ran the entire depth of the house on the second floor—the matched panels; the cozy fireplace; the rich velvet rug; the easel with one of his own completed canvases upon it; that queer little curtained alcove occupied by the squat, barrel-shaped safe with its complicated mechanism of inner and outer doors, that he had designed himself in the days when he had been associated with his father’s business.

He loved the room. It was full of memories. Strange things had happened here. But, too, he had come to know that it possessed an underlying sense of loneliness—as did, indeed, everything connected with this little-less-than mansion that was his home. Even faithful old Jason, who had been butler to his, Jimmie Dale’s, father before him could not dispel that feeling. It had been lonely here since his parents had died.

But that was over now—a thing of the past. In a few more days she would be mistress here—his wife. Her identity, the identity of the Tocsin, had long since ceased to be a mystery. Marie LaSalle—Marie! But she would always be the Tocsin! The days when, following the murder of her father and her uncle at the hands of the old Crime Club, she had fought in the disguise of Silver Mag, and then as Mother Margot, for her life and fortune were gone forever; for, with the Crime Club finally destroyed, she had been able to resume her normal life—and they were to have been married then. Only the war had intervened, and they had both volunteered, agreeing to postpone their marriage until after the war. She had gone as a nurse.

Well, the war was over now—had been for more than a year. And during the last few months she had been in Paris purchasing her trousseau. His face hardened suddenly. She was even supposed to be there now; but of late, instead, she had been here in New York—as Mother Margot —coming back hurriedly and secretively because of what had become known to the public as the Blue Envelope Murder, in which Ray Thorne, who was to have been “best man” at their wedding, had been the victim.

Jimmie Dale cupped his chin in his hands for a moment. It had seemed a cruelly ironic trick of fate that it should have been Ray’s murder that had thrown them both, the Tocsin as Mother Margot, and himself both as Smarlinghue and Larry the Bat, into the fray again, when they had both been so sure that their contact with the underworld had been definitely severed for all time.

But that was the past—he lifted his head suddenly, a quiet smile on his lips—and the past belonged to the past. Whereas now, beyond any peradventure of doubt, the shadows that had kept Marie and himself for so long apart were behind them for always; for last night had seen Daddy Ratzler and his son Beaton, Ray Thorne’s murderers, trapped—and there would never be again a “call to arms” to the Gray Seal from her, inspired by the inside knowledge that had so often come into her possession while living the life of Silver Mag or Mother Margot.

With a mental jerk Jimmie Dale brought himself back to his immediate surroundings. He drew the half-written letter toward him and picked up his pen—but once more his thoughts strayed as his eyes caught again the scareheads of the paper that he had previously brushed aside and which now lay at one end of the desk. It was an evening sheet, but the scareheads, flung in massive type across the front page from one side to the other, were even more lurid than those carried by the special and late editions of the morning papers. News of this sort was not ephemeral—everything else had been “killed” to give place to it. Automatically he read the scareheads over again:

MURDERERS OF RAY THORNE ARRESTED

THE GRAY SEAL, ALIAS LARRY THE BAT, WHO WAS ACCUSED OF THE CRIME, BRINGS GUILTY MEN TO JUSTICE

And then, in smaller type:

Herman Carruthers, Managing Editor of the “Morning News-Argus,” Plays Momentous Part in Capture.

Jimmie Dale laughed softly to himself as the scene of last night in Daddy Ratzler’s secret sub-cellar visualized itself before him—Carruthers—Larry the Bat—the handcuffed Beaton! Carruthers’s rise from reporter to managing editor had been meteoric, for he was still a young man of no more than his, Jimmie Dale’s, own age; but from the beginning it had been Carruthers’s one obsession to lay the Gray Seal by the heels.

“Good old Carruthers!” chuckled Jimmie Dale. “I wonder what he’d have said, or done, last night if he’d found out that Larry the Bat was his bosom pal—Jimmie Dale! I wonder what—”

Someone was knocking on the door.

“Come in!” Jimmie Dale called.

It was old Jason, the butler.

“Begging your pardon, Master Jim, sir,” he announced, “Mr. Carruthers has called and would like to see you.”

“Speak of the devil,” grinned Jimmie Dale under his breath, “and—”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Jason interposed respectfully “but I didn’t quite catch what you said, Master Jim.”

“I said show him up by all means, Jason.”

“Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” returned the old man quietly, as he closed the door behind him.

Jimmie Dale was lounging back in his desk chair as Carruthers entered the room a minute or so later.

“Oh, hello, my hero of the hour!” Jimmie Dale exclaimed capriciously. “I see that your fellow editors are continuing to play you up most generously—very nice of them, considering that you chaps are generally always clawing at each other’s throats! And that was some scoop with that roaring special of yours this morning! It strikes me you owe the Gray Seal a deep debt of gratitude after last night. I hope that at last your attitude toward him has become one of at least decent restraint.”

Carruthers dropped into a chair and produced his cigarette case.

“What do you mean—decent restraint?” he demanded.

“Well,” prodded Jimmie Dale slyly, “in the pre-war days when he first broke into print you began by calling him the most puzzling, bewildering, delightful crook in the annals of crime, and you had the newspaper itch to get him, though you said you’d actually be sorry if you did, for you had come to love the fellow—that it was the game, really, that you wanted to beat. Then you began to revile him and became a bloodhound on the trail ready to tear him limb from limb if you ever caught up with him, and—”

“That was when he began to commit his filthy murders,” Carruthers interrupted sharply. “My attitude toward him since then has not changed.”

“And yet,” observed Jimmie Dale casually, “he vindicated himself last night. You and everyone else believed he had murdered Ray Thorne because one of his gray seals was found on Ray’s safe.”

“He undoubtedly vindicated himself in that particular instance,” Carruthers admitted bluntly; “but that does not absolve him from the murders that he has committed.”

“And yet,” persisted Jimmie Dale, “when you barged in here at dawn this morning to tell me what had happened, I think, if I am not mistaken, you said you had gratuitously stretched out your hand to clasp his red-stained palm.”

“I’d shake hands with any murderer who had done what he did last night,” Carruthers asserted gruffly.

“And, no doubt,” murmured Jimmie Dale, “would have handed him over to the police—if you could—at the same time you handed Beaton over.”

“No,” refuted Carruthers brusquely. “You know damned well that when he first telephoned me about Ray I gave him my word I’d play the game with him in return for his promise, as he expressed it, to make me ‘a present of Ray’s murderer with the goods on him.’ “

“Stout fellow!” applauded Jimmie Dale. “But I’m afraid I’m responsible for an unpardonable digression. Last night was an exception, of course; but what brings you here tonight at this hour, in spite of that fetish of yours of always seeing your paper put to bed?”

Carruthers was studying the tip of his cigarette. “The Gray Seal,” he stated tersely.

Jimmie Dale leaned nonchalantly forward over his desk.

“A bit of the backwash from last night, I suppose?” he suggested lightly.

“In a sense, yes,” Carruthers answered; “in a much broader sense, no. Listen, Jimmie, a rather queer thing has happened. I started out for the office this evening as usual, and at the usual time—say an hour ago. I took a taxi downtown. When I got out in front of our building the street was apparently deserted, but before I had crossed the sidewalk a man appeared from an adjacent doorway and came up to me. He had evidently checked up on me and my habits, for he called me by name and said he had been waiting to beg me to help him—that, as a matter of fact, his life was in danger. I asked him at once, of course, why, in that case, he didn’t go to the police. His answer was that he would be bumped off within the hour if he did.”

“Oh!” Jimmie Dale nodded. “Of the genus gangster, eh? Just as bad for him, I’d say, if he were found talking to a newspaper man! But how were you to save this precious life of his?”

“By putting him in touch with Larry the Bat—to wit, the Gray Seal,” Carruthers replied briefly. Jimmie Dale’s brows drew slightly together.

“Look here, Carruthers, old chap,” he complained,” you’re really most confusing, you know. I don’t get this at all.”

“I’ll try to make it clear,” Carruthers returned quietly. “He said he had read in the papers that I had been with Larry the Bat last night, hence I was the only chance he had of making contact with Larry the Bat; that Larry the Bat was his one hope—and, failing that, that he was a goner.”

Jimmie Dale’s brows drew still a little closer together.

“What is this, Carruthers?” he inquired whimsically. “A frame—up to snaffle the jolly old Gray Seal, a sort of come-into-my-parlor stunt and all that kind of thing? Frankly, I must say it wouldn’t be at all nice of you after that promise of yours, old dear.”

“It’s no frame-up so far as I am concerned,” Carruthers affirmed somewhat tartly; “nor, I am convinced, on the part of this man we are talking about, either. He was too genuinely anxious and worried to leave any doubt in my mind as to his sincerity.”

“Well?” prompted Jimmie Dale.

“Well,” conceded Carruthers, “I had been taken aback, naturally, from the start. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I told him to telephone me in the morning, and that in the meantime I’d think it over and see what I could do. He went off along the street then; and I decided that, instead of going into our building and upstairs to my office, I’d take a subway uptown to save time, and talk it over with you. So that is what I did—and here I am.

“So I perceive,” said Jimmie Dale dryly. “But, for God’s sake, my dear old chap, would you mind telling me just why I am so honored? And also what on earth you imagine I have to do with this?”

“I don’t imagine you have anything to do with it,” said Carruthers decisively; “but we have worked together before on cases where the Gray Seal was involved, and you know as much of his methods as I do. I think that this contact should be made if possible, and I want your advice as to how best to make it.”

“On the basis that, having trusted you afore-times, the Gray Seal will trust you again?”

“Yes.”

“And you? Once in your power, the temptation to let him—er—stub his toe? What about that?” Carruthers bridled.

“Damn it!” he whipped out. “What do you think I am?”

Jimmie Dale smiled disarmingly.

“Please, Carruthers,” he murmured, “please don’t ask me to indulge in personalities. We will grant at once, however, that he will be safe in your protecting arms; but, incident to such circumstances, it may not perhaps have occurred to you that you would not come far short of compounding a felony if, being in a position to do so, you did not turn him over to the authorities.”

“I’d be compounding a worse felony if I sat tight and did nothing,” Carruthers declared earnestly. “I’m sure of that. I’m sure that man told the literal truth when he said his life depended on making contact with Larry the Bat. I don’t know why. But I wouldn’t care to hear that he had been murdered, and feel that I possibly might have done something to prevent it.”

Jimmie Dale grinned pleasantly.

“Yes; quite so!” he said. “Very commendable of you, Carruthers, old chap, since you feel that way about it. But, after all, what do you know about this fellow? What did he tell you about himself? Who is he? What does he look like?”

“It was rather dark there on the sidewalk,” Carruthers explained; “and, besides, he had a slouch hat pulled pretty well down over his eyes. I am afraid the only description of him that I could give would be that he was a well-built, broad-shouldered man of about my height, a little younger than we are, I should say, and that he was quite well dressed. He didn’t tell me anything about himself except that his name was Sonny Gartz. He said that was all Larry the Bat would need to know.”

Jimmie Dale leaned comfortably back in his chair. His eyes held placidly, unemotionally on Carruthers’s face; but his mind was far away: Back to the days before the war; back to the days of the old Sanctuary and Larry the Bat; back to the days when the Tocsin was still a mystery to him; back to a certain night when Lan Chi’s dive had been a hell of fire and smoke and torment. Sonny Gartz! Sonny Gartz had saved Larry the Bat’s life that night, made light of his own heroism, and, embarrassed by his, Jimmie Dale’s gratitude, had said he would take a “rain check” on Larry the Bat’s offer to do something for him in return, if the need ever came. Here was the rain check. There was no question but that it would be honored. Far better than Carruthers now he knew that Sonny Gartz was in desperate need. His mind veered from the old days to the present. Only a little while ago he had assured himself that the Gray Seal had been swallowed up in the pot forever; but, after all, anything he might now be able to do for Sonny Gartz did not at all necessarily mean anything but a momentary return, if even that, to the old life. There was a hiatus of a few days anyway ahead of him. Marie, though actually now in New York, was not supposed to return from Europe for, say, still another week. And, owing to Ray’s murder, the stage was set—the new Sanctuary at his disposal, and the roles of either Larry the Bat or Smarlinghue, if need be, could be instantly and readily assumed. Sonny Gartz! His mind was back again to that night in Lan Chi’s dive. Sonny Gartz had risked his life to save Larry the Bat. It was Larry the Bat’s turn now—not a return to be made grudgingly, but one to be given gladly no matter what the cost, and—

“Well,” Carruthers jerked out impatiently, “what’s all the deep thought about?”

“I was thinking,” lied Jimmie Dale smoothly, “that your pernicious habit of everlastingly gum-shoeing after the Gray Seal may very possibly land you in a heap of trouble yourself one of these days. As a matter of fact, I have a ghastly suspicion that is what’s at the back of your mind in the present instance, rather than an overwhelming sense of anxiety anent the welfare of one Sonny Gartz.”

Carruthers scowled.

“Oh, shut up, Jimmie!” he growled. “This isn’t getting me anywhere. You can label my motive any way you like, but I’m going through with this if I can. I am frankly at a loss as to how to get in touch with the Gray Seal, or Larry the Bat, whichever you want to call him, and I came here on the chance of getting a helpful suggestion from you. If you haven’t got one to offer, I might as well chase along and see what I can do on my own.”

“Oh, well,” sighed Jimmie Dale resignedly, “if you feel that way, I’ll take a shot at it. Wait a jiffy till I get the old intellect at work.” He stared thoughtfully at Carruthers for a full minute—his furrowed brow hiding a mental chuckle. And then his face cleared, and he leaned across the desk toward Carruthers. “I’ve got it!” he announced impressively. “Simplest thing in the world!”

“I’m listening,” invited Carruthers.

“He’s telephoned you several times of his own accord during his scandalous and bloodthirsty career, hasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s no reason why he should hesitate to do so again?”

“No.”

“Exactly! That’s the point!” expounded Jimmie Dale with mounting enthusiasm. “So you stick an item in the personal column of the News-Argus, asking him to telephone you. Say that his confidence and all that sort of thing will be strictly observed—or use any other old motto you like. And sign your name.”

“H’m!” Carruthers pulled at his lower lip. “And suppose he never reads the News-Argus—suppose he never sees it?”

“Then we’ll have to do something else.”

“What?”

“I haven’t the faintest!” acknowledged Jimmie Dale brightly. “I’ll admit my idea doesn’t scintillate with genius, but it’s the best I can do for you. After all, having chummed up with him last night, your rag is the one he’s bound to read to see what you’ve got to say about it all.”

Carruthers got up from his chair.

“Well, I’ll try it, of course,” he said, “along with anything else I can think up; but it looks to me like a dashed long shot, and I haven’t got much faith in it—besides, there’s the time element involved. It might be a lot too late even if he did see it.”

“Carruthers,” remonstrated Jimmie Dale, “you are flicking on the raw. Most ungenerous of you! I have already admitted that the old bean has not been brilliant, but it’s done its best. I haven’t another earthly idea to suggest.”

“Oh, good Lord,” protested Carruthers, “I’m not blaming you! I don’t know of anything else to do myself.” He moved toward the door. “Don’t come down. Jason will see that I don’t pinch your best hat; and he needn’t call a taxi, because I’m going back the way I came—by subway.”

Jimmie Dale stood up.

“Right!” he said. “And of course you’ll keep me posted on anything that breaks loose.”

“Naturally!” Carruthers’s hand was on the door knob.

“But, please,” pleaded Jimmie Dale facetiously, “at a reasonable hour. You know, you’ve got a beastly habit of yanking a chap out of a sound sleep at three or four o’clock in the morning with the dulcet tinkling of the telephone bell. Postpone anything of that sort hereafter, will you, like a good fellow, until the first matutinal cigarette?”

“Oh, go to the devil!” retorted Carruthers politely, as he grimaced himself out of the room.

Jimmie Dale slumped down in his chair. Bodily inactive, his mind was instantly virile and at work. A time limit! That had been in his thoughts from the first. If Sonny Gartz was in the kind of jam that had caused him to make a last, desperate, back-to-the-wall appeal for help through Carruthers, with the chances apparently a thousand to one against him of any contact with Larry the Bat ever being established in that way, it became a question, not of days, but far more likely of hours, or even minutes, in which any help that reached him would be of any avail.

But where and how could he reach Sonny Gartz? He had not heard of Sonny Gartz since before the war, and even at that time Sonny Gartz had not been allied with any particular gang. And since that time the old type of gang leader had given place to the boiled-shirt Park Avenue big shot, the bootlegger, and the new phase of racketeer from whose “squeeze” nothing was immune. The Bowery had disappeared; its glamour and color replaced by drab shock joints and flop houses. True, some of the old undercover dives and dens remained—and always would, of course —but the picture on the whole was entirely changed.

How reach Sonny Gartz? Where?

At any price and at any hazard that rain check would be honored if it were humanly possible for him to honor it.

But how?

For half an hour, three quarters of an hour, Jimmie Dale sat there motionless; then he got up from his chair, crossed the room, opened the door, crossed the hall, entered his bedroom, and passed on into the adjoining dressing room. It was a slim chance—but there seemed to be no other way, no other choice. It was not yet midnight. The new Sanctuary—the clothes and make-up for the role of Smarlinghue hidden there behind the baseboard—a round of the still existent dens and dives —Smarlinghue had the entree everywhere—perhaps he might strike the trail of Sonny Gartz. It would be luck, of course—but there was no other way, no other move that he could see to make against that time limit.

He threw off his dressing gown—and, in the act of reaching for a suit of clothes in his wardrobe, paused. The telephone on the stand beside his bed was ringing. He went back into the bedroom and picked up the receiver.

Carruthers’s voice reached him:

“That you, Jimmie?”

“Oh, hello, Carruthers,” drawled Jimmie Dale. “Thanks for your consideration, old top. I hadn’t quite turned in.”

“Well, you can”—there was a rasp in Carruthers’s voice—“so far as Sonny Gartz is concerned. There won’t be any ‘personal’ in the paper. He’s dead.”

Jimmie Dale stiffened.

“Dead?” he repeated bleakly.

“Yes,” said Carruthers. “Over on a slab in the morgue. Identified by the police. Riddled by a submachine gun. Must have been shot down within a couple of blocks after he left me—almost immediately after I started for your place—the fellows in the office heard the shots.”

Jimmie Dale made no answer.

“Thought I’d let you know,” said Carruthers. “Rotten business! Good-night!”

“Good-night,” said Jimmie Dale mechanically —but Jimmie Dale’s face was lined and sober as he replaced the receiver on the hook.

He had owed his life to Sonny Gartz.

Chapter 2 The Missing Hour

Table of Contents

JIMMIE DALE had not slept well following Carruthers’s telephone message, and he awoke in the morning unrefreshed. After breakfast he had attempted to reach Marie on the phone at her so-called hotel on the East Side, where no questions were ever asked if the rent was paid in advance, and where she was still living, pending now her “arrival” in New York; but the answer had come back that Agnes Watkins was not in.

This had depressed him more than ever. He had sorely felt the need of her companionship this morning—somewhere, of course, where she would be safe from recognition, for, naturally, being supposed to be in Europe while actually forced to return and reassume at times the role of Mother Margot in the running down of the murderers of Ray Thorne, she had been obliged to live incognito amid such questionable surroundings as would enable her to issue forth unsuspected and at will, whether as Agnes Watkins or in the guise of Mother Margot.

He had essayed a philosophic attitude of mind, telling himself that this sort of thing would not endure much longer, since she was now expected back in New York shortly, at which time her “arrival” on the pier would be adequately staged for the benefit of her friends, and that all would then be well; but, nevertheless, his disappointment at failing to make contact with her this morning had been none the less acute.

At loose ends then, restlessly, he had taken his light touring car and had spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon in motoring aimlessly alone on Long Island.

It was four o’clock now as, returning to New York, he parked his car and entered the St. James Club. He was still restless. He picked up a newspaper haphazardly from the rack and went into the lounge. The lounge was deserted. Too early in the afternoon for any activity, of course. He selected a window seat and searched rapidly through the paper. There was one possible item of news, and one only, that would interest him. Yes; here it was. But there were no details other than those that he had read at breakfast time. Fewer, in fact. Gang killings were becoming commonplace. Sonny Gartz’s obituary had already been relegated to no more than a matter of a few sticks. He laid the paper aside and stared out of the window.

The murder of Sonny Gartz had struck deep under his skin. He had been depressed all day. He owed his life to Sonny Gartz. But what could he do? Last night, in response to Sonny Gartz’s appeal for help, there had been no hesitancy on his part—and Larry the Bat could have lived again if, by so doing, it would have aided Sonny Gartz in any way. But Sonny Gartz was dead now. He could not restore Sonny Gartz to life. To go back as a creature of the underworld would avail nothing for the moment, though inherent in him, of course, was the urge to see the killer or killers brought to justice. But the police were not sitting idly by and twiddling their thumbs. It was a gang feud undoubtedly. If eventually the police failed, and he, as Smarlinghue or Larry the Bat, could, through the underworld, pick up the broken threads, he would most certainly do so; but the police had not yet failed, and between Jimmie Dale and the old double life there lay a gulf now that, both for Marie’s sake and his own, he did not wish to bridge again unless it were imperative that he should do so. But, meanwhile, to honor that rain check merely with an anonymous wreath —a floral tribute!

His lips were tight—compressed into a straight line. No; that was unthinkable—surely he could do more than that! he had heard nothing of Sonny Gartz since those years before the war; but Sonny Gartz might well have a wife—children—who might now, with Sonny Gartz’s passing, be in need. Carruthers, pitchforked headlong into the case, would acquire all those details, and quite innocently would pass them on to Jimmie Dale—and, well, who would know where the money came from?

Jimmie Dale nodded his head now emphatically. Yes; he would get after Carruthers on that score. He had had no word from Carruthers since that telephone message last night—which was quite natural. Carruthers, always late from the office, slept through the morning—and he, Jimmie Dale, had been away all day. He glanced at his wrist watch. It was well after four o’clock. Not a bad idea perhaps to call up Carruthers now at his bachelor apartment.

He half rose from his chair, but sat down again as a club attendant approached and tendered a newspaper.

“I beg pardon, Mr. Dale,” said the man, “but this is an extra edition just on the street, and the hall porter, knowing you were in the club, sir, and that the gentleman mentioned is a personal friend of yours, thought you would want to see the paper, and sent me up with it.”

“The gentleman mentioned?” repeated Jimmie Dale mechanically.

“Yes, sir,” replied the man, pointing to the newspaper; “Mr. —”

But Jimmie Dale’s eyes had already caught the front page headlines:

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF WELL-KNOWN PUBLISHER

HERMAN CARRUTHERS MISSING

FOUL PLAY FEARED

Connection with Last Night’s Gang Murder Indicated

“Thank you,” said Jimmie Dale in quiet dismissal to the man at his elbow.

And then, as the other withdrew, Jimmie Dale read the story itself swiftly, intently, anxiety and fear tugging at his heart. There were two columns of it, but the salient facts were few. He enumerated these in his mind as he sat there then, staring unseeingly now at the newspaper on his lap.

Carruthers had not returned home as was his invariable custom during the early hours of the morning, and when by lunch time, one o’clock, he had still not put in an appearance, and no word had been received from him, Harlow, his man, had become disturbed and had telephoned Carruthers’s office. The information gathered from that source had been far from reassuring. Carruthers had arrived at his office the previous evening an hour later than was his habit, and on his arrival had been informed that there had been a submachine-gun killing almost within a block of the office an hour before. Carruthers had appeared to take an unusual interest in the case. The victim had not then been identified, and Carruthers had left the office saying that he was going over to the morgue. He had not returned to the office; and the office, until Harlow’s inquiry was received, had taken it for granted that Carruthers, after leaving the morgue, had simply gone home. Harlow, decidedly worried by this time, had communicated with the police. From then on the story was extremely vague. The police, though admitting that Carruthers had gone to the morgue, had not otherwise been informative. In a word, the last that had been seen of Carruthers was when he had left the morgue.

Jimmie Dale’s dark eyes were narrowed. He could fit some of the missing pieces together out of his own knowledge—but not all. He had presumed, when Carruthers had telephoned saying that Sonny Gartz had been put on the spot and had been identified by the police, that Carruthers had been speaking from his office. This now was obviously not so. Carruthers had telephoned either from the morgue or after leaving the morgue. The fact that Carruthers had made no mention of any part he might have had in the identification of Sonny Gartz meant nothing. Before Carruthers had reached the morgue, the police by then had quite probably identified Sonny Gartz without Carruthers’s office knowing anything about it. Carruthers had not been loquacious; he had been too upset and shocked to dwell on details. His voice had rasped and sounded a bit unstrung over the telephone. But what, though, had Carruthers said to the authorities to account for his visit to the morgue? That he was there merely as a newspaper man? The managing editor of a big daily like the Morning News-Argus did not usually usurp the functions of a police reporter! Another thing: That hour in which Carruthers was late in arriving at his office last night was, of course, the hour that Carruthers had spent in coming back uptown to his, Jimmie Dale’s, home on Riverside Drive. And Sonny Gartz had been murdered apparently within a few minutes after having talked to Carruthers.

Jimmie Dale’s brows drew together in heavy furrows. He remembered he had told Carruthers that to be seen talking to a newspaper man would be about as bad for Sonny Gartz as though the man were seen talking to the police. He remembered, too, the half-jocular, half-serious prediction he had made to Carruthers last night to the effect that the other’s “pernicious habit of everlastingly gumshoeing after the Gray Seal” would very possibly end up by landing Carruthers himself in a heap of trouble.

Well, the prediction had come true—and only too swiftly on the heels of its making!

Jimmie Dale’s conscience rose suddenly against him. There was no doubt in his mind but that whatever had happened to Carruthers was due to Carruthers’s contact with Sonny Gartz last night; but, in turn, there would never have been any such contact if in the past there had not been contact between Sonny Gartz and Larry the Bat, alias the Gray Seal. Hence Jimmie Dale did not shirk the issue. He was the Gray Seal, he was Larry the Bat. If there had never been any Gray Seal, if there had never been any Larry the Bat, Carruthers would be safe and sound at this moment. That Carruthers had always been obsessed with the idea of “getting” the Gray Seal had no bearing on the present situation. As a matter of fact, he, Jimmie Dale, had deliberately egged Carruthers on in this respect on more than one occasion. Like it or not, he, Jimmie Dale, was, not indirectly but directly, responsible for whatever might now have befallen Carruthers—and Carruthers was his lifelong friend. Both the moral and personal obligations were clear-cut, unescapable. The Gray Seal, as Smarlinghue or as Larry the Bat, would be at work again before the night was out.

Was Carruthers alive?

Dead men tell no tales. Obviously, the gang that had murdered Sonny Gartz did not know that Sonny Gartz had disclosed nothing to Carruthers relative to the gang’s activities or personnel, else, quite likely, unless there were something else behind it all, Carruthers would have been left alone; but, obviously also, through fear of what Carruthers might know, or for whatever other reason, they had struck at Carruthers because of his contact with Sonny Gartz.

It was true—Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders impatiently—that there was a lapse of possibly close to two hours, one hour at least of which he could himself account for, between the killing of Sonny Gartz and Carruthers’s disappearance after leaving the morgue, during which time, as the killers must know, Carruthers might already have “talked”; but the trite old adage of many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip applied here as well as anywhere else, and this apparent delay on their part could almost certainly be credited to the force of intervening circumstances. This hiatus in time could not be allowed to destroy the general background of the picture.

What had Carruthers said at the morgue? Was it known that Carruthers had paid a visit to Riverside Drive immediately following his conversation with Sonny Gartz? This was of decidedly vital moment to—Jimmie Dale. Especially so if, besides the police, this were also known to the killers, since, in such case, one Jimmie Dale would not illogically have been at once marked down as the next victim!

Well, the issue was joined and the first step was plainly indicated. He must talk to Harlow at once—and not by telephone. He folded and tucked the newspaper into the side pocket of his jacket, and, conscious of a sympathetic glance from the hall porter as he left the club, stepped into his car.

A run of less than ten minutes farther uptown brought him to the entrance of the apartment house where Carruthers made his home, and a moment or so later he was ringing at Carruthers’s door on the ground floor.

Harlow, who always reminded Jimmie Dale somewhat of his own faithful old Jason, opened the door, and Jimmie Dale, who had never stood on ceremony here, stepped instantly forward—only to find that Harlow barred his way.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Dale,” Harlow mumbled nervously. “Please wait a moment, sir.”

Jimmie Dale stood back, staring in perplexed amazement at the door which, for the first time in more years than he could remember, had been closed in his face. What was the matter with Harlow? Decidedly more than strange! Had the worry and anxiety over his master’s disappearance unbalanced the man? Harlow was getting well along in years of course, but even so—

The door was opened again, and this time Harlow held it wide open.

“Please come in, Mr. Dale,” he said formally; and then, in a whisper, as Jimmie Dale stepped across the threshold: “I apologize, sir. Orders, sir. I couldn’t help it.”

Jimmie Dale nodded automatically as he stepped across the threshold; but his muscles tensed suddenly as a voice that he recognized called out to him from what he knew to be the direction of the living room:

“Come along in here, Mr. Dale. Too bad to have kept you waiting.”

Jimmie Dale traversed the small reception hall and, an instant later, with a sudden, ugly pull at his heart, shook hands with Detective Sergeant Waud of the Homicide Bureau. Sergeant Waud, it was true, was a personal friend of Carruthers, and Sergeant Waud had been in charge of the Thorne case; but the Homicide Bureau did not deal with disappearances—it dealt only with death.

“You here!” Jimmie Dale’s voice was rarely, seldom ever, out of control—but it was husky now. “You’ve found Carruthers, then? He’s dead!”

Detective Sergeant Waud waved his hand reassuringly toward a chair, and both sat down.

“I get you,” he said; “but it’s not as bad as that. We haven’t found the slightest trace of Carruthers; but I’m on the Sonny Gartz case, and it’s a cinch there’s a tie-up between the two. That’s why I’m here.”

“Well, thank God for that!” Jimmie Dale breathed in relief.

“Yes,” acceded Sergeant Waud; “I kind of like Carruthers myself. I’ve been taking a look around in here, and I told Carruthers’s man not to admit anyone while I was in the apartment without reporting to me. I’m glad you’ve come. I tried to get you by telephone, after Carruthers was reported missing, in the hope that you, being his closest friend, might be able to throw some light on the affair. But no one at your house knew where you were, and I was beginning to wonder if you hadn’t been swamped in the same boat with Carruthers.”

Jimmie Dale shook his head.

“I’ve been out on Long Island idling around most of the day in my car. I didn’t know that anything had happened to Carruthers until just a little while ago when this”—he motioned toward the newspaper in his pocket—“was handed to me in the club. I came over here at once to ask Harlow if there were any further developments.” And then, mentally wary, Jimmie Dale reached for a cigarette to gain a second’s time. Was the ice thin—or would it bear his weight? What had Carruthers said at the morgue? If the police already knew that Carruthers had gone at once to Riverside Drive after his meeting with Sonny Gartz, there was nothing to it but to volunteer, apparently, that information; if, on the other hand, the police did not know—well, then, that was quite another matter. “The newspaper account,” Jimmie Dale went on as he lighted his cigarette, “is hopelessly vague and unsatisfactory, and I’m glad you’re here to talk to rather than Harlow. A moment ago you referred to me as Carruthers’s closest friend. On that basis may I have the inside story —as it is known to the police?”

“Sure!” Detective Sergeant Waud’s voice was gruff but hearty. “Carruthers came over to the morgue last night. He said he had heard there had been a killing quite close to his office and asked to see the body. He was shown the body. The victim had just been identified as a gangster by the name of Sonny Gartz. Carruthers also identified the dead man. He said that Sonny Gartz had accosted him as he, Carruthers, had reached his office, and knowing that Carruthers had been in contact with His Majesty the Gray Seal”—Sergeant Waud laughed shortly without mirth—“the previous night on the Thorne case, for the papers had been full of it, he pleaded with Carruthers to put him in touch with the Gray Seal—as if Carruthers could!—stating that his, Sonny Gartz’s, life was in danger, implied that the Gray Seal owed him something or other out of the past, and said that the Gray Seal was the only one who could now help him. Carruthers was impressed with the man’s sincerity and promised to do what he could. Then, after Carruthers reached his private office, he was informed that there had been a killing up the street; and, fearing that it might be the same man, came over to the morgue to see for himself. And it was the same man.”

Jimmie Dale, through the blue spiral of smoke curling from the tip of his cigarette, was unostentatiously studying the face of the man from the Homicide Bureau.

“Is that all?” he asked.

Sergeant Detective Waud’s square, aggressive chin was suddenly outthrust.

“No; it’s not all!” he rasped. “There’s a missing hour!”

Jimmie Dale’s face registered only perplexity.

“A missing hour?” he repeated interrogatively.

“Yes!” snapped Sergeant Waud. “That’s what I said. A missing hour. It was a good hour after Sonny Gartz was killed before Carruthers showed up with his story at the morgue. Where was Carruthers during that hour?”

“Well, why didn’t you ask him?” inquired Jimmie Dale ingenuously.

“Ask him!” wailed Detective Sergeant Waud. “Damn it, Carruthers hadn’t disappeared then, and we didn’t know then what we know now. We had no reason for asking him, since we already knew when Sonny Gartz had been killed, and we naturally assumed, if we thought of it at all, that Carruthers had been detained in his office and had come on as soon as he could. But what we know now puts an entirely different complexion on the whole affair. The check-up following Carruthers’s disappearance shows that he was an hour past his usual time of arrival at his office. So, in view of the fact that we know to within a few minutes the actual time of the murder, Carruthers must have talked to Sonny Gartz in front of his own office building shortly before Sonny Gartz was killed. Therefore, Carruthers did not go to his office until at least an hour after talking to Sonny Gartz. I’m telling you there’s a missing hour. Where did Carruthers go, what did he do during that time? If we knew that, it might help to clear up a lot. All we know is that he came into the morgue, told his story, and walked straight out again with a brief, sort of upset good-night to us all—and that’s the last that has been seen of him.”

Jimmie Dale drew deeply on his cigarette. It wouldn’t clear up anything. It wouldn’t help the police any to know that hour had been spent with Jimmie Dale; but it would do Jimmie Dale an incalculable amount of harm if it leaked out through the police, or anyone else, and so reached the ears of those who had finally, or temporarily, put Carruthers out of the way, that Carruthers had first told his story to Jimmie Dale. As he had confided to himself in the club, it would be practically equivalent to finding himself marked down as the next victim. But the physical danger to which he would then be subjected was far from being the prime consideration; the prime consideration was that if the story of Carruthers’s visit to him leaked out, it would hamper, more than he cared to contemplate, whatever move he might now make on Carruthers’s behalf.

Quite so! But first, what about Detective Sergeant Waud here? Sergeant Waud was not the sort of man to wear his heart on his sleeve. Was he holding back anything? Did he really know where Carruthers had been? Not likely—but it would be a bit disastrous if Jimmie Dale fell into a trap.

He, Jimmie Dale, could take no chances of even a misunderstanding with the police; he must be sure. Carruthers had come uptown and had likewise returned, according to his own statements, by subway—his movements therefore almost certainly untraceable. The servants had been out last evening, all except Jason, and would know nothing of Carruthers’s visit unless Jason told them—which Jason wouldn’t do; but Jason, for instance, had he been questioned when Sergeant Waud had phoned, would naturally have said that Carruthers had been at the house last night. On the other hand, it might have been before the check-up was made when Sergeant Waud phoned, so that the “missing hour” was not then in evidence—or, of course, and what was much more probable, Sergeant Waud might merely have attempted to get into touch with——Mr. Dale.” But that other phone call—from Carruthers to Jimmie Dale, stating that Sonny Gartz was dead. Had Carruthers telephoned from the morgue? In which case, was that up Detective Sergeant Waud’s sleeve? No! Detective Sergeant Waud’s description, so obviously free from dissimulation, of Carruthers’s visit to the morgue was assurance enough that the call had not been made from there.

“H’m!” commented Jimmie Dale pensively.

“But you don’t by any chance mean to imply, do you, that Carruthers was trying to camouflage that hour?”

“Hell, no!” declared Detective Sergeant Waud fervently. “Nothing like that! He was too shaken and nervous to have it even enter his head—and I’ve already told you our side of it.”

Quite satisfied, Jimmie Dale nodded his head understandingly at the Homicide Bureau man—it only remained to warn Jason to say nothing of Carruthers’s visit.

“I see!” said Jimmie Dale. “But, leaving that apart, what else is there? You’ve committed yourself to the inside story, you know.”

“Sure!” reiterated Sergeant Waud. “That’s all right. But there’s not much else to date. As I said before, it’s a cinch that Sonny Gartz was bumped off by the same crowd that’s responsible for Carruthers’s disappearance. Whether Carruthers was actually seen with Sonny Gartz or not, or whether Carruthers’s story at the morgue leaked out, we don’t know; but it is certain, of course, one way or the other, that the gang knew Sonny Gartz had talked to Carruthers. The question is, did Sonny Gartz know too much on his own about something on the outside, or was he bumped off for double-crossing the mob he was traveling with because he was thought to have spilled that particular plate of beans? In either event—you see what I mean? —Sonny Gartz having confided in Carruthers, it would mean wholesale publicity.”

“What mob was Sonny Gartz traveling with?”

Detective Sergeant Waud shrugged his shoulders.

“We don’t know for a fact that he was traveling with any mob. That’s one of our troubles. Over a period that extends back to before the war and up to, say, a year and a half ago, Sonny Gartz was held on several occasions, once for manslaughter, though we were never able to pin the goods on him for that job, and on all occasions he got off with no more damage to himself than being mugged and fingerprinted. The records show that he was never tied up with any particular gang, but mostly played a lone hand; though we knew, of course, that he was a slick safe-worker, and also that he used to hit the pipe and play around a bit with the Chinese.”

“Up to about a year and a half ago, you said,” prompted Jimmie Dale. “What’s happened since then?”

“Nothing!” returned Sergeant Waud tersely. “Since then we haven’t run foul of him, or he hasn’t run foul of us—whichever way you like. For all we know, he may not have been in New York at all during that time—until last night.”

“Was he married?” queried Jimmie Dale. “Did he have any family or relations? He must at least have had relations.”

“He wasn’t married so far as we know,” replied Sergeant Waud. “As for relations, he was brought up in the gutter.”

“Tough!” murmured Jimmie Dale. “Anything else, Sergeant?”

Detective Sergeant Waud smiled ruefully. “No,” he said. “That’s all.”

Jimmie Dale’s forehead was puckered in well-simulated distress.

“Looks like a bit of a blank wall, then,” he remarked unhappily.

“Yes,” admitted Sergeant Waud. “So far. But—”

“Yes, I know,” Jimmie Dale broke in drearily. “You’ve scarcely had time to turn around yet, but the minutes are counting against Carruthers just the same—if he is still alive.”