I.11. The Stool-Pigeon
In the subway, ten minutes before, a freckled-faced messenger boy had squeezed himself into a seat beside Jimmie Dale, yanked a dime novel from a refractory pocket, and, blissfully lost to all the world, had buried his head in its pages. Jimmie Dale's glance at the youngster had equally, perforce, embraced the lurid title of the thriller, "Dicing with Death," so imperturbably thrust under his nose. At the time, he had smiled indulgently; but now, as he left the subway and headed for his home on Riverside Drive, the words not only refused to be ignored, but had resolved themselves into a curiously persistent refrain in his mind. They were exactly what they purported to be, dime-novelish, of the deepest hue of yellow, melodramatic in the extreme; but also, to him now, they were grimly apt and premonitorily appropriate. "Dicing with Death"--there was not an hour, not a moment in the day, when he was not literally dicing with death; when, with the underworld and the police allied against him, a single false move would lose him the throw that left death the winner!
The risk of the dual life enforced upon him grew daily greater, and in the end there must be the reckoning. He would have been a madman to have shut his eyes in the face of what was obvious--but it was worth it all, and in his soul he knew that he would not have had it otherwise even now. To-night, to-morrow, the day after, would come another letter from the Tocsin, and there would be another "crime" of the Gray Seal's blazoned in the press--would that be the last affair, or would there be another--or to-night, to-morrow, the day after, would he be trapped before even one more letter came!
He shrugged his shoulders, as he ran up the steps of his house. Those were the stakes that he himself had laid on the table to wager upon the game, he had no quarrel there; but if only, before the end came, or even with the end itself, he could find--HER!
With his latchkey he let himself into the spacious, richly furnished, well-lighted reception hall, and, crossing this, went up the broad staircase, his steps noiseless on the heavy carpet. Below, faintly, he could hear some of the servants--they evidently had not heard him close the door behind him. Discipline was relaxed somewhat, it was quite apparent, with Jason, that peer of butlers, away. Jason, poor chap, was in the hospital. Typhoid, they had thought it at first, though it had turned out to be some milder form of infection. He would be back in a few days now; but meanwhile he missed the old man sorely from the house.
He reached the landing, and, turning, went along the hall to the door of his own particular den, opened the door, closed it behind him--and in an instant the keen, agile brain, trained to the little things that never escaped it, that daily held his life in the balance, was alert. The room was unusually dark, even for night- time. It was as though the window shades had been closely drawn--a thing Jason never did. But then Jason wasn't there! Jimmie Dale, smiling then a little quizzically at himself, reached up for the electric-light switch beside the door, pressed it--and, his finger still on the button, whipped his automatic from his pocket with his other hand.
THE ROOM WAS STILL IN DARKNESS.
The smile on Jimmie Dale's lips was gone, for his lips now had closed together in a tight, drawn line. The lights in the rest of the house, as witness the reception hall, were in order. This was no ACCIDENT! Silent, motionless, he stood there, listening. Was he trapped at last--in his own house! By whom? The police? The thugs of the underworld? It made little difference--the end would differ only in the method by which it was attained! What was that! Was there a slight stir, a movement at the lower end of the room--or was it his imagination? His hand fell from the electric-light switch to the doorknob behind his back. Slowly, without a sound, it began to turn under his slim, tapering fingers, whose deft, sensitive touch had made him known and feared as the master cracksman of them all; and, as noiselessly, the door began to open.
It was like a duel--a duel of silence. What was the intruder, whoever he might be, waiting for? The abortive click of the electric-light switch, to say nothing of the opening of the door when he had entered, was evidence enough that he was there. Was the other trying to place him exactly through the darkness to make sure of his attack! The door was open now. And suddenly Jimmie Dale laughed easily aloud--and on the instant shifted his position.
"Well?" inquired Jimmie Dale coolly from the other side of the threshold.
It seemed like a long-drawn sigh fluttering through the room, a gasp of relief--and then the blood was pounding madly at his temples, and he was back in the room again, the door closed once more behind him.
"Oh, Jimmie--why didn't you speak? I had to be sure that it was you."
It was her voice! HERS! The Tocsin! HERE! She was here--here in his house! "You!" he cried. "You--here!" He was pressing the electric-light switch frantically, again and again.
Her voice came out of the darkness from across the room:
"Why are you doing that, Jimmie? You know already that I have turned off the lights."
"At the sockets--of course!" He laughed out the words almost hysterically. "Your face--I have never seen your face, you know." He was moving quickly toward the reading lamp on his desk.
There was a quick, hurried swish of garments, and she was blocking his way. "No," she said, in a low voice; "you must not light that lamp."
He laughed again, shortly, fiercely now. She was close to him, his hands reached out for her, touched her, and thrilling at the touch, swept her toward him.
"Jimmie--Jimmie--are you mad!" she breathed.
Mad! Yes--he was mad with the wildest, most passionate exhilaration he had ever known. He found his voice with an effort.
"These months and years that I have tried until my soul was sick to find you!" he cried out. "And you are here now! Your face--I must see your face!"
She had wrenched herself away from him. He could hear her breath coming sharply in little gasps. He groped his way onward toward the desk.
"WAIT!"--her tones seemed to ring suddenly vibrant through the room. "Wait, before you touch that lamp! I--I put you on your honour not to light it."
He stopped abruptly.
"My--honour?" he repeated mechanically.
"Yes! I came here to-night because there was no other way. No other way--do you understand? I came, trusting to your honour not to take advantage of the conditions that forced me to do this. I had no fear that I was wrong--I have no fear now. You will not light that lamp, and you will not make any attempt to prevent my going away as I came--unknown. Is there any question about it, Jimmie? I am in YOUR house."
"You don't know what you are saying!" he burst out wildly. "I've risked my life for a chance like this again and again; I've gone through hell, living in squalour for a month on end as Larry the Bat in the hope that I might discover who you are--and do you think I'll let anything stop me now! I tell you, no--a thousand times no!"
She made no answer. There was only her low, quick breathing coming from somewhere near him. He made another step toward the lamp--and stopped.
"I tell you, no!" he said again, and took another step forward--and stopped once more.
Still she made no answer. A minute passed--another. His hand lifted and swept across his forehead in an agitated way. Still silence. She neither moved nor spoke. His hand dropped slowly to his side. There was a queer, twisted smile upon his lips.
"You win!" he said hoarsely.
"Thank you, Jimmie," she said simply.
"And your name, who you are"--he was speaking, but he did not seem to recognise his own voice--"the hundred other things I've sworn I'd make you explain when I found you, are all taboo as well, I suppose!"
"Yes," she said.
He laughed bitterly.
"Don't you know," he cried out, "that between the police and the underworld, our house of cards is likely to collapse at any minute-- that they are hunting the Gray Seal day and night! Is it to be always like this--that I am never to know--until it is too late!
She came toward him out of the darkness impulsively.
"They will never get you, Jimmie," she said, in a suppressed voice. And some day, I promise you now, you shall have your reward for to- night. You shall know–-everything."
"When?" The word came from him with fierce eagerness.
"I do not know," she answered gently. "Soon, perhaps--perhaps sooner than either of us imagine."
"And by that you mean--what?" he asked, and his hand reached out for her again through the blackness.
This time she did not draw away. There was an instant's hesitation; then she spoke again hurriedly, a note of anxiety in her voice.
"You are beginning all over again, aren't you, Jimmie? And I have told you that to-night I can explain nothing. And, besides, it is what has brought me here that counts now, and every moment is of--"
"Yes. I know," he interposed; "but, then, at least you will tell me one thing: Why did you come to-night, instead of sending me a letter as you always have before?"
"Because it is different to-night than it ever was before," she replied earnestly. "Because there is something in what has happened that I cannot explain myself; because there is danger, and