Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/106

102 "No; you're safe enough there," the other interposed heavily. "Knowing what was up, you don't think I'd give the gang a chance to get them into circulation, do you? I got them all when I got the plate. And"—he smiled a little anxiously—"I'll bring them here to be destroyed with the plate. It would finish me now, as well as you, if one of them ever showed up. Say," he said suddenly, with a catch in his breath, "I—I don't think I know what I'm doing."

Mrs. Matthews reached out her hands to him.

"What can I say to you!" she said brokenly. What"

Jimmie Dale drew back along the wall. A little way from the door he quickened his pace, still moving, however, with extreme caution. They were still talking behind him as he turned from the corridor into the passageway leading to the store, and from there into the store itself. And then suddenly, in spite of caution, his foot slipped on the bare floor. It was not much—just enough to cause his other foot, poised tentatively in air, to come heavily down, and a loud and complaining creak echoed from the floor.

Jimmie Dale's jaws snapped like a steel trap. From down the corridor came a sudden, excited exclamation in the little old lady's voice, and then her steps sounded running toward the store. In the fraction of a second Jimmie Dale was at the front door.

"Clumsy, blundering fool!" he whispered fiercely to himself as he turned the key, opened the door noiselessly until it was just ajar, and turned the key in the lock again, leaving the bolt protruding out. One step backward, and he was rapping on the counter with his knuckles. "Isn't anybody here?" he called out loudly. "Isn't any—oh!"—as Mrs. Matthews appeared in the back doorway. "A package of cigarettes, please."

She stared at him, a little frightened, her eyes red and swollen with recent crying.

"How—how did you get in here?" she asked tremulously.