Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/211

Rh even after he himself had started briskly along the avenue in a downtown direction. It was invariably the same, always the same—the letters came unexpectedly, when least looked for, now by this means, now by that, but always in a manner that precluded the slightest possibility of tracing them to their source. Was there anything, in his intimate surroundings, in his intimate life, that she did not know about him—who knew absolutely nothing about her! Benson, for instance—that the man was absolutely trustworthy—or else she would never for an instant have risked the letter in his possession. Was there anything that she did not—yes, one thing—she did not know him in the rôle he was going to play to-night. That at least was one thing that surely she did not know about him; the rôle in which, many times, for weeks on end, he had devoted himself body and soul in an attempt to solve the mystery with which she surrounded herself; the rôle, too, that often enough had been a bulwark of safety to him when hard pressed by the police; the rôle out of which he had so carefully, so painstakingly created a now recognised and well-known character of the underworld—the rôle of Larry the Bat.

Jimmie Dale turned from Fifth Avenue into Broadway, continued on down Broadway, across to the Bowery, kept along the Bowery for several more blocks—and finally headed east into the dimly lighted cross street on which the Sanctuary was located.

And now Jimmie Dale became cautious in his movements. As he approached the black alleyway that flanked the miserable tenement, he glanced sharply behind and about him; and, at the alleyway itself, without pause, but with a curious lightning-like side step, no longer Jimmie Dale now, but the Gray Seal, he disappeared from the street, and was lost in the deep shadows of the building.

In a moment he was at the side door, listening for any sound from within—none had ever seen or met the lodger on the first floor either ascending or descending, except in the familiar character of Larry the Bat. He opened the door, closed it behind him, and in the utter blackness went