Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/219

Rh Jimmie Dale was counting the houses as he passed—they were more infrequent now, farther apart. Stangeist was no fool—not the fool that he would appear to be for keeping a document like that, once he had had the temerity to execute it, in his own safe; for, in a day or two, the Tocsin had hinted at this, after holding it over the heads of Australian Ike, The Mope, and Clarie Deane again to drive the force of it a little deeper home, he would undoubtedly destroy it—and the supposition that it was still in existence would have equally the same effect on the minds of the other three! Stangeist was certainly alive to the peril that he ran with such a thing in his possession, only the peril had not appealed to him as imminent either from the three thugs with whom he had allied himself, or, much less, from any one else, that was all.

Jimmie Dale halted by a low, ornamental stone fence, some three feet high, and stood there for a moment, glancing about him. This was Stangeist's house—he could just make out the building as it loomed up a shadowy, irregular shape, perhaps two hundred yards back from the fence. The house was quite dark, not a light showed in any window. Jimmie Dale sat down casually on the fence, looked carefully again up and down the road—then, swinging his legs over, quick now in every action, he dropped to the other side, and stole silently across the grass to the rear of the house.

Here he stopped again, reached up to a window that was about on a level with his shoulders, and tested its fastenings. The window—it was the window of Stangeist's private sanctum, according to the plan in her letter—was securely locked. Jimmie Dale's hands went into his pocket—and the black silk mask was slipped over his face. He listened intently—then a little steel instrument began to gnaw like a rat.

A minute passed—two of them. Again Jimmie Dale listened. There was not a sound save the night sounds—the light breeze whispering through the branches of the trees; the far-off rumble of a train; the whir of insects; the