Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/312

308 steadily, in curious fascination it seemed, as, in its circuit, the ray fell upon Hagan—fell upon the torn, ragged edge of a paper in Hagan's hand! With a suppressed cry, Jimmie Dale snatched it away from the other. It was but a torn half of the letter! "The other half! The other half, Hagan—where is it?" he demanded hoarsely.

Hagan, almost in a state of collapse, muttered inaudibly. The crash of a toppling door sounded from above. Jimmie Dale shook the man desperately.

"Where is it?" he repeated fiercely.

"He—he was holding it tight, it—it tore in his hand," Hagan stammered. "Does it make any difference? Oh, let's get out of here, whoever you are—for God's sake let's get out of here!"

Any difference! Jimmie Dale's jaws were clamped like a steel vise. Any difference! The difference between life and death for the man beside him—that was all! He was reading the portion in his hand. It was the last part of the letter, beginning with: "There's a paper stuck under the edge of Hagan's table" From above, from the floor of the front room now, came the rush and trample of feet. He could not go back for the other half. And any attempt to conceal the fact that Connie Myers had been alone in the house was futile now. They would find the torn letter in the dead man's hand, proof enough that some one else had been there. What was in that part of the letter that was still clutched in that death grip upstairs? A sentence from it, that he had heard Connie Myers read, seemed to burn itself into his brain. "If you want to know who did it, look in Mike Hagan's room on the floor above." And then, suddenly, like light through the darkness, came a ray of hope. He pulled Hagan to the cellarway, and stealthily lifted one side of the double trapdoor. There was a chance, desperate enough, one in a thousand—but still a chance!

Voices from the house came plainly now, but there was no one in sight. The police, to a man, were evidently all inside. From the road in front showed the lamp glare of their automobile.