Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/408

402 enough that, while I worked to undermine my father's and my uncle's murderers, they were moving heaven and earth to find me.

"That is all, Jimmie. The day before yesterday, a month after Travers' first message to let me know that he was coming, there was another 'personal' giving me an hour and a telephone number. He was back! He had everything—everything! We dared not meet; he was afraid, suspicious that they had got track of him again. You know the rest. That package contained the proof that, with Travers' death, can probably never be obtained again. Do you understand why they want it—why it is life and death to me? Do you understand why my supposed uncle offered huge rewards for me, why secretly every resource of that hideous organisation has been employed to find me—that it is only by my death the estate can pass into their hands, and now"

She flung out her hands suddenly toward Jimmie Dale.

"Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, I've—I've fought so long alone! Jimmie, what are we to do?"

He came slowly to his feet. She had fought so long—alone. But now—now it was his turn to fight—for her. But how? She had not told him all—surely she had not told him all, for everything depended upon that package. There had been so much to tell that she had not thought of all, and she had not told him the details about that.

"That box—No. 428!" he cried quickly. "What is that? What does it mean?"

She shook her head.

"I do not know," she answered.

Then who is this John Johansson?"

"I do not know," she said again.

"Nor where the Crime Club is?"

"No"—dully.

He stared at her for a moment in a dazed way.

"My God!" Jimmie Dale murmured.

And then she turned away her head.

"It's—it's pretty bad, isn't it, Jimmie? I—I told you that we did not hold many trumps."