Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/417

Rh possession, use this means of depositing them temporarily for safe-keeping. You see now, don't you? It's certain that's where Travers left the package. He used the name of John Johansson, not to hoodwink Spider Jack, I should say, but as an added safeguard against the Crime Club. Travers must have known both Makoff and Spider Jack in the old days, and probably had reason, and good reason, to trust them both—possibly, a crook then himself, as he confessed, he may have acted in a legal capacity for them in their frequent tangles with the police."

"Then," she said—and there was a glad, new note in her voice, "then, Jimmie—Jimmie, we are safe! You can get it, Jimmie! It is only a little thing for the Gray Seal to do—to get it now that we know where it is."

"Yes," he said tersely. "Yes—if it is still there."

"Still there!"—she repeated the words quickly, nervously. "Still there! What do you mean?"

"I mean if they, too, have not discovered that he was at Makoff's—if they have not got there first!" he said grimly. "There seems to be no limit to their cleverness, or their power. They penetrated his disguise as a chauffeur, and who knows what more they have learned since last night? We are fighting them in the dark, and—what's that!" he whispered tensely, suddenly—and leaning forward like a flash, as he whipped his automatic from his pocket, he blew out the lamp.

The room was in darkness. They stood there rigid, silent, listening. Her hand found and caught his arm.

And then it came again—a low sound, the sound of a stealthy footstep just outside the window that faced on the storage yard.