The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale/Chapter 16

T was three nights later. Old Jason had placed a tray with after-dinner coffee and a liqueur set on the table at Jimmie Dale's elbow—that was fully an hour ago, and both coffee and liqueur were untouched. Things were not going well. Apart entirely from all lack of success where the Tocsin was concerned, things were not going well. The fate of Frenchy Virat, the fate of the Wolf, and, added to this, the Gray Seal's intervention in the plans and purposes of one Gentleman Laroque and certain gentlemen still higher up than Laroque, had not passed unmarked or unnoticed in the underworld. And now in the underworld a strange, ominous and far-reaching disquiet reigned. It was an underworld rampant with suspicion, mad with fury, more dangerous than it had ever been before.

Jimmie Dale's hand reached abstractedly into the pocket of his dinner jacket for his cigarette case. He lighted a cigarette, leaned back once more in the big, leather-upholstered lounging chair, and his eyes, half closed, strayed introspectively around the luxuriously appointed room, his own particular den in his Riverside Drive residence. Once, a very long while ago, years ago, so long ago now that it seemed as though it must have been in some strange previous incarnation, back in those days when the Tocsin had first come into his life, and when he had known her only as the author of those mysterious letters, those "calls to arms" to the Gray Seal, she had written: "Things are a little too warm, aren't they, Jimmie? Let's let them cool for a year."

A blue thread curled lazily upward from the tip of the cigarette. Jimmie Dale's eyes fastened mechanically on the twisting, wavering spiral, followed it mechanically as it rose and spread out into filmy, undulating, fantastic shapes—and the strong, square jaw set suddenly hard. It was not so very strange that those words should have come back to him to-night! Things were "warm" now—and he could not let them "cool" for a year!

"Warm!" He smiled a little mirthlessly. The comparison was very slight! Then, at the beginning, at the outset of the Gray Seal's career, the police, it was true, had shown a certain unpleasant anxiety for a closer acquaintanceship, but that was about all. To-day, lashed on and mocked by a virulent press, goaded to madness by their own past failures to "get" the Gray Seal, to whose door they laid a hundred crimes and for whom the bars of a death cell in Sing Sing was the goal if they could but catch their prey, the police, to a man, were waging a ceaseless and relentless war against him; and to-day, joining hands with the police, the underworld in all its thousand ramifications, prompted by fear, by suspicion of one another, reached out to trap him, and to deal out to him a much more speedy, but none the less certain, fate than that prescribed by the statutes of the law!

He shook his head. It could not go on—indefinitely. The rôle was too hard to play; the dual life, in a sort of grim, ironical self-mockery, brought even in its own successful interpretation added dangers and perils with each succeeding day. As it had been with Larry the Bat, the more he now lived Smarlinghue the more it became difficult to slough off Smarlinghue and live as Jimmie Dale; the more Smarlinghue became trusted and accepted in the inner circles of the underworld, the more he became a figure in those sordid surroundings, and the more dangerous it became to "disappear" at will without exciting suspicion, where suspicion, as it was, was already spread into every nook and corner of the Bad Lands, where each rubbed shoulders with his fellow in the lurking dread that the other was—the Gray Seal!

The police were no mean antagonists, he made no mistake on that score; but the peril that was the graver menace of the two, and the greater to be feared, was—the underworld. And here in the underworld in the last few days, here where on every twisted, vicious lip was the whisper, "Death to the Gray Seal," there had come even another menace. He could not define it, it was intuition perhaps—but intuition had never failed him yet. It was an undercurrent of which he had gradually become conscious, the sense of some unseen, guiding power, that moved and swayed and controlled, and was present, dominant, in every den and dive in crimeland. There had been many gang leaders and heads of little coteries of crime, cunning, crafty in their way, and all of them unscrupulous, like the Wolf, for instance, who had sworn openly and boastingly through the Bad Lands, and had been believed for a season, that they would bring the Gray Seal to a last accounting—but it was more than this now. There was a craftier brain and a stronger hand at work than the Wolf's had ever been! Who was it? He shook his head. He did not know. He had gone far into the innermost circles of the underworld—and he did not know. He sensed a power there; and in a dozen different, intangible ways, still an intuition more than anything else, he had sensed this "some one," this power, creeping, fumbling, feeling its implacable way through the dark, as it were, toward him.

Yes, it was getting "warm"—perilously warm! And inevitably there must come an end—some day. The warning stared him in the face. But he could not stop, could not heed the warning, could not let things "cool" now for a year, and stand aside until the storm should have subsided! Where was the Tocsin? If his peril was great—what was hers!

He surged suddenly upward from his chair, his hands clenched until the knuckles stood out like ivory knobs. The Tocsin! The woman he loved—where was she? Was she safe to-night? Where was she? He could not stop until that question had been answered, be the consequences what they might! Warnings, the realisation of peril—he laughed shortly, in grim bitterness—counted little in the balance after all, did they not! Where was the Tocsin?

The telephone rang. Jimmie Dale stared at the instrument for a moment, as though it were some singular and uninvited intruder who had broken in without warrant upon his train of thought; and then, leaning forward over the table, he lifted the receiver from the hook.

"Yes? Hello! Yes?" inquired Jimmie Dale. "What is it?"

A man's voice, hurried, and seemingly somewhat agitated, answered him.

"I would like to speak to Mr. Dale—to Mr. Dale in person."

"This is Mr. Dale speaking," said Jimmie Dale a little brusquely. "What is it?"

"Oh, is that you, Mr. Dale?" The voice had quickened perceptibly. "I didn't recognise your voice—but then I haven't heard it for a long while, have I? This is Forrester. Are—are you very busy to-night, Mr. Dale?"

"Oh, hello, Forrester!" Jimmie Dale's voice had grown more affable. "Busy? Well, I don't know. It depends on what you mean by busy."

"An hour or two," the other suggested—the tinge of anxiety in his tones growing more pronounced. "The time to run out here in your car. I haven't any right to ask it, I know, but the truth is I—I want to talk to some one pretty badly, and I need some financial help, and—and I thought of you. I—I'm afraid there's a mess here. The bank examiners landed in suddenly late this afternoon."

"The—what?" demanded Jimmie Dale sharply.

"The bank examiners—I—I can't talk over the 'phone. Only, for God's sake, come—will you? I'll be in my rooms—you know where they are, don't you—on the cottier over"

"Yes, I know," Jimmie Dale broke in tersely; then, quietly: "All right, Forrester, I'll come."

"Thank God!" came Forrester's voice—and disconnected abruptly.

Jimmie Dale replaced the receiver on the hook, stared at the instrument again in a perplexed way; then, called the garage on the private house wire. There was no answer. He walked quickly then across the room and pushed an electric button.

"Jason," he said a moment later, as the old butler appeared on the threshold in answer to the summons, "Benson doesn't answer in the garage. I presume he is downstairs. I wish you would ask him to bring the touring car around at once. And you might have a light overcoat ready for me—Jason."

"Yes, sir," said the old man. "Yes, Master Jim, sir, at once." His eyes sought Jimmie Dale's, and dropped—but into them had come, not the questioning of familiarity, but the quick, anxious questioning inspired by the affection that had grown up between them from the days when, as the old man was so fond of saying, he had dandled his Master Jim upon his knee. "Yes, sir, Master Jim, at once, sir," Jason repeated—but he still hesitated upon the threshold.

And then Jimmie Dale shook his head whimsically—and smiled.

"No—not to-night, Jason," he said reassuringly. "It's quite all right, Jason—there's no letter to-night."

The old man's face cleared instantly.

"Yes, sir; quite so, sir. Thank you, Master Jim," he said. "Shall I tell Benson that he is to drive you, sir, or"

"No; I'll drive myself, Jason," decided Jimmie Dale.

"Yes, sir—very good, sir"—the door closed on Jason.

Jimmie Dale turned back into the room, began to pace up and down its length, and for a moment the reverie that the telephone had interrupted was again dominant in his mind. Jason was afraid. Jason—even though he knew so little of the truth—was afraid. Well, what then? He, Jimmie Dale, was not blind himself! It had come almost to the point where his back was against the wall at last; to the point where, unless he found the Tocsin before many more days went by, it would be, as far as he was concerned—too late!

And then he shrugged his shoulders suddenly—and his forehead knitted into perplexed furrows. Forrester—and the telephone message! What did it mean? There was an ugly sound to it, that reference to the bank examiners and the need of financial assistance. And it was a little odd, too, that Forrester should have telephoned him, Jimmie Dale, unless it were accounted for by the fact that Forrester knew of no one else to whom he might apply for perhaps a large sum, of ready money. True, he knew Forrester quite well—not as an intimate friend—but only in a sort of casual, off-hand kind of a way, as it were, and he had known him for a good many years; but their acquaintanceship would not warrant the other's action unless the man were in desperate straits. Forrester had been a clerk in the city bank where his, Jimmie Dale's, father had transacted his business, and it was there he had first met Forrester. He had continued to meet Forrester there after his father had died; and then Forrester had been offered and had accepted the cashiership of a small local bank out near Bayside on Long Island. He had run into Forrester there again once or twice on motor trips—and once, held up by an accident to his car, he had dined with Forrester, and had spent an hour or two in the other's rooms. That was about all.

Jimmie Dale's frown grew deeper. He liked Forrester The man was a bachelor and of about his, Jimmie Dale's, own age, and had always appeared to be a decent, clean-lived fellow, a man who worked hard, and was apparently pushing his way, if not meteorically, at least steadily up to the top, a man who was respected and well-thought of by everybody—and yet just what did it mean? The more he thought of it, the uglier it seemed to become.

He stepped suddenly toward the telephone—and as abruptly turned away again. He remembered that Forrester did not have a telephone in his rooms, for, on the night of the break-down, he, Jimmie Dale, had wanted to telephone, and had been obliged to go outside to do so. Forrester, obviously then, had done likewise to-night. Well, he should have insisted on a fuller explanation in the first place if he had intended to make that a contingent condition; as it was, it was too late now, and he had promised to go.

The sound of a motor car on the driveway leading from the private garage in the rear reached him. Benson was bringing out the car now. Jimmie Dale, as he prepared to leave the room, glanced about him from force of habit, and his eyes held for an instant on the portières behind which, in the little alcove, stood the squat, barrel-shaped safe. Was there anything he would need to-night—that leather girdle, for instance, with its circle of pockets containing its compact little burglar's kit? He shook his head impatiently. He had already told Jason—if in other words—that there was no "call to arms" to the Gray Seal to-night, hadn't he? It was habit again that had brought the thought, that was all! For the rest, in the last few days, since this new intuitive danger from the underworld had come to him, an automatic had always reposed in his pocket by day and under his pillow by night; and by way of defence, too, though they might appear to be curious weapons of defence if one did not stop to consider that the means of making a hurried exit through a locked door might easily make the difference between life and death, his pockets held a small, but very carefully selected collection of little steel picklocks. He smiled somewhat amusedly at himself, as he passed out of the room and descended the stairs to the hall below. The contents of the safe could hardly have added anything that would be of any service even in an emergency! His mental inventory of his pockets had been incomplete—there was still the thin, metal insignia case, and the black silk mask, both of which, like the automatic, were never now out of his immediate possession.

He slipped into his coat as Jason held it out for him, accepted the soft felt hat which Jason extended, and, with a nod to the old butler, ran down the steps, dismissed Benson, who stood waiting, and entered his car.

It was three-quarters of an hour later when Jimmie Dale drew up at the curb on the main street of the little Long Island town that was his destination.

"Pretty good run!" said Jimmie Dale to himself, as he glanced at the car's clock under its little electric bulb. "Halfpast nine."

He descended from the car, and nodded as he surveyed his surroundings. He had stopped neither in front of the bank, nor in front of Forrester's rooms—it was habit again, perhaps, the caution prompted by Forrester's statement relative to the bank examiners. If there was trouble, and the obvious deduction indicated that there was, he, Jimmie Dale, had no desire to figure in it in a public way. Again he nodded his head. Yes, he quite had his bearings now. It was the usual main street of a small town—fairly well lighted, stores and shops flanking the pavements on either side, and of perhaps a distance equivalent to some seven or eight city blocks in length. Two blocks further up, on the same side of the street as that on which he was standing, was the bank—not a very pretentious establishment, he remembered; its staff consisting of but one or two apart from Forrester, as was not unusual with small local banks, though this in no way indicated that the business done was not profitable, or, comparatively, large. Jimmie Dale started forward along the street. On the corner just ahead of him was a two-story building, the second floor of which had been divided into rooms originally designed to be used as offices, as, indeed, most of them were, but two of these Forrester had fitted up as bachelor quarters.

Jimmie Dale turned the corner, walked down the side street to the office entrance that led to the floor above, opened the door, and ran lightly up the stairs. At the head of the stairs he paused to get his bearings once more. Forrester's rooms were here directly at the head of the stairs, but he had forgotten for the moment whether they were on the right or left of the corridor; and the corridor being unlighted now and without any sign of life left him still more undecided. It seemed, though, if his recollection served him correctly, that the rooms had been on the right. He moved in that direction, found the door, and knocked; but, receiving no answer, crossed the hall again, and knocked on the door on the left-hand side. There was no answer here, either. He frowned a little impatiently, and returned once more to the right-hand door. Forrester probably was up at the bank, and had not expected him to make the run out from the city so quickly. He tried the door tentatively, found it unlocked, opened it a little way, saw that the room within was lighted—and suddenly, with a low, startled exclamation, stepped swiftly forward over the threshold, and closed the door behind him.

It was Forrester's room, this one here at the right of the corridor—his recollection had not been at fault. It was Forrester's room, and Forrester himself was there—on the floor—dead.

For a moment Jimmie Dale stood rigid and without movement, save that as his eyes swept around the apartment his face grew hard and set, his lips drooping in sharp, grim lines at the corners of his mouth.

"My God!" Jimmie Dale whispered.

There was a faint, almost imperceptible odour in the room, like the smell of peach blossom—he noticed it now for the first time, as his eyes fastened on a small, empty bottle that lay on the floor a few feet away from the dead man's outstretched arm. Jimmie Dale stepped forward abruptly now, and knelt down beside the man for a hurried; examination. It was unnecessary—he knew that even before he performed the act. Yes—the man was dead He reached out and picked up the bottle. The odour was tell-tale evidence enough. The bottle had contained prussic, or hydrocyanic acid, probably the moist deadly poison in existence, and the swiftest in its action. He replaced the bottle on the spot where he had found it, and stood up.

Again, Jimmie Dale's eyes swept his surroundings. The room in which he stood was a sort of living room or den. There was a desk over by the far wall, a couch near the door, and several comfortable lounging chairs. Forrester lay with his head against the sharp edge of one of the legs of the couch, as though he had rolled off and struck against it.

Opposite the desk, across the room, was the door leading into the second room of the little apartment. Jimmie Dale moved toward this now, and stepped across the threshold. The room itself was unlighted, but there was light enough from the connecting doorway to enable him to see fairly well. It was Forrester's bedroom, and in no way appeared to have been disturbed. He remembered it quite well. There was a door here, too, that gave on the hall. He circled around the bed and reached the door. It was locked.

Jimmie Dale returned to the living room—and stood there in a sort of grim immobility, looking down at the form on the floor. He was not callous. Death, as often as he had seen it, and in its most tragic phases, had not made him callous, and he had liked Forrester—but suicide was not a man's way out, it was the way a coward took, and if it brought pity, it was the pity that was blunted with the sterner, almost contemptuous note of disapproval. What had happened since Forrester had 'phoned, that had driven the man to this extremity? When Forrester had 'phoned he had appeared to be agitated enough, but, at least, he had seemed to have had hopes that the appeal he was then making might see him through, and, as proof of that, there had been unmistakable relief in the man's voice when he, Jimmie Dale, had agreed to the other's request. And what had been the meaning of that "financial help"? Had, for instance—for it was pitifully obvious that if the bank had been looted an innocent man would not commit suicide on that account—a greater measure of the depredation been uncovered than had been counted on, so much indeed that, say, the financial assistance Forrester had intended to ask for had now increased to such proportions that he had realised the futility of even a request; or, again, had it for some reason, since he had telephoned, now become impossible to restore the funds even if they were in his possession?

A sheet of note paper lying on the desk caught Jimmie Dale's eyes. He stepped forward, picked it up—and his lips drew tight together, as he read the two or three miserable lines that were scrawled upon it:

What's left is in the middle drawer of the desk. There's only one way out now—I don't see any other way. I thought that I could get—but what does that matter! God help me! I'm sorry. 2em

I'm sorry! It was a pitiful epitaph for a man's life! I'm sorry! Jimmie Dale's face softened a little—the man was dead now. "I'm sorry…. Fleming P. Forrester"—he had seen that signature on bank paper a hundred times in the old days; he had little thought ever to see it on a document such as this!

He stared at the paper for a long time, and then, from the paper, his eyes travelled over the desk, then shifted again to Forrester—and then, for the second time, he knelt beside the other on the floor. For the moment, what was referred to as "being all that was left" in the middle drawer of the desk could wait. There was another matter now. He felt hurriedly through Forrester's vest and coat pockets—and from one of the pockets drew out a folded piece of paper. It was not what he was looking for, but it was all that rewarded his search. He unfolded the paper. It was dirty and crumpled, and the few lines written upon it were badly penned and illiterate:

The ante's gone up—get me? Six thousand bucks. You come across with that to-morrow morning by ten o'clock—or I'll spill the beans. And I ain't got any more paper to write any more letters on either—savvy? This is the last.

There was no signature. Jimmie Dale read it again—and abruptly put it in his own pocket. Yes, he had liked Forrester—well enough for this anyway! The man might have a mother perhaps—it would be bad enough in any case. And those other things, the empty bottle, the sheet of note paper with its scrawled confession—what about them? He returned with a queer sort of hesitant indecision to the desk. He had no right of course to touch them unless

He shook his head sharply, as he pulled open the middle drawer of the desk.

"Newspapers—publicity—rotten!" he muttered savagely. "One chance in ten, and—ah!"

From the back of the drawer where it had been tucked in under a mass of papers, he had extracted a little bundle of documents that were held together by an elastic band. He snapped off the band, and ran through the papers rapidly. For the most part they were bonds and stock certificates indorsed by their owners, and evidently had been held by the bank as collateral for loans.

And then suddenly Jimmie Dale straightened up, tense and alert. He had no desire, very far from any desire to be caught here, or to figure publicly in any way in the case. The street door had opened and closed again. Footsteps, those of three men, his acute, trained hearing told him, sounded on the stairs. Again there came that queer, hesitant indecision as he stood there, while his eyes travelled in swift succession from the bank's securities in his hand to the note on the desk, to the empty bottle on the floor, to the white, upturned face of the silent form huddled against the couch.

"One chance in ten," muttered Jimmie Dale through his set lips. "One chance in ten—and I guess I'll take it!"

The footsteps came nearer—they were almost at the head of the stairs now. But now Jimmie Dale was in action—swift as a flash and silent as a shadow in every movement. The bundle of securities was thrust into his pocket, the sheet of note paper followed, and, as a knock sounded on the door, he stooped, picked up the bottle from the floor, and darted into the adjoining room—and in another instant he had reached the locked door and was working at it silently and swiftly with a picklock.