The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard

see these on the table here are the regular small variety!” he observed coolly, as he pulled the drawer open. “The big ones make a quick turn-over, though, if you have the plant to turn them out, and can swing a scheme to cash them—after banking hours—and steal them back! Hello, what’s this!”—the sealed envelope, torn open at one end, evidently by the Rat in his examination, but still full of the counterfeit notes, was blood-smeared, and on the upper left-hand corner there showed the distinct impression of a finger print.

      There was a sudden crash against the door.

      Both men, in their chairs, strained around—and now Curley, too, had lost his colour.

      “My God, what’s that!” he whispered.

      The thin metal case was in Jimmie Dale’s hand. With the tweezers, he lifted one of the little gray seals to his lips, moistened it, and, using his elbow, pressed it firmly down upon the envelope.

      Came another furious thud upon the door—and another.

      “What’s that!” Curley’s voice was a frantic scream now. “For God’s sake, do you hear, what’s that!”

      Jimmie Dale, under a pencilled arrow mark indicating the finger print, was scrawling a few words in printed characters.

      “It’s the police,” said Jimmie Dale calmly. “Somebody murdered the Rat to-night!” He surveyed the envelope in his hand critically. Between the arrow mark and the gray seal were the words: “Look on the Rat’s collar—and these gentlemen’s fingers.” He laid the envelope down on the table—and, as the door suddenly splintered and sagged under a terrific blow from some heavy object, he retreated hurriedly to the farther end of the room. Here a half dozen steps led upward, and hanging from the ceiling beside them was a cord to which was attached a leaden weight. He jerked the cord quickly. A panel above him slid noiselessly back. He leaped to the top of the stairs, and paused for a moment.

      “They’ve been looking for this place for several years, I guess,” said Jimmie Dale softly. “And I guess it will change hands to-night for the last time—and without the need of any Bill of Sale from old Henry Grenville! But we were speaking of the Rat—and why the Rat was murdered. If the Rat had had a chance to spread the news that the money paid by Mr. Curley this afternoon was counterfeit, it—”

      Jimmie Dale did not finish his sentence. In a bound, as the door from the cellar crashed inward, he was through the panel opening and in the room above. There was light from the open panel behind him—enough to show him that he was in a small room which was fitted up as an office—the office of Haines & Curley, wholesale liquor dealers!

      In an instant he was out of the office, and running silently down the length of the store. He snatched off his mask, reached the front door, opened it, stepped out on the quiet, deserted street—and a moment later Jimmie Dale was but one of the many that still, even at that hour, drifted their way along the Bowery.

      Chapter XIV.

       The Last Card

       Table of Contents

      Two weeks had gone by—or was it three? How long was it since he had found the Tocsin’s letter in the secret hiding place of the new Sanctuary! It had seemed to him then that he had been given a new lead, a new hope; for, once he had recovered from his startled amazement at the realisation that she was as conversant with the secrets of the new Sanctuary as she had been with the old, there had come the thought of turning that very fact to his own account—that if he were unable to reach or find her by any other means, he might succeed, instead, by letting her unwittingly come to him. She had come there once to the Sanctuary when he had been absent; she was almost certain to come there again—when she thought he was absent! He had put his plan into execution. For days at a stretch he had remained hidden in the Sanctuary—and nothing had come of it—and then the inaction, coupled with the knowledge that the peril which faced her, even though his previous efforts to avert it had all been abortive, had made it unbearable to remain longer passive, and he had given it up, and gone out again, combing and searching through the dens and dives of the underworld.

      That had been two weeks ago—or three. And the net result had been nothing!

      Jimmie Dale allowed the evening newspaper to slip from his fingers. It dropped to the arm of his lounging chair, and from there to the floor. It was no use. He had been reading mechanically ever since he had returned from the club half an hour ago, and he was conscious in only the haziest sort of way of what he had been reading. The market, the general news items, the editorials, had all blended one into the other to form a meaningless jumble of words; even the leading article on the front page, that proclaimed as imminent the final and complete exposé of what had come to be known as “The Private Club Ring”—an investigation that, from its inception, he had hitherto followed closely, promising as it did to involve and link in partnership with the lowest of the underworld names that heretofore had stood high up in the social circles of New York—seemed uninteresting and unable to hold his attention to-night.

      He rose impulsively from his chair, and, walking down the length of the richly furnished room, his tread soundless on the thick, heavy rug, drew the portières aside, and stood looking out of the rear window; It was dark outside, but presently the shadows formed into concrete shapes, and, across the black space of driveway and yard, the wall of the garage assumed a solid background against the night. He passed his hand over his forehead heavily, and a wanness came into his face and eyes. Once before he had stood here at this window of his den, the room that ran the entire depth of his magnificent Riverside Drive residence, and old Jason had stood at the front window—and they had watched, Jason and he—watched the shadows, that were not shadows of walls and buildings, close in around the house. That was the night before he had escaped from the trap set by the Crime Club; the night before the old Sanctuary had burned down, and police and underworld alike had believed the Gray Seal buried beneath the charred and fallen walls; the night before she, the Tocsin, had come for a little while into her own, and for a little while—into his arms.

      His lips twisted in pain. A little while! Days of glad and glorious wonder! They were gone now; and in their place was emptiness and loneliness—and a great, overmastering fear and terror that would clutch at times, as it clutched now, cold at his heart.

      It was not so very long ago that night, only a few months ago, but it seemed as though the years had come and rolled away since then. She was gone again, driven by a peril that menaced her life into hiding again—a peril that she would not let him share—because she loved him.

      The pain that showed on his twisted lips was voiced in a low, involuntary cry. Because she loved him! His hands clenched hard. Where was she? Who was it that dogged and haunted her, that was wrecking and ruining her life? God knew! And God knew, employing every resource he possessed, he had done everything he could to reach her. And all that he had accomplished had been the creation of a new character in the underworld! That was all—and yet, strangely enough, in that way there had come to him the one single gleam of relief that he had known, for out of the creation of that character had sprung again the activities of the Gray Seal, and with the resumption of those activities, since, as in the old days, those “calls to arms” of hers had come again he knew that, at least, she was so far alive and safe.

      Jimmie Dale swung from the window, and began to pace rapidly up and down the room. Safe—yes! But for how long? She had outwitted those against her up to now, but for how long would—

      He had halted abruptly beside the table. Some one was knocking at the door.

      “Come!” he called.

      And old Jason entered—and it seemed to Jimmie Dale that he must laugh out like one suddenly over-wrought and in hysteria. In the old butler’s hand was a silver card tray, and on the tray was—but there was no need to look on the tray, old Jason’s face, curiously mingling excitement and disquiet, the imperturbability of the butler gone for the nonce, was alone quite eloquent enough. But Jimmie Dale, master of many things, was most