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

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.

      Chapter XVII.

       The Defaulter

       Table of Contents

      At the other door the knocking still continued—and then it was opened—and there came a chorus of low, horrified, startled cries, and the quick rush of feet into the room.

      The picklock went back into Jimmie Dale’s pocket, and crouched, now, his hand on the knob, turning it gradually without a sound, drawing the door ajar inch by inch, he kept his eyes on the doorway connecting with the other room. He could see the three men bending over Forrester. Their voices came in confused, broken, snatches:

      “… Dead!… Good God!… Are you sure?… Perhaps he’s only fainted…. No, he’s dead, poor devil!…”

      And then one of the men, the youngest of the three, a slight-built, clean-shaven, dark-eyed man of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, rose abruptly, and glanced sharply around the room.

      “Yes, he’s dead!” he said bitterly. “Any one could tell that! But he wouldn’t be dead, and this would never have happened if you’d done what I wanted you to do when you first came to the bank this afternoon. I wanted you to have him arrested then, didn’t I?”

      One of the others—and it was obvious that the others were the two bank examiners—a man of middle age, answered soberly.

      “You’re upset, Dryden,” he said. “You know we couldn’t do that—”

      “On a teller’s word against the cashier’s—of course not!” the young man broke in caustically. “Well, you see now, don’t you?”

      “We couldn’t do it then without proof,” amended the bank examiner quietly.

      “Proof!” Dryden exclaimed. “My God—proof! Who tipped your people off to have you drop in there this afternoon? I did, didn’t I? Do you think I’d do that without knowing what I was about! Didn’t I tell you that there was nothing but the office fixtures left! Didn’t I? There were only the two of us on the staff, and didn’t I tell you that I had discovered that the books were cooked from cover to cover? Yes, I did! And you had to get your pencils out and start in on a thumb-rule examination, as though nothing were the matter! Well, what did you find? The securities in a mess, what there was left of them—and what was supposed to be twenty thousand dollars that came out from the city yesterday nothing but a package of blank paper!”

      “You didn’t know that yourself until half an hour ago when we started to check up the cash,” returned the other a little sharply.

      “Well, perhaps, I didn’t,” admitted Dryden; “but I knew about the books.”

      “Besides that,” continued the bank examiner, “Mr. Forrester was in town this afternoon when we got to the bank and this is the first time we have seen him, so we could not very well have done anything other than we have done in any case. I mention this because you are talking wildly, and that sort of talk, if it gets out, won’t do any of us any good. You don’t want to blame Mr. Marner here and myself for Mr. Forrester’s death, do you?”

      “No—of course, I don’t!” said Dryden, in a more subdued voice. “I don’t mean that at all. I guess you’re right—I’m excited. I—well”—he motioned jerkily toward the form on the floor—“I’m not used to walking into a room and finding that.”

      It was Marner, the other bank examiner, who broke a moment’s silence.

      “We none of us are,” he said, and brushed his hand across his forehead. “A doctor can’t do any good, of course, but I suppose we should call one at once, and notify the police, too. I—”

      Jimmie Dale had slipped through the door and out into the hall. A moment more and he had descended the stairs and gained the street, still another and he had stepped nonchalantly into his car. The car started forward, passed out of the lighted zone of the town’s main street—and in the darkness, headed toward New York, Jimmie Dale, his nonchalance gone now, leaned forward over the wheel, and the big sixty horse-power car leaped into its stride like a thoroughbred at the touch of the spur, and tore onward at dare-devil speed through the night.

      His lips twisted in a smile that held little of humour. Back there in that room they would call a doctor, and they would call the police. And the doctor would establish the fact that Forrester had died from the effects of a dose of prussic acid; and the police would establish—what? Prussic acid was swift in its effect. If Forrester had died from that cause, how had he taken it himself, and out of what had he taken it? What the police would see would be quite a different thing from what he, Jimmie Dale, had seen when he opened the door of that room! Instead of the evidence of suicide, there was now every evidence of murder. The bank examiners on entering the room, started at what they saw, obsessed with the wreckage of the bank, might still for the moment have jumped to the conclusion, natural enough under the circumstances, of suicide; but the police, after ten minutes of unemotional investigation, would father a very different theory.

      Jimmie Dale’s jaws clamped, as his eyes narrowed on the flying thread of gray road under the dancing headlights. Well, the die was cast now! For good or bad, his response to Forrester’s telephone appeal had become the vital factor in the case. For good or bad! He laughed out sharply into the night. He would see soon enough—old Kronische, the wizened, crafty, little chemist, who burrowed like a fox in its hole deep in the heart of the Bad Lands, would answer that question. Old Kronische had a record that was known to police and underworld alike—and was trusted by neither one, and feared by both. But he was clever—clever with a devilish cleverness. God alone knew what he was up to in the long hours of day and night amongst his retorts and test tubes in his abominable smelling little hole; but every one knew that from old Kronische anything of a chemical nature could be obtained if the price, not a small one, was forthcoming, and if old Kronische was satisfied with the credentials of his prospective client.

      Yes—old Kronische! Old Kronische was the man, the one than; there was no possible hesitancy or question there—the question was how to reach old Kronische. Jimmie Dale shook his head in a quick, impatient gesture, as though in irritation because his brain would not instantly respond to his demand to formulate a plan. It seemed simple enough, old Kronische was perfectly accessible—but it was, nevertheless, far from simple. He could not go to old Kronische as Jimmie Dale, there was an ugly turn that had been taken in that room of Forrester’s now. If, as Jimmie Dale, he had had reason to keep out of the affair before, it was imperative that he should do so now—or he might find himself in a very awkward situation, so awkward, in fact, that the consequences might lead anywhere, and “anywhere” to Jimmie Dale, to the Gray Seal, to Smarlinghue, might mean ruin, wreckage and disaster. Nor, much less, could he risk going to old Kronische as Smarlinghue. He could not trust old Kronische. How, if old Kronische chose to “talk,” could Smarlinghue account for any connection with what had transpired in Forrester’s room? How long would it be, even if Smarlinghue were no more than put under surveillance, before the discovery would be made that Smarlinghue was but a role that covered—Jimmie Dale!

      And then Jimmie Dale’s strained, set face relaxed a little. His brain had repented of its stubbornness, it seemed, and was at work again. There was a way, a very sure way as far as old Kronische