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

Joe’s eyes ceased to blink.

      “Why, thanks!” grinned Hunchback Joe. “You’re a queer sort of a night marauder, you are! Sure this is for me, and that you aren’t making a mistake?”

      “Quite sure,” said Jimmie Dale, still quietly. “It’s yours. It’s the money you planted in Klanner’s trunk a couple of hours ago.”

      “I never heard of Klanner,” said Hunchback Joe.

      “It’s simply the evidence that that isn’t all I found in the trunk,” said Jimmie Dale. “There was a packet of papers, and the blood-stained blackjack with which Jathan Lane was murdered in the bank this afternoon.”

      “My God, the man’s mad!” muttered Hunchback Joe under his breath. “I’m up against a maniac!”

      Jimmie Dale had taken his handkerchief from his pocket, and, carrying it to his mouth, had moistened the adhesive side of the little seal. His voice rasped, as his hand went down upon the table.

      “You blot on God’s earth!” he said hoarsely. “That’s enough of that!

       The buttons are off the foils to-night, Hunchback Joe!”

      For the second time, Hunchback Joe’s eyes had ceased to blink. He was staring at the gray seal on the table top in front of him, and now in spite of his effort to maintain nonchalance, a whiteness had come into his face.

      “You!” he shrank back a little in his chair. “The Gray Seal!”

      Jimmie Dale’s lips were thin and drawn tight together. He made no answer.

      It was Hunchback Joe who broke the silence.

      “What’s your price?” he asked thickly. “I suppose you’ve got those—those other things, or at least you know where they are.”

      “Yes,” said Jimmie Dale grimly, “I know where they are.”

      “Well”—Hunchback Joe hesitated, fumbling for his words—“we’re both tarred with the same brush, only you’re worse than I am. I’ve got to pay your price, of course. Make it reasonable. I haven’t got all the money in the world. Tell me where those things are, and name your figures.”

      “My figure”—Jimmie Dale was clipping off his words—“is a little information. A trade, Hunchback Joe—mine for yours. I want to know where Peter Marre, alias Clarke, is?”

      Hunchback Joe drew back from the table with a jerk. The whiteness in his face had changed to an unhealthy, leaden gray. He shook his head.

      “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s straight—I’ve heard of Marre, of course, everybody has, he’s a lawyer; but I never heard of Clarke, and that’s—”

      “A lie!” Jimmie Dale cut in, an ugly calm in his voice “You—”

      But Jimmie Dale, too, was interrupted. The telephone on the table was ringing. His automatic covering Hunchback Joe, he pulled the instrument toward him, and lifted the receiver from the hook.

      “Hello!” he said gruffly. “What’s wanted?”

      A voice responded in feverish excitement:

      “Say, dat youse, Joe? Dis is Hoppy Meggs. Say, de fly cops has got tipped off; dey’re on de way down to yer place now. Youse want to beat it on de jump!”

      “Wait a minute!” said Jimmie Dale. He passed the instrument over to Hunchback Joe. “It’s for you,” he said, with a queer smile.

      Hunchback Joe put the receiver to his ear—and a moment later, without a word in reply, returned it to the hook. But he had risen from his seat, and, swaying on his feet, was gripping at the table edge for support.

      “I could have told you that,” said Jimmie Dale evenly; “but you’ve got it now from a source that you won’t question. I told you the buttons were off the foils tonight, but you don’t seem to realise it yet. Three nights ago you laid a trap for me—and the Pippin died. Do you understand what I mean now by naked foils? You’ve one chance for life—and that’s to answer my question. But I’ll play fair with you, and tell you that I’m going to see that the police get you even if you do answer. Those documents and that blackjack are here in this place, and the Secret Service men know where to find them.” Jimmie Dale’s watch was in his hand. “It’s five minutes to twelve. They’ll be here at midnight. I’ve got to make my getaway before they come. I need two minutes for that, including locking you in so that you can’t get away. That leaves you three minutes to make up your mind. If you answer, you can have whatever chance your lawyers can get you; if you refuse, you and I settle our score before I leave. It’s three minutes against a possible commutation of sentence to life imprisonment. Where is Marre?”

      The misshapen, shrunken thing was rocking on its feet. There was no answer.

      “There are two minutes left,” said Jimmie Dale in a monotone.

      The man’s eyes, coal black, hunted, the pupils gone, swept the room. His lips were working; his hands, clenching and unclenching, clawed at the table.

      “One!“ said Jimmie Dale.

      There was a scream of ungovernable fury, the crash of the toppling table, and, reaching out with both hands for Jimmie Dale’s weapon, Hunchback Joe hurled himself forward—but quick as the other was, Jimmie Dale was quicker, and with his left hand, palm open, pushed full into the man’s face, he flung the other back.

      And then there came a cry—a cry in a woman’s voice;

      “Marre!”

      It was the Tocsin’s voice from the rear doorway of the office. It was her voice; Jimmie Dale could never mistake it even in its startled cry—but he did not look. His eyes were on the man who was standing on the other side of the overturned table, whose beard where he, Jimmie Dale, had grasped the other’s face had been wrenched away, and whose shrunken figure seemed to tower up now in height, and whose deformity was a padded coat, awry now because of the erect and upright posture in which the man stood. It was Clarke, the master of disguise, who once had impersonated Travers, the chauffeur; it was Marre—Wizard Marre.

      There was a ghastly smile on the man’s face.

      “Marre,” he said. “Yes—Marre. But you never knew it, did you, Miss LaSalle—until now! Well, now is time enough for you, and far too soon for me!” He flung out his hand in a queer, impotent gesture, as he threw back his shoulders. “But I would like to be thought a good loser. I congratulate you, Miss LaSalle!” Again his hand was raised in gesture—and with lightning swiftness, before Jimmie Dale could intervene, swept to his vest pocket and was carried to his mouth. “And so I drink to your success, and—”

      A glass vial rolled away upon the floor—and Jimmie Dale, with a bound, had caught the swaying figure in his arms. There was a tremor through the man’s form—then inertness. He lowered the other to the ground. Wizard Marre was dead. It was the colourless liquid of the old Crime Club, instantaneous in its action that—

      Jimmie Dale swept his hand over his masked face, and pulled the mask away, and looked up. She, the Tocsin; yes, it was the Tocsin; yes, it was Marie—only the beautiful face was deadly pale—it was the Tocsin who was standing over him, shaking him frantically by the shoulder.

      “Jimmie! Quick! Quick!” she cried. “The Secret Service men! Don’t you hear them? Quick! This way!”

      There was a crash, a pound upon the street door. She had caught his hand, and was pulling him forward now out into the rear of the shed. There was a light from the office doorway—enough to see. One of the packing cases was tipped over, and, on hinges, made a trap door. A short ladder led downward to where, a few feet below, two boats were moored.

      “I came this way. I followed him,” she said. “Quick—Jimmie!”

      It took an instant, no more, to swing her through the opening, but as he lowered her down