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

he had also found a gold seal ring of hers, a dainty thing that bore a crest, a bell surmounted by a bishop's mitre, and underneath, in the scroll, a motto in French: Sonnez le Tocsin! It had seemed so apt! Ring the Tocsin! Sound the alarm! Always her notes had done that—calling the Gray Seal to arms that some one else might be the better or the happier for what she bade him do. The Tocsin! The word had seemed to visualise her then, and, knowing her by no other name, he had called her—the Tocsin.

      She stirred a little in his arms.

      “What time is it, Jimmie?” she asked.

      He shook his head. Time! What did time matter now? To Marie LaSalle, who once had lived in hourly peril of her life as Silver Mag in the days of the old Crime Club, and later, yes even until to-night, had again been forced to live under cover of some rôle which she had never divulged to him and which he had never penetrated; and to him, Jimmie Dale, in whose ears need never sound again that slogan of the underworld, “Death to the Gray Seal!” that reached to every nook and corner of the Bad Lands—to her and to him what did time count for now, save as a great, illimitable mine of happiness, a wealth beyond all telling that they were to spend together!

      She spoke again:

      “What time is it, Jimmie?”

      And now he answered her.

      “I don't know,” he said happily. “It was just midnight when the shed back there was raided. Since then there hasn't been any such thing as time, Marie.”

      “Listen!” she said.

      From somewhere across the water, faintly, a tower clock struck the hour.

      “One o'clock!” she exclaimed, as though in dismay. “We must be getting ashore. I—I did not think it was so late. And please, Jimmie, I'd like to row the boat. I—I feel quite—quite cold.”

      He felt her shiver a little in his arms.

      “Cold!” he echoed anxiously; and then, as he released her: “All right, if you really want to. It isn't very far. And I guess it's safe now. Pull in and skirt along the shore until we can find some good place to land.”

      She nodded as she picked up the oars, then turned the boat's head in toward the shore and began to row.

      Jimmie Dale moved back into the stern of the boat and settled himself in his seat. He watched her, drinking in the lithe, graceful swing of her body, the rhythmic stroke of the heavy oars. He could not see her face for the night shadows hid it, but he could see the poise of her head and the contour of the full, perfect throat. And he clasped his hand behind his head, and a great happiness and a great peace fell upon him.

      It seemed somehow as though the voyage of this little boat in which they had fled out here into the night for safety epitomised a voyage of great immensity that had begun in the very long ago, a voyage of interminable night through which his eyes had been straining and his soul had been yearning for a glimpse of the beacon light that should signal the approach to a wondrous Port of Dawn. And now the voyage was almost at an end. Marie there at the oars, and the peace and quiet around them, was the beacon light at last; and they could no more lose their way because the way was charted now to that Port of Dawn where there was no more any strife and peril and sordid crime, and where only love was.

      He smiled at his fancy, and suddenly laughed out into the night.

      “Keep in a little to the right, Marie,” he called. “There's something that looks like a low wharf ahead that ought to do.”

      “Yes; I see it,” she answered.

      Jimmie Dale sat abruptly upright in his seat. Perhaps it was only the rasp and creak of the oars in the rowlocks, but it had sounded so human—like a short, quick, suppressed sob. He leaned forward.

      “Was that you, Marie?” he asked quickly. “What is it?”

      He could not see her face. Her voice came back to him steady and untroubled:

      “Nothing, Jimmie.”

      Across the night, far up above them and in the distance, a great bridge stretched from shore to shore, its arc of sparkling lights like a tiara crowning the brow of the heavens. Faintly there came the roar of traffic, ever restless, ever sleepless. A trolley clanged its way unseen somewhere near the shore which the boat was now rapidly approaching; and here, where the lights showed but sparsely, many buildings, small and large, loomed out in queer, grotesque and fanciful shapes.

      Jimmie Dale's dark eyes lighted. All this was as it always was and always had been—only it was changed. It held a promise now that it had never held before. He felt his pulse beat quicken.

      The Port of Dawn!

      “Here we are, Marie!” he cried.

      The bow of the boat touched the edge of a low wharf—and then Jimmie Dale, like a man stunned, bewildered, his mind and brain in turmoil and riot, was standing up in the stern of the boat. Quick, like a flash, the Tocsin had lifted the oars from the rowlocks, flung them away in the water, and, springing to the string-piece of the wharf, had pushed the boat out again.

      “Jimmie! Oh, Jimmie!” Her voice reached him in a low, broken sob. “There was no other way. It's in your pocket, Jimmie. I put it there when—when you were—were holding me.”

      “Marie!” he cried out wildly. “In God's name, what are you doing, Marie!” He flung himself upon his knees and began to paddle furiously with his hands. “Marie!” he cried again.

      A shadow flitted swiftly along the wharf shorewards; it grew filmy and mingled with a thousand other shadows—and was lost.

      She was gone! The Tocsin was gone—as she had gone so many times before. He paddled on with his hands, but the act was purely mechanical. Gone! A cold chill was at his heart; an agony of fear seized upon him. Gone—when life in all its fulness....Gone! Why? An abyss seemed to yawn before him.

      After a time the boat bumped against the wharf. He sprang out and ran madly to the shore. He found himself groping like a blind man amongst buildings, in alleys, along dimly lighted streets. And then suddenly he stood still with the consciousness of stark futility upon him. Had he learned no lesson from the past? It was useless to search for her. He might have known that from the first! He had known it, only—only things had seemed so changed to-night.

      Fear took its toll of him again. It brought the sweat beads out upon his forehead. Fear for her. Subconsciously he realised now that something, somewhere, had, after all, gone wrong to-night; that she was still in danger, a danger that she still meant he should not share. No other reason save that brave, unselfish love of hers would have prompted her to this.

      “It's in your pocket, Jimmie.” Her words came back to him.

      He searched quickly, and with a sharp little cry of pain drew out a sealed envelope. Under a street lamp in a deserted street, he tore it open. Words that he had never thought to see again danced unsteadily before his eyes.

      “Dear Philanthropic Crook—since you must be that again,” he read. “I do not know under what circumstances you will receive this. I only know that before the night is over I shall be with you, and we will be together—for a little while. And, Jimmie, I am writing this instead of telling you what I must say, because I am afraid of myself and our love, afraid that I would not be strong enough to hold out against the plea of our hearts that at all costs we should remain together, and against your arguments, and perhaps against your physical restraint—for you are masterful, Jimmie. I cannot bring you any more into the shadows in which I know now I must live again. I must not, Jimmie; for it might only too well mean your certain destruction, the certain revelation to both the police and the underworld that the Gray Seal and Larry the Bat and Smarlinghue are none other than Jimmie Dale, the Riverside Drive millionaire and clubman. You see, I am writing without reserve, putting upon paper what has never been put upon paper before, because I know that in some way I shall personally place this letter in your possession, and that no other hands shall touch it and no other eyes shall see it save yours and mine.