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

a few hours, far too dangerous a move to consider; he had been too much the attraction, too much on exhibition, as it were. But even if this had not been so, there was still another and perhaps even stronger reason that had temporarily chained him to the rôle of the drug-wrecked artist and to the environment of the Sanctuary. The underworld had eyes and ears, and so too had the police; while, still more to be feared as one who seemed to reach out with cunning versatility into so many different spheres, as one who, of all others, would have his suspicions the most quickly aroused, there was the Phantom. Jimmie Dale, if he had returned to his ordinary life, would have had to do so with a bandaged face curiously like Smarlinghue's! It invited far too much! And so he had telephoned to Jason, that peer of butlers, that he had been called out of town for a few days; and whatever personal fears the old man might have entertained for the safety of his young master, whom, as he was wont to say, he had dandled on his knee as a child, Jason could be trusted to account, both ingeniously and to the entire satisfaction of any one interested, for the temporary absence of Jimmie Dale from his usual haunts.

      In a personal sense, therefore, there had been no serious cause for anxiety; but in those four days it seemed, somehow, as though a wall, impenetrable, thick, had been reared across his path, halting him, and shutting out from both sight and hearing those things that concerned him far more than the consideration of his own security. There had been no word from the Tocsin, no note, no sign, no straw of evidence out of the whispered confidences in the hidden places of the underworld that he could grasp at as indicative of even her continued existence. The old question gnawed at his heart. Was she still alive to-night? What move had the Phantom made in those four days, and if any, had the man with his hell-born cunning been at last successful?

      The days had been as a blank. Even Mother Margot had been denied him, for no mask could have hidden the bandages from her eyes. But yet, after all, he had not been idle. He had done what he could. The wave of notoriety that for the moment had swept him to a pinnacle high above his fellows of the underworld had seemed to present the only opportunity for activity left open to him, and he had seized upon it to cultivate the very men who were unconsciously responsible for the ruse to which he had been forced to resort that night in the Sanctuary to save his life, the men who had hammered at his door, voicing for the moment the one rallying cry that alone could unite the myriad, vicious interests of gangland in one common bond, “Death to the Gray Seal!” And in a measure he had been successful, though, as far as results had gone, he might, it seemed, have saved himself the effort. Bunty Myers, Muller and the rest—Gentleman Laroque's, alias the Phantom's, gang—had admitted him, rather pleased to bask in his reflected glory, to their hang-out in the upstairs rear room of Wally Kerrigan's ill-favoured “club,” which was half restaurant, half gambling den, and the resort of the worst in the Bad Lands, but he had learned nothing. They had loafed and smoked and played cards and drunk an amazing quantity of liquor, but that was all. There had always been Bunty Myers and Muller, and at times as many as three or four more, but had he, Jimmie Dale, not known that back of it all Gentleman Laroque, unseen, held these men in allegiance, he never would have discovered it there!

      He had learned nothing; but though to-night, for perhaps the first time, he could have dispensed with the bandages to the extent of at least being able to use the black silk mask without the risk of Mother Margot suspecting the tell-tale hurt that lay beneath, he was on his way now to Kerrigan's again as the first part of his night's work. Afterwards—He shrugged his shoulders. Afterwards he would see! Certainly there was always a chance at Kerrigan's. He felt that he had already worked himself into an intimacy that was not far from breeding confidences. Their apparent inaction was also not without its measure of satisfaction, and this in itself alone was worth knowing. It might very well, and probably did, augur that the Phantom too was for the moment inactive, that there was a momentary stagnation, as it were, in that master crook's field of endeavour, and——

      Jimmie Dale stopped short. He was opposite the swinging doors of a saloon, run by one Gypsy Dan, from which there emanated a stentorian-lunged voice high-pitched in song, accompanied by the thumping of many fists evidently upon the bar, and the stamping of many feet obviously upon the floor. Subconsciously, he was now aware, he had heard the row half a block away. It was not by any means a select and exclusive neighbourhood; it was one more of squalor than anything else and accustomed to disturbances more strenuous and decidedly more vicious than this, but it was at least within the purlieus of the city and supposedly under the domination of law and order. And now from the opposite corner ahead he caught the ray of a street lamp glinting on the rubber-cloaked shoulders of an officer, as the man crossed the street and headed for the saloon.

      Jimmie Dale, as Smarlinghue, smiled thinly. Whoever they were in there, they were friends of Smarlinghue, the riff-raff, the rank and file of the citizenry of that sordid fatherland of the underworld in which he held so high a station! The character of Gypsy Dan's saloon guaranteed that. He turned quickly, pushed the swinging doors open, and stepped to the side of the ragged, unkempt figure at the bar who was yelling at the top of his voice.

      “Forget it!” said Smarlinghue roughly. “There's a harness bull on the move out there.”

      The man, too immersed in his vocal efforts and the liquor he had imbibed, paid no attention; but the barkeeper was alert in an instant.

      “T'anks, Smarly!” he grunted. He leaned across the bar and clapped his hand over the singer's mouth, effectually shutting off the flow of song. “Close yer face!” he ordered peremptorily. “Dat'll be Riley out dere, an' he's all to de good if youse'll give him half a chance. D'ye hear? Dat goes for de whole of youse!”

      The half dozen loungers around the bar subsided. Comparative silence reigned for a moment, then a slow, measured step sounded outside, a night-stick rattled softly on the swinging doors, as though both in warning and in acknowledgment that the amenities had been observed, and the step died away.

      “T'anks, Smarly!” said the barkeeper again, as he once more leaned back against the far side of the bar.

      The erstwhile singer blinked.

      “Have a drink,” he invited cordially; and digging into his pocket, he produced a fistful of bills which he waved with a lordly, inebriated air about him.

      Jimmie Dale stared. A moniker in the Bad Lands was always apt and incisive, and it had been particularly so in this instance. He knew the ragged, down-at-the-heels vagrant, as everybody else in the East Side knew the man. Beggar Pete! The man was known at times to do odd jobs perhaps if pushed to extremity for food and particularly for drink, but otherwise he lived a miserable, poverty-stricken existence—not criminal, perhaps, just a drifter, lost to all sense of responsibility and self-respect.

      “Hello!” said Jimmie Dale, half seriously, half facetiously. “Who stuck you in his will, Pete?”

      Some one at the bar guffawed.

      “A nice old geezer wid gold spectacles dat Pete croaked wid a black-jack,” said the man. “Dere wasn't no one else to inherit wot was in de stiff's pocket!”

      Beggar Pete swung suddenly upon the speaker.

      “Dat's a damn lie!” he shouted furiously. “Youse t'inks youse're funny, don't youse? Well, mabbe youse won't laugh so loud wid a bust face—see?”

      Jimmie Dale edged in between the two men. Beggar Pete was huge-framed and, in spite of dissipation, muscular, and his face, working with rage, was indicative of a row that would bring more than Riley rapping softly in admonition with his night-stick on the swinging doors.

      “Sure, I'll have a drink,” said Jimmie Dale, diplomatically. He nodded to the barkeeper. “Suds for mine!” Then to Beggar Pete: “Here's how, Pete!”

      Beggar Pete's scowl gradually subsided.

      “Youse're all right, Smarly!” he said. He grew suddenly confidential. “Say, it came my way all right, an' 'twasn't more'n half an hour ago, neither. I'll tell youse. I was walkin' along an' broke for fair, an' an old gent goes brushin' by in a hurry in de rain. De Mouser t'inks he's funny, but de old geezer did have gold spectacles 'cause just after he gets by me he stops an' reaches into his pocket for a box of matches, an' I sees his face under de umbrella as he lights his cigar. Den