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

was half-past twelve, or a little later, as nearly as he could judge, for Larry the Bat carried no such ornate thing in evidence as a watch, as he halted at the corner of a dark, squalid street in the lower East Side. It was a miserable locality—in daylight humming with a cosmopolitan hive of pitiful humans dragging out as best they could an intolerable existence, a locality peopled with every nationality on earth, their community of interest the struggle to maintain life at the lowest possible expenditure, where necessity even was pared and shaved down to a minimum; but now, at night time, or rather in the early-morning hours, the darkness, in very mercy, it seemed, covered it with a veil, as it were, and in the quiet that hung over it now hid the bald, the hideous, aye, and the piteous, too, from view.

      It was a narrow street, and the row of tenement houses, each house almost identical with its neighbour, that flanked the pavement on either side, seemed, from where Jimmie Dale stood looking down its length, from the corner, to converge together at a point a little way beyond, giving it an unreal, ominous, cavernlike effect. And, too, there seemed something ominous even in its quiet. It was as though one sensed acutely the crouching of some Thing in its lair—waiting silently, viciously, with sullen patience.

      A footstep sounded—another. Jimmie Dale drew quickly back around the corner into an areaway. Two men passed—in helmets—swinging their nightsticks—that beat was always policed in pairs!

      They passed on, turned the corner, and went down the narrow cross street that Jimmie Dale had just been inspecting. He started to follow—and drew back again abruptly. A form flitted suddenly across the road and disappeared in the darkness in the officers' wake—ten yards behind the first another followed—at the same interval of distance still another—and yet still one more—four in all.

      The darkness hid all six, the two policemen, the four men behind them—the only sounds were the OFFICERS' footsteps dying away in the distance.

      Jimmie Dale's fingers were mechanically testing the mechanism of the automatic in his pocket.

      "The Skeeter's gang!" he muttered to himself. "Red Mose, the Midget, Harve Thoms—and the Skeeter! The Worst apaches in the city of New York; death contractors—the lowest bidders! Professional assassins, and a man's life any time for twenty-five dollars! I wonder—I've never done it yet—but I wonder if it would be a crime in God's sight if one shot—to KILL!"

      Jimmie Dale was at the corner again—again the street before him was black, deserted, empty. He chose the right hand side, and, well in the shadow of the houses, as an extra precaution, stole along silently. He stopped finally before one where, in the doorway, hung a little sign. Jimmie Dale mounted the porch, and with his eyes close to the sign could just make out the larger words in the big printed type:

      ROOM TO RENT TOP FLOOR

      Jimmie Dale nodded. That was right. The first house on the right-hand side, with the room-to-rent sign, her letter had said. His fingers were testing the doorknob. The door was not locked.

      "Naturally, it wouldn't be locked," Jimmie Dale told himself grimly—and stepped inside.

      He stood for an instant without movement, every faculty on the alert. Far up above him a step, guarded though his trained ear made it out to be, creaked faintly upon the stairs—there was no other sound. The creaking, almost inaudible at its loudest, receded farther up—and silence fell.

      In the darkness, noiselessly, Jimmie Dale groped for the stairway, found it, and began to ascend. The minutes passed—it seemed a minute even from step to step, and there were three flights to the top! There must be no creaking this time—the slightest sound, he knew well enough, would be not only fatal to the work he had to do, but probably fatal to himself as well. He had been near death many times—the consciousness that he was nearer to it now, possibly, than he had ever been before, seemed to stimulate his senses into acute and abnormal energy. And, too, the physical effort, as, step by step, the flexed muscles relaxing so slowly, little by little, gradually, each time as he found foothold on the step higher up, was a terrific strain. At the top his face was bathed in perspiration, and he wiped it off with his coat sleeve.

      It was still dark here, intensely dark, and his eyes, though grown accustomed to it, could make out nothing but the deeper shadow of the walls. But thanks to her, always a mistress of accurate and minute detail, he possessed a mental plan of his surroundings. The head of the stairs gave on the middle of the hallway—the hallway ran to his right and left. To his right, on the opposite side of the hall, was the door of old Luddy's squalid two-room apartment.

      For a moment Jimmie Dale stood hesitant—a sudden perplexity and anxiety growing upon him. It was strange! What did it mean? He had nerved himself to a quick, desperate attempt, trusting to surprise and his own wit and agility for victory—there had seemed no other way than that, since he had seen those four men at the corner—since they were AHEAD of him. True, they were not much ahead of him, not enough to have accomplished their purpose—and, furthermore, they were not in that room. He knew that absolutely, beyond question of doubt. He had listened for just that all the nerve-racking way up the stairs. But where were they? There was no sound—not a sound—just blackness, dark, impenetrable, utter, that began to palpitate now.

      It came in a whisper, wavering, sibilant—from his left. A sort of relief, fierce in the breaking of the tense expectancy, premonitory in the possibilities that it held, swept Jimmie Dale. He crept along the hall. The whisper had come from that room, presumably empty—that was for rent!

      By the door he crouched—his sensitive fingers, eyes to Jimmie Dale so often—feeling over jamb and panels with a delicate, soundless touch. The door was just ajar. The fingers crept inside and touched the knob and lock—there was no key within.

      The whispering still went on—but it seemed like a screaming of vultures now in Jimmie Dale's ears, as the words came to him.

      "Aw, say, Skeeter, dis high-brow stunt gives me de pip! Me fer goin' in dere an' croakin' de geezer reg'lar, widout de frills. Who's to know? Say, just about two minutes, an' we're beatin' it wid de sparklers."

      An inch, a half inch at a time, the knob slowly, very, very slowly turning, the door was being closed by the crouched form on the threshold.

      "Close yer trap, Mose!" came a fierce response. "We ain't fixed the lay all day for nothin'. There ain't a soul on earth knows he's got any sparklers, 'cept us. If there was, it would be different—then they'd know that was what whoever did it was after, see?"

      The door was closed—the knob slowly, very, very slowly being released again. From one of the leather pockets under Jimmie Dale's vest came a tiny steel instrument that he inserted in the key-hole.

      The same voice spoke on:

      "That's what we're croaking him for, 'cause nobody knows about them diamonds, and so's he can't TELL anybody afterward that any were pinched. An' that's why it's got to look like he just got tired of living and did it himself. I guess that'll hold the police when they find the poor old duck hanging from the ceiling, with a bit of cord around his neck, and a chair kicked out from under his feet on the floor. Ain't you got the brains of a louse to see that?"

      "Sure"—the whisper came dully, in grudging intonation through the panels—the door was locked. "Sure, but it's de hangin' 'round waitin' to get busy that's gettin' me goat, an'—"

      Jimmie Dale straightened up and began to retreat along the corridor. A merciless rage was upon him now, every fiber of his being seemed to tingle and quiver with it—the damnable, hellish ingenuity of it all seemed to choke and suffocate him.

      "Luck!" muttered Jimmie Dale between his clenched teeth. "Oh, the blessed luck to get that door locked! I've got time now to set the stage for my own get-away before the showdown!"

      He stole on along the corridor. Excerpts from her letter were running through his brain: "It would do no good to warn him, Jimmie—the Skeeter and his gang would never let up on him until they got the stones. . . . It would do no good for you to steal them first, for they would only take that as a ruse of old Luddy's, and murder the man first and hunt afterward. . . . In some way you must let the Skeeter SEE you steal them, make them think, make them