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

closer than before—then the pound of racing feet.

      Jimmie Dale swung around the corner of the house, running at top speed. Something that was like a hot iron suddenly burned and seared along the side of his head just above the ear. He reeled, staggered, recovered himself, and dashed on. It nauseated him, that stinging in his head, and all at once seemed to be draining his strength away. The shouts, the shots, the running feet became like a curious buzzing in his ears. It seemed strange that they should have hit him, that he should be wounded! If he could only reach the low stone wall by the road, he could at least make a fight for his life on the other side!

      Red streaks swam before Jimmie Dale's eyes. The wall was such a long way off—a yard or two was a very long way more to go—the weakness seemed to be creeping up now even to numb his brain. No, here was the wall—they hadn't hit him again—he laughed in a demented way—and rolled his body over, and fell to the other side.

      "JIMMIE!"

      The cry seemed to reach some inner consciousness, revive him, send the blood whipping through his veins. That voice! It was her—HERS! The Tocsin! There was an automobile, engine racing, standing there in the road. He won to his feet—dark, rushing forms were almost at the wall. He fired—once—twice—fired again—and turned, staggering for the car.

      "Jimmie! Jimmie—QUICK!"

      Panting, gasping, he half fell into the tonneau. The car leaped forward, yells filled the air—but only one thing was dominant in Jimmie Dale's reeling brain now. He pulled himself up to his feet, and leaned over the back of the seat, reaching for the slim figure that was bent over the wheel.

      "It's you—you at last!" he cried. "Your face—let me lee your face!"

      A bullet split the back panel of the car—little spurting flames were dancing out from the roadway behind.

      "Are you mad!" she shouted back at him. "Let me steer—do you want them to hit me!"

      "No-o," said Jimmie Dale, in a queer singsong sort of way, and his head seemed to spin dizzily around. "No—I guess—" He choked. "The paper—it's in—my pocket"—and he went down unconscious on the floor of the car.

      When he recovered his senses he was lying on a couch in a plainly furnished room, and a man, a stranger, red, jovial-faced, farmerish looking, was bending over him.

      "Where am I?" he demanded finally, propping himself up on his elbow.

      "You're all right," replied the man. "She said you'd come around in a little while."

      "Who said so?" inquired Jimmie Dale.

      "She did. The woman who brought you here about five minutes ago. She said she ran you down with her car."

      "Oh!" said Jimmie Dale. He felt his head—it was bandaged, and it was bandaged, he was quite sure, with a piece of torn underskirt. He looked at the man again. "You haven't told me yet where I am."

      "Long Island," the other answered. "My name's Hanson. I keep a bit of a truck garden here."

      "Oh," said Jimmie Dale again.

      The man crossed the room, picked up an envelope from the table, and came back to Jimmie Dale.

      "She said to give you this as soon as you got your senses, and asked us to put you up for a while, as long as you wanted to stay, and paid us for it, too. She's all right, she is. You don't want to hold the accident up against her, she was mighty sorry about it. And now I'll go and see if the old lady's got your room ready while you're readin' your letter."

      The man left the room.

      Jimmie Dale sat up on the couch, and tore the envelope open. The note, scrawled in pencil, began abruptly:

      "You were quite a problem. I couldn't take you HOME—could I? I couldn't take you to what you call the Sanctuary could I? I couldn't take you to a hospital, nor call in a doctor—the stain you use wouldn't stand it. But, thank God! I know it's only a flesh wound, and you are all right where you are for the day or two that you must keep quiet and take care of yourself. By the time you read this the paper will be on the way to the proper hands, and by morning the four where they should be. There were a few articles in your clothes I thought it better to take charge of in case—well, in case of ACCIDENT."

      Jimmie Dale tore the note up, and smiled wryly at the door. He felt in his pockets. Mask, revolver, burglar's tools, and the thin metal insignia case were gone.

      "And I had the sublime optimism," murmured Jimmie Dale, "to spend months trying to find her as Larry the Bat!"

      Chapter IX.

       Two Crooks and a Knave

       Table of Contents

      The bullet wound along the side of his head and just above his ear would have been a very awkward thing indeed, in more ways than one, for Jimmie Dale, the millionaire, to have explained at his club, in his social set, or even to his servants, and of these latter to Jason the Solicitous in particular; but for Jimmie Dale as Larry the Bat it was a matter of little moment. There was none to question Larry the Bat, save in a most casual and indifferent way; and a bandage of any description, primarily and above all one that he could arrange himself, with only himself to take note of the incongruous hues of skin where the stain, the grease paint, and the make-up was washed off, would excite little attention in that world where daily affrays were common-place happenings, and a wound, for whatever reason, had long since lost the tang of novelty. Why then should it arouse even a passing interest if Larry the Bat, credited as the most confirmed of dope fiends, should have fallen down the dark, rickety stairs of the tenement in one of his orgies, and, in the expressive language of the Bad Lands, cracked his bean!

      And so Jimmie Dale had been forced to maintain the role of Larry the Bat for a far longer period than he had anticipated when, ten days before, he had assumed it for the night's work that had so nearly resulted fatally for himself, though it had placed Roessle's murderers behind the bars. For, the next day, unwilling to court the risk of remaining in that neighbourhood, he had left Hanson's, the farmer's, house on Long Island where the Tocsin had carried him in an unconscious state, telephoned Jason that he had been unexpectedly called out of town for a few days, and returned to the Sanctuary in New York. And here, to his grim dismay, he had found the underworld in a state of furious, angry unrest, like a nest of hornets, stirred up, seeking to wreak vengeance on an unseen assailant.

      For years, as the Gray Seal, Jimmie Dale had lived with the slogan of the police, "The Gray Seal dead or alive—but the Gray Seal!" sounding in his ears; with the newspapers screaming their diatribes, arousing the people against him, nagging the authorities into sleepless, frenzied efforts to trap him; with a price upon his head that was large enough to make a man, not too pretentious, rich for life—but in the underworld, until then, the name of the Gray Seal had been one to conjure with, for the underworld had sworn by the unknown master criminal, and had spoken his name with a reverence that was none the less genuine even if pungently tainted with unholiness. But now it was different. Up and down through the Bad Lands, in gambling hells, in vicious resorts, in the hiding places where thugs and crooks burrowed themselves away from the daylight, through the heart and the outskirts of the underworld travelled the fiat, whispered out of mouths crooked to one side—DEATH TO THE GRAY SEAL!

      Gangland differences were forgotten in the larger issue of the common weal. The gang spirit became the spirit of a united whole, and the crime fraternity buzzed and hummed poisonously, spurred on by hatred, thirst for revenge, fear, and, perhaps most potent of all, a hideous suspicion now of each other.

      The underworld had received a shock at which it stood aghast, and which, with its terrifying possibilities, struck consternation into the soul of every individual of that brotherhood whose bond was crime, who was already "wanted" for some offence or other, whether it ranged from murder in the first degree to some petty piece of sneak thievery. Stangeist, the Indian chief, the lawyer whose cunning brain had stood as a rampart between the underworld and a prison cell, was himself