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

across the low forehead, the shifty eyes that were an indeterminate colour between brown and gray, the thin lips that seemed to draw in and give the jaw a protruding, belligerent effect. And Connie Myers knew him as Jimmie Dale—it would have to be then as Larry the Bat that the Gray Seal must work. That meant time—to go to the Sanctuary and change.

      "The police," he asked suddenly, aloud, "they have not yet discovered the body?"

      "Not yet," she replied hurriedly. "And that is still another reason for haste—there is no telling when they will. See—here!" She thrust a paper into his hand. "Here is a plan of old Doyle's house, and directions for finding it. You must get Connie Myers red-handed, you must make him convict himself, for the evidence through which I know him to be guilty can never be used against him. And, Jimmie, be careful—I know I am not wrong, that there is still something more behind all this. And now go, Jimmie, go! There is no time to lose!" She was pushing him across the room toward the door.

      Go! The word seemed suddenly to bring dismay. It was she again who was dominant now in his mind. Who knew if to-night, when he was taking his life in his hands again, would not be the last! And she was here now, here beside him—where she might never be again!

      She seemed to divine his thoughts, for she spoke again, a strange new note of tenderness in her voice that thrilled him.

      "You must never let them get you, Jimmie—for my sake. It will not last much longer—it is near the end—and I shall keep my promise. But go, now, Jimmie—go!"

      "Go?" he repeated numbly. "Go? But—but you?"

      "I?" She slipped suddenly away from him, retreating back down the room. "I will go—as I came."

      "Wait! Listen!" he pleaded.

      There was no answer.

      She was there—somewhere back there in the darkness still. He stood hesitant at the door. It seemed that every faculty he possessed urged him back there again—to her. Could he let her escape him now when she was so utterly in his power, she who meant everything in his life! And then, like a cold shock, came that other thought—she who had trusted to his honour! With a jerk, his hand swept out, felt for the doorknob, and closed upon it.

      "Good-night!" he said heavily, and stepped out into the hall.

      It seemed for a while, even after he had gained the street and made his way again to the subway, that nothing was concrete around him, that he was living through some fantastical dream. His head whirled, and he could not think rationally—and then slowly, little by little, his grip upon himself came back. She had come—and gone! With the roar of the subway in his ears, its raucous note seeming to strike so perfectly in consonance with the turmoil within him, he smiled mirthlessly. After all, it was as it always was! She was gone—and ahead of him lay the chances of the night!

      "Dicing with death!" The words, unbidden, came back once more. If they were true before, they were doubly applicable now. It was different to-night from what it had ever been before, as she had said. Usually, to the smallest detail, everything was laid open, clear before him in those astounding letters. To-night, it was vague at best. A man had been murdered. Connie Myers had committed the murder under circumstances that pointed strongly to some hidden motive behind and beyond the mere chance it afforded him to search his victim's house for the hidden cash. What was it?

      Jimmie Dale stared out at the black subway walls. The answer would not come. Station after station passed. At Fourteenth Street he changed from the express to a local, got out at Astor Place, and a few minutes later was walking rapidly down the upper end of the Bowery.

      The answer would not come—only the fact itself grew more and more deeply significant. The ghastly, callous fiendishness that lured an old, half-witted man to his death had Jimmie Dale in that grip of cold, merciless anger again, and there was a dull flush now upon his cheeks. Whatever it meant, whatever was behind it, one thing at least was certain—HE WOULD GET CONNIE MYERS!

      He was close to the Sanctuary now—it was down the next cross street. He reached the corner and turned it, heading east; but his brisk walk had changed to a nonchalant saunter—there were some people coming toward him. It was the Gray Seal now, alert and cautious. The little group passed by. Ahead, the tenement bordering on the black alleyway loomed up—the Sanctuary, with its three entrances and exits; the home of Larry the Bat. And across from it was that other tenement, that held a new interest for him now, where, in an empty room on the second floor, she had said, old Doyle still lay. Should he go there? He was thinking quickly now, and shook his head. It would take what he did not have to spare—time. It was already ten o'clock; and, granted that Connie Myers had committed the crime only a little over an hour ago, the man by this time would certainly be on his way to Doyle's house near Pelham, if, indeed, he were not already there. No, there was no time to spare—the question resolved itself simply into how long, since he had already searched twice and failed on both occasions, it would take Connie Myers to unearth old Doyle's hiding place for the money.

      Jimmie Dale glanced sharply around him, slipped into the alleyway, and, crouching against the tenement wall, moved noiselessly along to the side entrance. A moment more, and he had negotiated the rickety stairs with practiced, soundless tread, was inside the squalid quarters of Larry the Bat, and the door of the Sanctuary was locked and bolted behind him.

      Perhaps five minutes passed—and then, where Jimmie Dale, the millionaire, had entered, there emerged Larry the Bat, of the aristocracy and the elite of the Bad Lands. But instead of leaving by the side door and the alleyway, as he had entered, he went along the lower hallway to the front entrance. And here, instinctively, he paused a moment at the top of the steps, as his eyes rested upon the tenement on the opposite side of the street.

      It was strange that the crime should have been committed there! Something again seemed to draw him toward that empty room on the second story. He had decided once that he would not go, that there was not time; but, after all, it would not take long, and there was at least the possibility of gaining something more valuable even than time from the scene of the crime itself—there might even be the evidence he wanted there that would disclose the whole of Connie Myers' game.

      He went down the steps, and started across the street; but halfway over, he hesitated uncertainly, as a child's cry came petulantly from the doorway. It was dark in the street; and, likewise, it was one of those hot, suffocating evenings when, in the crowded tenements of the poorer class, miserable enough in any case, misery was added to a hundredfold for lack of a single God-given breath of air. These two facts, apparently irrelevant, caused Jimmie Dale to change his mind again. He had not noticed the woman with the baby in her arms, sitting on the doorstep; but now, as he reached the curb, he not only saw, but recognised her—and he swung on down the street toward the Bowery. He could not very well go in without passing her, without being recognised himself—and that was a needless risk.

      He smiled a little wanly. Once the crime was discovered, she would not have hesitated long before informing the police that she had seen him enter there! Mrs. Hagan was no friend of his! One could not live as he had lived, as Larry the Bat, and not see something in an intimate way of the pitiful little tragedies of the poor around him; for, bad, tough, and dissolute as the quarter was, all were not degraded there, some were simply—poor. Mrs. Hagan was poor. Her husband was a day labourer, often out of a job—and sometimes he drank. That was how he, Jimmie Dale, or rather, Larry the Bat, had come to earn Mrs. Hagan's enmity. He had found Mike Hagan drunk one night, and in the act of being arrested, and had wheedled the man away from the officer on the promise that he would take Hagan home. And he was Larry the Bat, a dope fiend, a character known to all the neighbourhood, and Mrs. Hagan had laid her husband's condition to HIS influence and companionship! He had taken Mike Hagan home—and Mrs. Hagan had driven Larry the Bat from the door of her miserable one-room lodging in that tenement with the bitter words on her tongue that only a woman can use when shame and grief and anger are breaking her heart.

      He shrugged his shoulders, as, back along the Bowery, he retraced his steps, but now, with the hurried shuffle of Larry the Bat where before had been the brisk, athletic stride of Jimmie Dale.

      At Astor Place again, he took the subway, this time to the Grand Central