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

get that paper first.

      He was at the tenement now—shuffling leisurely up the steps. The front door was open. He entered, and went up the first flight of stairs, then along the hall, and up the next flight. He had half expected the place to be bustling with excitement over the crime; but the police evidently had kept the affair quiet, for he had seen no one since he had entered. But now, as he began to mount the third flight, he went more slowly—some one was ahead of him. It was very dark—he could not see. The steps above died away. He reached the landing, started along for Hagan's room—and a light blazed suddenly in his face, and a hard, quick grip on his shoulder forced him back against the wall. Then the flashlight wavered, glistened on brass buttons went out, and a voice laughed roughly:

      "It's only Larry the Bat!"

      "Larry the Bat, eh?" It was another voice, harsh and curt. "What are you doing here?"

      He was not first, after all! The telephone message from Pelham—it was almost certainly that—had beaten him! They were ahead of him, just ahead of him, they had only been a few steps ahead of him going up the stairs, just a second ahead of him on their way to Hagan's room! Jimmie Dale was thinking fast now. He must go, too—to Hagan's room with them—somehow—there was no other way—there was Hagan's life at stake.

      "Aw, I ain't done nothin'!" he whined. "I was just goin' ter borrow the price of a feed from Mike Hagan—lemme go!"

      "Hagan, eh!" snapped the questioner. "Are you a friend of his?"

      "Sure, I am!"

      The officers whispered for a moment together.

      "We'll try it," decided the one who appeared to be in command. "We're in the dark, anyhow, and the thing may be only a steer. Mabbe it'll work—anyway, it won't do any harm." His hand fell heavily on Jimmie Dale's shoulder. "Mrs. Hagan know you?" brusquely.

      "Sure she does!" sniffled Larry the Bat.

      "Good!" rasped the officer. "Well, we'll make the visit with you. And you do what you're told, or we'll put the screws on you—see? We're after something here, and you've blown the whole game—savvy? You've spilled the gravy—understand?"

      In the darkness, Jimmie Dale smiled grimly. It was far more than he had dared to hope for—they were playing into his hands!

      "But I don't know 'bout any game," grovelled Larry the Bat piteously.

      "Who in hell said you did!" growled the officer. "You're supposed to have snitched the lay to us, that's all—and mind you play your part! Come on!"

      It was two doors down the hall to Mike Hagan's room, and there one of the officers, putting his shoulder to the door, burst it open and sprang in. The other shoved Jimmie Dale forward. It was quickly done. The three were in the room. The door was closed again.

      Came a cry of terror out of the darkness, a movement as of some one rising up hurriedly in bed; and then Mrs. Hagan's voice:

      "What is it! Who is it! Mike!"

      The table—it was against the right-hand wall, Jimmie Date remembered. He sidled quickly toward it.

      "Strike a light!" ordered the officer in charge.

      Jimmie Dale's fingers were feeling under the edge of the table—a quick sweep along it—NOTHING! He stooped, reaching farther in—another sweep of his arm—and his fingers closed on a sheet of paper and a piece of hard gum. In an instant they were in his pocket.

      A match crackled and flared up. A lamp was lighted. Larry the Bat sulked sullenly against the wall.

      Terror-stricken, wide-eyed, Mrs. Hagan had clutched the child lying beside her to her arms, and was sitting bolt upright in bed.

      "Now then, no fuss about it!" said the officer in charge, with brutal directness. "You might as well make a clean breast of Mike's share in that murder downstairs—Larry the Bat, here, has already told us the whole story. Come on, now—out with it!"

      "Murder!"—her face went white. "My Mike—MURDER!" She seemed for an instant stunned—and then down the worn, thin, haggard face gushed the tears. "I don't believe it!" she cried. "I don't believe it!"

      "Come on now, cut that out!" prodded the officer roughly. "I tell you Larry the Bat, here, has opened everything up wide. You're only making it worse for yourself."

      "Him!" She was staring now at Jimmie Dale. "Oh, God!" she cried. "So that's what you are, are you—a stool-pigeon for the cops? Well, whatever you told them, you lie! You're the curse of this neighbourhood, you are, and if my Mike is bad at all, it's you that's helped to make him bad. But murder—you LIE!"

      She had risen slowly from the bed—a gaunt, pitiful figure, pitifully clothed, the black hair, gray-streaked, streaming thinly over her shoulders, still clutching the baby that, too, was crying now.

      The officers looked at one another and nodded.

      "Guess she's handing it straight—we'll have a look on our own hook," the leader muttered.

      She paid no attention to them—she was walking straight to Jimmie Dale.

      "It's you, is it," she whispered fiercely through her sobs "that would bring more shame and ruin here—you that's selling my man's life away with your filthy lies for what they're paying you—it's you, is it, that—" Her voice broke.

      There was a frightened, uneasy look in Larry the Bat's eyes, his lips were twitching weakly, he drew far back against the wall—and then, glancing miserably at the officers, as though entreating their permission, began to edge toward the door.

      For a moment she watched him, her face white with outrage, her hand clenched at her side—and then she found her voice again.

      "Get out of here!" she said, in a choked, strained way pointing to the door. "Get out of here—you dirty skate!"

      "Sure!" mumbled Larry the Bat, his eyes on the floor. "Sure!" he mumbled—and the door closed behind him.

      Part Two:

       The Woman in the Case

       Table of Contents

      Chapter I.

       Below the Dead Line

       Table of Contents

      Whisperings! Always whisperings, low, sibilant, floating errantly from all sides, until they seemed a component part of the drug-laden atmosphere itself. And occasionally another sound: the soft SLAP-SLAP of loose-slippered feet, the faint rustle of equally loose-fitting garments. And everywhere the sweet, sickish smell of opium. It was Chang Foo's, simply a cellar or two deeper in Chang Foo's than that in which Dago Jim had quarrelled once—and died!

      Larry the Bat, vicious-faced, unkempt, disreputable, lay sprawled out on one of the dive's bunks, an opium pipe beside him. But Larry the Bat was not smoking; instead, his ear was pressed closely against the boarding that formed the rather flimsy partition at the side of the bunk. One heard many things in Chang Foo's if one cared to listen—if one could first win one's way through the carefully guarded gateway, that to the uninitiated offered nothing more interesting than the entrance to a Chinese tea-shop, and an uninviting one at that!

      HAD HE BEEN FOLLOWED IN HERE? He had been shadowed for the last hour; of that, at least, he was certain. Why? By whom? For an hour he had dodged in and out through the dens of the underworld, as only one who was at home there and known to all could do—and at last he had taken refuge in Chang Foo's like a fox burrowing deep into its hole.

      Few could find their way into the most infamous opium den in all New York, where not only the poppy ruled as master, but where crime was hatched, ay, and carried to its ghastly consummation, sometimes, as well; and of those few, not one but was of the