"If I may?" he inquired courteously--and confided a number to the mouthpiece of the instrument.

There was a moment's wait, during which Wilbur, in a desperate sort of way, seemed to be trying to rally himself, to piece together a puzzle, as it were; and for the first time he appeared to take a personal interest in the masked figure that leaned against his desk. He kept pa.s.sing his hands across his eyes, staring at Jimmie Dale.

Then Jimmie Dale spoke--into the 'phone.

"MORNING NEWS-ARGUS office? Mr. Carruthers, please. Thank you."

Another wait--then Jimmie Dale's voice changed its pitch and register to a pleasant and natural, though quite unrecognisable ba.s.s.

"Mr. Carruthers? Yes. I thought it might interest you to know that Mr. Theodore Markel purchased a very valuable diamond necklace this afternoon. . . . Oh, you knew that, did you? Well, so much the better; you'll be all the more keenly interested to know that it is no longer in his possession. . . . I beg pardon? Oh, yes, I quite forgot--this is the Gray Seal speaking. . . . Yes. . . . The Gray Seal. . . . I have just come from Mr. Markel's country house, and if you hurry a man out there you ought to be able to give the public an exclusive bit of news, a scoop, I believe you call it--you see, Mr. Carruthers, I am not ungrateful for, I might say, the eulogistic manner in which the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS treated me in that last affair, and I trust I shall be able to do you many more favours--I am deeply in your debt. And, oh, yes, tell your reporter not to overlook the detail of Mr. Markel in his pajamas and dressing gown tied to a tree in his park--Mr. Markel might be inclined to be reticent on that point, and it would be a pity to deprive the public of any--er--'atmosphere' in the story, you know. . . .

What? . . . No; I am afraid Mr. Markel's 'phone is--er--out of order.

. . . Yes. . . . And, by the way, speaking of 'phones, Mr. Carruthers, between gentlemen, I know you will make no effort under the circ.u.mstances to discover the number I am calling from. Good-night, Mr.

Carruthers." Jimmie Dale hung the receiver abruptly on the hook.

"You see," said Jimmie Dale, turning to Wilbur--and then he stopped. The man was on his feet, swaying there, his face positively gray.

"My G.o.d!" Wilbur burst out. "What have you done? A thousand times better if I had shot myself, as I would have done in another moment if you had not come in. I was only ruined then--I am disgraced now. You have robbed Markel's safe--I am the one man in the world who would have a reason above all others for doing that--and Markel knows it. He will accuse me of it. He can prove I had a motive. I have not been home to-night.

n.o.body knows I am here. I cannot prove an alibi. What have you done!"

"Really," said Jimmie Dale, almost plaintively, swinging himself up on the corner of the desk and taking the cash box on his knee, "really, you are alarming yourself unnecessarily. I--"

But Wilbur stopped him. "You don't know what you are talking about!"

Wilbur cried out, in a choked way; then, his voice steadying, he rushed on: "Listen! I am a ruined man, absolutely ruined. And Markel has ruined me--I did not see through his trick until too late. Listen! For years, as a mining engineer, I made a good salary--and I saved it. Two years ago I had nearly seventy thousand dollars--it represented my life work.

I bought an abandoned mine in Alaska for next to nothing--I was certain it was rich. A man by the name of Thurl, Jason T. Thurl, another mining engineer, a steamer acquaintance, was out there at the time--he was a partner of Markel's, though I didn't know it then. I started to work the mine. It didn't pan out. I dropped nearly every cent. Then I struck a small vein that temporarily recouped me, and supplied the necessary funds with which to go ahead for a while. Thurl, who had tried to buy the mine out from under my option in the first place, repeatedly then tried to buy it from me at a ridiculous figure. I refused. He persisted.

I refused--I was confident, I KNEW I had one of the richest properties in Alaska."

Wilbur paused. A little row of glistening drops had gathered on his forehead. Jimmie Dale, balancing Markel's cash box on one knee, drummed softly with his finger tips on the cover.

"The vein petered out," Wilbur went on. "But I was still confident.

I sank all the proceeds of the first strike--and sank them fast, for unaccountable accidents that crippled me both financially and in the progress of the work began to happen." Wilbur flung out his hands impotently. "Oh, it's a long story--too long to tell. Thurl was at the bottom of those accidents. He knew as well as I did that the mine was rich--better than I did, for that matter, for we discovered before we ran him out of Alaska that he had made secret borings on the property.

But what I did not know until a few hours ago was that he had actually uncovered what we uncovered only yesterday--the mother lode. He was driving me as fast as he could into the last ditch--for Markel. I didn't know until yesterday that Markel had any thing to do with it. I struggled on out there, hoping every day to open a new vein. I raised money on everything I had, except my insurance and the mine--and sank it in the mine. No one out there would advance me anything on a property that looked like a failure, that had once already been abandoned. I have always kept an office here, and I came back East with the idea of raising something on my insurance. Markel, quite by haphazard as I then thought, was introduced to me just before we left San Francisco on our way to New York. On the run across the continent we became very friendly. Naturally, I told him my story. He played sympathetic good fellow, and offered to lend me fifty thousand dollars on a demand note.

I did not want to be involved for a cent more than was necessary, and, as I said, I hoped from day to day to make another strike. I refused to take more than ten thousand. I remember now that he seemed strangely disappointed."

Again Wilbur stopped. He swept the moisture from his forehead--and his fist, clenched, came down upon the desk.

"You see the game!"--there was bitter anger in his voice now. "You see the game! He wanted to get me in deep enough so that I couldn't wriggle out, deeper than ten thousand that I could get at any time on my insurance, he wanted me where I couldn't get away--and he got me. The first ten thousand wasn't enough. I went to him for a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth--hoping always that each would be the last. Each time a new note, a demand note for the total amount, was made, cancelling the former one. I didn't know his game, didn't suspect it--I blessed G.o.d for giving me such a friend--until this, or, rather, yesterday afternoon, when I received a telegram from my manager at the mine saying that he had struck what looked like a very rich vein--the mother lode.

And"--Wilbur's fist curled until the knuckles were like ivory in their whiteness--"he added in the telegram that Thurl had wired the news of the strike to a man in New York by the name of Markel. Do you see? I hadn't had the telegram five minutes, when a messenger brought me a letter from Markel curtly informing me that I would have to meet my note to-morrow morning. I can't meet it. He knew I couldn't. With wealth in sight--I'm wiped out. A DEMAND note, a call loan, do you understand--and with a few months in which to develop the new vein I could pay it readily. As it is--I default the note--Markel attaches all I have left, which is the mine. The mine is sold to satisfy my indebtedness. Markel buys it in legally, upheld by the law--and acquires, ROBS me of it, and--"

"And so," said Jimmie Dale musingly, "you were going to shoot yourself?"

Wilbur straightened up, and there was something akin to pathetic grandeur in the set of the old shoulders as they squared back.

"Yes!" he said, in a low voice. "And shall I tell you why? Even if, which is not likely, there was something reverting to me over the purchase price, it would be a paltry thing compared with the mine. I have a wife and children. If I have worked for them all my life, could I stand back now at the last and see them robbed of their inheritance by a black-hearted scoundrel when I could still lift a hand to prevent it!

I had one way left. What is my life? I am too old a man to cling to it where they are concerned. I have referred to my insurance several times.

I have always carried heavy insurance"--he smiled a little curious, mirthless smile--"THAT HAS NO SUICIDE CLAUSE." He swept his hand over the desk, indicating the papers scattered there. "I have worked late to-night getting my affairs in order. My total insurance is fifty-two thousand dollars, though I couldn't BORROW anywhere near the full amount on it--but at my death, paid in full, it would satisfy the note. My executors, by instruction would pay the note--and no dollar from the mine, no single grain of gold, not an ounce of quartz, would Markel ever get his hands on, and my wife and children would be saved. That is--"

His words ended abruptly--with a little gasp. Jimmie Dale had opened the cash box and was dangling the necklace under the light--a stream of fiery, flashing, sparkling gems.

Then Wilbur spoke again, a hard, bitter note in his voice, pointing his hand at the necklace.

"But now, on top of everything, you have brought me disgrace--because you broke into his safe to-night for THAT? He would and will accuse me.

I have heard of you--the Gray Seal--you have done a pitiful night's work in your greed for that thing there."

"For this?" Jimmie Dale smiled ironically, holding the necklace up.

Then he shook his head. "I didn't break into Markel's safe for this--it wouldn't have been worth while. It's only paste."

"PASTE!" exclaimed Wilbur, in a slow way.

"Paste," said Jimmie Dale placidly, dropping the necklace back into its case. "Quite in keeping with Markel, isn't it--to make a sensation on the cheap?"

"But that doesn't change matters!" Wilbur cried out sharply, after a numbed instant's pause. "You still broke into the safe, even if you didn't know then that the necklace was paste."

"Ah, but, you see--I did know then," said Jimmie Dale softly. "I am really--you must take my word for it--a very good judge of stones, and I had--er--seen these before."

Wilbur stared--bewildered, confused.

"Then why--what was it that--"

"A paper," said Jimmie Dale, with a little chuckle--and produced it from the cash box. "It reads like this: 'On demand, I promise to pay--'"

"My note!" It came in a great, surging cry from Wilbur; and he strained forward to read it.

"Of course," said Jimmie Dale. "Of course--your note. Did you think that I had just happened to drop in on you? Now, then, see here, you just buck up, and--er--smile. There isn't even a possibility of you being accused of the theft. In the first place, Markel saw quite enough of me to know that it wasn't you. Secondly, neither Markel nor any one else would ever dream that the break was made for anything else but the necklace, with which you have no connection--the papers were in the cash box and were just taken along with it. Don't you see? And, besides, the police, with my very good friend, Carruthers at their elbows, will see very thoroughly to it that the Gray Seal gets full and ample credit for the crime. But"--Jimmie Dale pulled out his watch, and yawned under his mask--"it's getting to be an unconscionable hour--and you've still a letter to write."

"A letter?" Wilbur's voice was broken, his lips quivering.

"To Markel," said Jimmie Dale pleasantly. "Write him in reply to his letter of the afternoon, and post it before you leave here--just as though you had written it at once, promptly, on receipt of his. He will still get it on the morning delivery. State that you will take up the note immediately on presentation at whatever bank he chooses to name.

That's all. Seeing that he hasn't got it, he can't very well present it--can he? Eventually, having--er--no use for fake diamonds, I shall return the necklace, together with the papers in his cash box here--including your note."

"Eventually?" Uncomprehendingly, stumblingly, Wilbur repeated the word.

"In a month or two or three, as the case may be," explained Jimmie Dale brightly. "Whenever you insert a personal in the NEWS-ARGUS to the effect that the mother lode has given you the cash to meet it." He replaced the note in the cash box, slipped down to his feet from the desk--and then he choked a little. Wilbur, the tears streaming down his face, unable to speak, was holding out his hands to Jimmie Dale.

"I--er--good-night!" said Jimmie Dale hurriedly--and stepped quickly from the room.

Halfway down the first flight of stairs he paused. Steps, running after him, sounded along the corridor above; and then Wilbur's voice.

"Don't go--not yet," cried the old man. "I don't understand. How did you know--who told you about the note?"

Jimmie Dale did not answer--he went on noiselessly down the stairs. His mask was off now, and his lips curved into a strange little smile.

"I wish I knew," said Jimmie Dale wistfully to himself.

CHAPTER IV

THE COUNTERFEIT FIVE