"The Gray Seal!" he whispered. Then, with a catch in his voice: "You mean this? You mean to let me have these back--you mean--you mean all you've said? For G.o.d's sake, don't play with me--the Gray Seal, the most notorious criminal in the country, to give back a fortune like this!

You--you--"

"Dog with a bad name," said Jimmie Dale, with a wry smile; then, a little gruffly: "Put it in your pocket!"

Slowly, almost as though he expected the case to be s.n.a.t.c.hed back from him the next instant, Burton obeyed.

"I don't understand--I CAN'T understand!" he murmured. "They say that you--and yet I believe you now--you've saved me from a ruined life to-night. The Gray Seal! If--if every one knew what you had done, they--"

"But every one won't," Jimmie Dale broke in bluntly, "Who is to tell them? You? You couldn't very well, when you come to think of it--could you? Well, who knows, perhaps there have been others like you!"

"You mean," said Burton excitedly, "you mean that all these crimes of yours that have seemed without motive, that have been so inexplicable, have really been like to-night to--"

"I don't mean anything at all," interposed Jimmie Dale a little hurriedly. "Nothing, Burton--except that there is still one little thing more to do to bolster up that 'childish' story of mine--and then get out of here." He glanced sharply, critically around the room, his eyes resting for a moment at the last on the form on the floor. Then tersely: "I am going to turn out the light--we will have to pa.s.s the window to get to the door, and we will invite no chances. Are you ready?"

"No; not yet," said Burton eagerly. "I haven't said what I'd like to say to you, what I--"

"Walk straight to the door," said Jimmie Dale curtly. There was the click of an electric-light switch, and the room was in darkness. "Now, no noise!" he instructed.

And Burton, perforce, made his way across the room--and at the door Jimmie Dale joined him and led him down the short flight of stairs. At the bottom, he opened the door leading into the rear of the p.a.w.nshop itself, and, bidding Burton follow, entered.

"We can't risk even a match; it could be seen from the street," he said brusquely, as he fumbled around for a moment in the darkness. "Ah--here it is!" He lifted a telephone receiver from its hook, and gave a number.

Burton caught him quickly by the arm.

"Good Lord, man, what are you doing?" he protested anxiously. "That's Mr. Maddon's house!"

"So I believe," said Jimmie Dale complacently. "h.e.l.lo! Is Mr. Maddon there? . . . I beg pardon? . . . Personally, yes, if you please."

There was a moment's wait. Burton's hand was still nervously clutching at Jimmie Dale's sleeve. Then:

"Mr. Maddon?" asked Jimmie Dale pleasantly. "Yes? . . . I am very sorry to trouble you, but I called you up to inquire if you were aware that your rubies, and among them your Aracon, had been stolen? . . . I beg pardon! . . . Rubies--yes. . . . You weren't. . . . Oh, no, I am quite in my right mind; if you will take the trouble to open your safe you will find they are gone--shall I hold the line while you investigate?

. . . What? . . . Don't shout, please--and stand a little farther away from the mouthpiece." Jimmie Dale's tone was one of insolent composure now. "There is really no use in getting excited. . . . I beg pardon? . . .

Certainly, this is the Gray Seal speaking. . . . What?" Jimmie Dale's voice grew plaintive, "I really can't make out a word when you yell like that. . . . Yes. . . . I had occasion to use them this afternoon, and I took the liberty of borrowing them temporarily--are you still there, Mr.

Maddon? . . . Oh, quite so! Yes, I hear you NOW. . . . No, that is all, only I am returning them through your private secretary, a very estimable young man, though I fear somewhat excitable and shaky, who is on his way to you with them now. . . . WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY? You repeat that," snapped Jimmie Dale suddenly, icily, "and I'll take them from under your nose again before morning! . . . Ah! That is better!

Good-night--Mr. Maddon."

Jimmie Dale hung up the receiver and shoved Burton toward the door.

"Now then, Burton, we'll get out of her--and the sooner you reach Fifth Avenue and Mr. Maddon's house the better. No; not that way!" They had reached the hall, and Burton had turned toward the side door that opened on the alleyway. "Whoever they were who settled their last account with Isaac may still be watching. They've nothing against any one else, but they know some one was in here at the time, and, if the police are clever enough ever to get on their track, they might find it very convenient to be able to say WHO was in the room when Isaac was murdered--there's nothing to show, since Isaac so obligingly opened the window for them, that the shot was fired THROUGH the window and not from the inside of the room. And even if they have already taken to their heels"--Jimmie Dale was leading Burton up the stairs again as he talked--"it might prove exceedingly inconvenient for us if some pa.s.ser-by should happen to recollect that he saw two men of our general appearance leaving the premises. Now keep close--and follow me."

They pa.s.sed the door of Isaac's den, turned down a narrow corridor that led to the rear of the house--Jimmie Dale guiding unerringly, working from the mental map of the house that the Tocsin had drawn for him--descended another short flight of stairs that gave on the kitchen, crossed the kitchen, and Jimmie Dale opened a back door. He paused here for a moment to listen; then, cautioning Burton to be silent, moved on again across a small back yard and through a gate into a lane that ran at right angles to the alleyway by which both had entered the house--and, a minute later, they were crouched against a building, a half block away, where the lane intersected the cross street.

Here Jimmie Dale peered out cautiously. There was no one in sight. He touched Burton's shoulder, and pointed down the street.

"That's your way, Burton--mine's the other. Hurry while you've got the chance. Good-night."

Burton's hand reached out, caught Jimmie Dale's, and wrung it.

"G.o.d bless you!" he said huskily. "I--"

And Jimmie Dale pushed him out on to the street.

Burton's steps receded down the sidewalk. Jimmie Dale still crouched against the wall. The steps grew fainter in the distance and died finally away. Jimmie Dale straightened up, slipped the mask from his face to his pocket, stepped out on the street--and five minutes later was pa.s.sing through the noisy bedlam of the Hungarian restaurant on his way to the front door and his car.

"SONNEZ LE TOCSIN," Jimmie Dale was saying softly to himself. "I wonder what she'll do when she finds I've got the ring?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAN HIGHER UP

The Tocsin! By neither act, sign, nor word had she evidenced the slightest interest in that ring--and yet she must know, she certainly must know that it was now in his possession. Jimmie Dale was disappointed. Somehow, he had counted more than he had cared to admit on developments from that ring.

He pulled a little viciously at his cigarette, as he stared out of the St. James Club window. That was how long ago? Ten days? Yes; this would be the eleventh. Eleven days now and no word from her--eleven days since that night at old Isaac's, since she had last called him, the Gray Seal, to arms. It was a long while--so long a while even that what had come to be his prerogative in the newspapers, the front page with three-inch type recounting some new exploit of that mysterious criminal the Gray Seal, was being usurped. The papers were howling now about what they, for the lack of a better term, were pleased to call a wave of crime that had inundated New York, and of which, for once, the Gray Seal was not the storm centre, but rather, for the moment, forgotten.

He drew back from the window, and, settling himself again in the big leather lounging chair, resumed the perusal of the evening paper. His eye fell on what was common to every edition now, a crime editorial--and the paper crackled suddenly under the long, slim, tapering fingers, so carefully nurtured, whose sensitive tips a hundred times had made mockery of the human ingenuity squandered on the intricate mechanism of safes and vaults. No; he was wrong--the Gray Seal had not been forgotten.

"We should not be surprised," wrote the editor virulently, "to discover at the bottom of these abominable atrocities that the guiding spirit, in fact, was the Gray Seal--they are quite worthy even of his diabolical disregard for the laws of G.o.d and man."

Jimmie Dale's lips straightened ominously, and an angry glint crept into his dark, steady eyes. There was nothing then, nothing too vile that, in the public's eyes, could not logically be a.s.sociated with the Gray Seal--even this! A series of the most cold-blooded, callous murders and robberies, the work, on the face of it, of a well-organized band of thugs, brutal, insensate, little better than fiends, though clever enough so far to have evaded capture, clever enough, indeed, to have kept the police still staggering and gasping after a clew for one murder--while another was in the very act of being committed! The Gray Seal! What exquisite irony! And yet, after all, the papers were not wholly to blame for what they said; he had invited much of it. Seeming crimes of the Gray Seal had apparently been genuine beyond any question of doubt, as he had intended them to appear, as in the very essence of their purpose they had to be.

Yes; he had invited much--he and she together--the Tocsin and himself.

He, Jimmie Dale, millionaire, clubman, whose name for generations in New York had been the family pride, was "wanted" as the Gray Seal for so many "crimes" that he had lost track of them himself--but from any one of which, let the ident.i.ty of the Gray Seal be once solved, there was and could be no escape! What exquisite irony--yet full, too, of the most deadly consequences!

Once more Jimmie Dale's eyes sought the paper, and this time scanned the headlines of the first page:

BRUTAL MURDER OF MILL PAYMASTER.

THE CRIME WAVE STILL AT ITS HEIGHT.

HERMAN ROESSLE FOUND DEAD NEAR HIS CAR.

a.s.sa.s.sINS ESCAPE WITH $20,000.

Jimmie Dale read on--and as he read there came again that angry set to his lips. The details were not pleasant. Herman Roessle, the paymaster of the Martindale-Kensington Mills, whose plant was on the Hudson, had gone that morning in his runabout to the nearest town, three miles away, for the monthly pay roll; had secured the money from the bank, a sum of twenty-odd thousand dollars; and had started back with it for the mill. At first, it being broad daylight and a well-frequented road, his nonappearance caused no apprehension; but as early afternoon came and there was still no sign of Roessle the mill management took alarm.

Discovering that he had left the bank for the return journey at a few minutes before eleven, and that nothing had been seen of him at his home, the police were notified. Followed then several hours of fruitless search, until finally, with the whole countryside aroused and the efforts of the police augumented by private search parties, the car was found in a thicket at the edge of a crossroad some four miles back from the river, and, a little way from the car, the body of Roessle, dead, the man's head crushed in where it had been fiendishly battered by some blunt, heavy object. There was no clew--no one could be found who had seen the car on the crossroad--the murderer, or murderers, and the twenty-odd thousand dollars in cash had disappeared leaving no trace behind.

There were several columns of this, which Jimmie Dale skimmed through quickly; but at the end he stared for a long time at the last paragraph.

Somehow, strange, to relate, the paper had neglected to turn its "sob"

artist loose, and the few words, added almost as though they were an afterthought, for once rang true and full of pathos in their very simplicity--at the Roessle home, where Mrs. Roessle was prostrated, two little tots of five and seven, too young to understand, had gravely received the reporter and told him that some bad man had hurt their daddy.

"Mr. Dale, sir!"

Jimmie Dale lowered his paper. A club attendant was standing before him, respectfully extending a silver card tray. From the man, Jimmie Dale's eyes fixed on a white envelope on the tray. One glance was enough--it was HERS, that letter. The Tocsin again! His brain seemed suddenly to be afire, and he could feel his pulse quicken, the blood begin to pound in fierce throbs at his heart. Life and death lay in that white, innocent-looking, unaddressed envelope, danger, peril--it was always life and death, for those were the stakes for which the Tocsin played.