"We'll take no chances with this," he said grimly. "It's been too close a call. After we've had a look at it, we'll put it out of harm's way on the spot, here, while we've got it--before we leave!"

He ripped the package open, and disclosed perhaps a dozen official-looking doc.u.ments, besides a miscellaneous number of others.

He took up the first of the papers, glanced through it hurriedly, then tossed it to the pseudo chauffeur.

"Tear it up, and tear it up--SMALL!" he ordered tersely. The next, after examining it as he had the first, he tossed to the other man. "Go ahead!"--curtly. "Work fast! From the looks of these, Travers had us cold! There's proof enough here of LaSalle's murder to send us all to the chair!"

He went on glancing through the doc.u.ments; and then suddenly, joining the others in their work, began to rip and tear at the papers himself.

A sort of cold horror had settled upon Jimmie Dale, and his forehead was clammy wet. The inhuman irony of it! That he should stand there and watch, impotent to prevent it, the destruction of what he would have given his life to secure! And then slowly, a grim, hard, merciless smile came to his lips. He had recognised the leader's voice--now he would recognise the leader's FACE. At least, that was left to him--perhaps the master trump of all. It would not be very hard to find the Crime Club now--with that man to lead the way!

The sc.r.a.ps of paper, tiny shreds, mounted into a heap on the table--and with the last of the contents of the package destroyed, the leader stood up.

"Put these pieces in your pockets; we don't want to leave them here," he directed quietly. "And then let's get out."

In scarcely a moment, the last sc.r.a.p of paper had vanished. The three men walked to the door, pa.s.sed through it, and joined Spider Jack in the store--and Jimmie Dale, slipping out from behind the curtain, gained the door of the rear room, crept through it, reached the stoop, and then, darting like the wind across the yard, was over the fence in a second, and in another was out of the alleyway and on the street.

He was in time--in plenty of time. They had just left Spider Jack's, and were, perhaps, fifty yards or so ahead of him. He slouched on behind them--the cold, grim smile on his lips once more. It was the Crime Club now, that h.e.l.l's cradle where their devil's schemes were hatched, that was the one thing left to him; they would lead him to that, and then--and then it would be his turn to STRIKE!

They turned the first corner. And suddenly, as the racing engine of an automobile caught his ear, he broke into a run, and dashed around the corner after them--in time to see them jump into a car, and the car speed off along the street! He halted, as though he were suddenly dazed--started involuntarily to run forward again--stopped with a hollow laugh at the futility of it--and stood still and motionless on the sidewalk.

And then he swayed a little, and his face grew gray. Failure, defeat, ruin--in that moment he knew them all to their bitterest dregs. How could he go to her! How could he face her, and tell her that they were beaten, that the last hope was gone, that he had failed!

"G.o.d!" he cried aloud, and clenched his hands.

Then deep in his consciousness a thought stirred, and he swept a shaking hand across his eyes. Why had it come again, that thought! Did it mean that HE must play--the last card! There was a way--there had always been a way. The way the Crime Club took--MURDER. It was their own weapon!

If the man who posed as Henry LaSalle were killed! If that man--were killed!

"The Magpie was to be there at three!" he muttered--and started mechanically back along the street.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ONLY WAY

It was a horrible thing--and it grew upon him. In a blind, mechanical way, his brain receptive to nothing else, Jimmie Dale walked on along the street. To kill a man! Death he had faced himself a hundred times, witnessed it a hundred times in its most violent forms, had seen murder done before his eyes, had been in straits where, to save his own life, it had seemed the one last desperate chance--and yet his hands were still clean! To kill a man in fair fight, in struggle, when the blood was hot, was terrible enough, a possibility that was always before him, the one thing from which he shrank, the one thing that, as the Gray Seal, he had always feared; but to kill a man deliberately, to creep upon his victim with hideous, cold-blooded premeditation--he shivered a little, and his hand shook as he drew it nervously across his eyes.

But there was no other way! Again and again, insidiously grappling with his revulsion, with the horror that the impulse to murder inspired, came that other thought--there was no other way. If the man who posed as Henry LaSalle were DEAD! If he were dead! If he were dead! See, now, what would happen if that man were dead! How clear his brain was on that point! The whole plot would tumble like a house of cards about the heads of the Crime Club. The courts would require an auditing of the estate by a trustee of the courts' own appointing, who would continue to administer it until the Tocsin's twenty-fifth birthday, or until there was tangible evidence of her death--but the Tocsin, automatically with her pseudo uncle's death, could publicly appear again. Her death could no longer benefit the Crime Club, since it, the Crime Club, with the supposed uncle dead, could not profit through the false Henry LaSalle inheriting as next of kin! It was the weak link, the vulnerable point in the stupendous scheme of murder and crime with which these h.e.l.l fiends had played for and won, so far, the stake of eleven millions. Not that they had overlooked or been blind to this, they were too clever, too cunning for that--it was only that they had planned to accomplish the Tocsin's death, as they had her father's and uncle's, and ESTABLISH the false Henry LaSalle in undisputed possession and ownership of the estate--and had failed in that--up to the present. But the material results remained the same, so long as the Tocsin, to save her life, was forced to remain in hiding, so long as proof that would convict the Crime Club was not forthcoming--SO LONG AS THAT MAN LIVED!

Time pa.s.sed to which Jimmie Dale was oblivious. At times he walked slowly, scarcely moving; at times his pace was a nervous, hurried stride, that was almost a run. And as he was oblivious to time, so was he oblivious to his surroundings, to the direction which he took.

At times his forehead was damp with moisture that was not there from physical exertion; at times his face, deathly white, was full as of the vision of some shuddering, abhorrent sight; at times his lips were thinned into a straight line, and there was a glitter in the dark eyes that was not good to see, while his hands at his sides clenched until the skin, tight over the knuckles, was an ivory white. To kill a man!

What other way was there? The proof that it had taken Hilton Travers years to obtain, the proof on which the Tocsin's life depended, was destroyed utterly, irreparably. It could never be duplicated--Hilton Travers was dead--MURDERED. Murder! That thought again! It was their own weapon! Murder! Would one kill a venomous reptile in whose fangs was death? What right had this man to life, whose life was forfeit even under the law--for murder? Was she to drag on an intolerable existence among the dregs and the sc.u.m of the underworld, she, in her refinement and her purity, to exist among the vile and dissolute, in daily, hourly peril of her life, because the weapons that these inhuman vultures had used to rob her, to destroy those she loved, to make of her life a hideous, joyless thing, should not be used against them?

But to kill a man! To steal upon a man with cold intent in the blackness of the night--and take his life! To be a murderer! To know the horror of blood forever upon one's hands, to rise, cold-sweated, in the night, fearful of the very shadows around one, to live with every detail of that fearsome act sweeping like some dread spectre at unexpected moments upon the consciousness! He put up his hands before his face, as though to blot out the thought from him. Mind and soul recoiled before it--to kill a man!

He walked on and on, until at last, conscious of a sense of fatigue, he stopped. He must have come a long way, been walking a long time. Where was he? He looked about him for a moment in a dazed way--and suddenly, with a low cry, shrank back. As though he had been drawn to it by some ghastly magnet, he found himself standing in front of the LaSalle mansion, on Fifth Avenue. No, no; it was not for that he had come--to kill a man! It was only--only to get that money. Yes--he remembered now--that money from the safe, before the Magpie got it. The Magpie was to be there at three o'clock--and the Tocsin was to be there, too. The Tocsin! That package! He had failed! It had been her one hope, and--and it was gone. What could he say to her? How could he tell her the miserable truth? But--but he had not come there in the dead of night to kill a man, these other things were what had--

"Jimmie!" It was a quick-breathed whisper. A hand was on his arm.

He turned, startled. It was the Tocsin--Silver Mag.

"Jimmie!" in alarm. "Why are you standing here like this? You may be SEEN!"

Seen! Suppose he WERE seen? He shuddered a little.

"Yes; that's so!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. He glanced numbly up and down the wide, deserted, but well-lighted, avenue. It was no place, that most aristocratic section of the city, for such as Silver Mag and Larry the Bat to be seen at that hour of night, or, rather, morning. And if anything HAPPENED inside that house! "I--I didn't think of that," he said mechanically.

"Come across the street--under the stoop of that house there." She had his arm, and was half dragging him as she spoke, the alarm in her voice intensified. And then, a moment later, safe from observation: "Jimmie, Jimmie, what is the matter? What has happened? What makes you act so strangely?"

"Nothing," he said. "I--"

"TELL me!" she insisted wildly.

And then, with a violent effort, Jimmie Dale forced his mind back to the immediate present. He was only inspiring her with terror--and there was the Magpie--and that money in the safe!

"Where is the Magpie?" he asked, with quick apprehension. "Am I late? Is he in there already?"

"No," she said. "He hasn't come yet."

"What time is it?" he demanded anxiously.

"About half-past two," she replied. "But, Jimmie--"

"Wait!" he broke in. "Where is he now? You were both together! And you were both to be here at three. What are you doing here alone at half-past two?"

A strange little exclamation, one almost of dismay, it seemed, escaped her.

"The Magpie left my place an hour ago--to get his kit, I think. And I came here at once because that was what you and I understood I was to do, wasn't it? Jimmie, you frighten me! You are not yourself. Don't you remember the last words you said, as you nodded to me behind the Magpie's back--that you would be here BEFORE us? There was no mistaking your meaning--if I could get away from him, I was to come here and meet you."

Jimmie Dale pa.s.sed his hand nervously across his eyes. Of course, he remembered now! What a frightful turmoil his brain had been in!

"Yes; of course!" He tried to speak nonchalantly. "I had forgotten for the moment."

She caught his arm in a quick, tight hold, shaking him in a terrified way.

"YOU--forget a thing like that! Jimmie--something terrible has happened.

Can't you see that I am nearly mad with anxiety! What is it? What is it?

That package, Jimmie--is it the package?"

He did not answer. What could he say? It meant life, hope, joy, everything that the world held for her--and it was gone.

"Yes--it IS the package!" she whispered frantically. "Quick, Jimmie!

Tell me! It--it was not there? You--you could not find it?"

"It was there," he said, as though the words were literally forced from him.

"Then? Then--WHAT, Jimmie?" The clutch on his arm was like a vise.