"They got it," he said. It was like a death sentence that he p.r.o.nounced.

"It is destroyed."

She did not speak or move--save that her hands, as though nerveless and without strength, fell away from his arms, and dropped to her sides. It was dark there under the stoop, though not so dark but that he could see her face. It was gray--gray as death. And there was misery and fear and a pitiful helplessness in it--and then she swayed a little, and he caught her in his arms.

"Gone!" she murmured in a dead, colourless way--and suddenly laughed out sharply, hysterically.

"Don't! For G.o.d's sake, don't do that!" he pleaded wildly.

She looked at him then for a moment in strange quiet--and lifted her hand and stroked his face in a numbed way.

"It--it would have been better, Jimmie, wouldn't it," she said in the same monotonous voice, "it would have been better if--if I had never found out anything, and they--they had done the same to me that they did to--to father."

"Marie! Marie!" It was the first time he had ever spoken her name, and it was on his lips now in an agony of tenderness and appeal. "Don't! You mustn't speak like that!"

"I'm tired," she said. "I--I can't fight any more."

She did not cry. She lay there in his arms quite still--like a weary child.

The minutes pa.s.sed. When Jimmie Dale spoke again it was irrelevantly--and his face was very white:

"Marie, describe the upper floor of that house over there for me."

She roused herself with a start.

"The upper floor?" she repeated slowly. "Why--why do you ask that?"

"Have YOU forgotten in turn?" he said, with a steady smile. "That money in the safe--it's yours--we can at least save that out of the wreck. You only drew the bas.e.m.e.nt plan and the first floor for the Magpie--the more I know about the house the better, of course, in case anything goes wrong. Now, see, try and be brave--and tell me quickly, for I must get through before the Magpie comes, and I have barely half an hour."

"No, Jimmie--no!" She slipped out of his arms. "Let it alone! I am afraid. Something--I--I have a feeling that something will happen."

"It is the only way." He said it involuntarily, more to himself than to her.

"Jimmie, let it alone!" she said again.

"No," he said. "I am going--so tell me quickly. Every minute that we wait is one that counts against us."

She hesitated an instant--and then, speaking rapidly, made a verbal sketch of the upper portion of the house for him.

"It's a very large house, isn't it?" he commented innocently--to pave the way for the question, above all others, that he had to ask. "Which is your uncle's, I mean that man's room?"

"The first on the right, at the head of the landing," she answered.

"Only, Jimmie, don't--don't go!"

He drew her close to him again.

"Now, listen," he said quietly. "When the Magpie comes and finds I am not here, lead him to think that the money he gave me was too much for me; that I am probably in some den, doped with drug--and hold him as long as you can on the pretext that there is always the possibility I may, after all, show up before he goes in there. You understand? And now about yourself--you must do exactly as I say. On no account allow yourself to be seen by ANY ONE except the Magpie. I would tell you to go now, only, unless it is vitally necessary, we cannot afford to arouse the Magpie's suspicions--he'd have every crook in the underworld snarling at our heels. But you are not to wait, even for him, if you detect the slightest disturbance in that house before he comes. And, equally, after he has gone in, whether I have come out or not, at the first indication of anything unusual you are to get away at once. You understand--Marie?"

"Yes," she said. "But--but, Jimmie, you--"

"Just one thing more." He smiled at her rea.s.suringly. "Did the Magpie say anything about how he intended to get in?"

"Yes--by the side away from the corner of the street," she said tremulously. "You see, there's quite a s.p.a.ce between the house and the one next door; and, besides, the house next door is closed up, there's n.o.body there, the family has gone away for the summer. The library window there is low enough to reach from the ground."

For a moment longer he held her close to him, as though he could not let her go--then bent and kissed her pa.s.sionately. And in that moment all the emotions he had known as he had walked blindly from Spider Jack's that night surged again upon him; and that voice was whispering, whispering, whispering: "It is the only way--it is the only way."

And then, not daring to trust his voice, he released her suddenly, and stepped back out from under the stoop--and the next instant he was across the deserted avenue. Another, and he had slipped through the iron gates that opened on the street driveway--and in yet another he was crouched close up against the front door of the LaSalle mansion.

It was a large house, a very large house, one of the few that, even amid the wealth and luxury of that quarter, boasted its own grounds, and those so restricted as scarcely to deserve the name; but it was set far enough back from the street to escape the radius of the street lamps, and so guarantee in its shadows security from observation. It was not the Magpie's way, the front door--the obvious to the Magpie and his ilk was a thing always to be shunned. Jimmie Dale's lips were set in a grim smile, as his fingers worked with lightning speed, now taking this instrument and now that from the leather pockets in the girdle beneath his shirt--the penitentiaries were full of Magpies who shunned the obvious!

Very slowly, very cautiously the door opened. He listened breathlessly, tensely. The door closed again--behind him. He was inside now.

Stillness! Blackness! Not a sound! A minute went by--another. And then, as he stood there, strained, listening, the silence itself began, it seemed, to palpitate, and pound, pound, pound, and be full of strange noises. It was a horrible thing--to kill a man!

CHAPTER XIV

OUT OF THE DARKNESS

A moment later, Jimmie Dale stepped forward through the vestibule.

He was quite calm now; a sort of cold, merciless precision in every movement succeeding the riot of turbulent emotions that had possessed him as he had entered the house.

The half hour, the maximum length of time before the Magpie would appear, as he had estimated it when out there under the stoop with the Tocsin, had dwindled now to perhaps twenty minutes, twenty-five at the outside. Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-five minutes was so little that for an instant the temptation was strong upon him to sacrifice, rather than any of those precious minutes, the Magpie instead! And then in the darkness, as he stole noiselessly across the hall, he shook his head. It would be a cowardly, brutal thing to do. What chance would a man with a record like the Magpie's stand if caught there? How easy it would be to shift the murder of the supposed Henry LaSalle to the Magpie's shoulders! Jimmie Dale's lips closed firmly. Self-preservation was, perhaps, the first law, but he would save the Magpie if he could--the Magpie should have his chance! The man might be a criminal, might deserve punishment at the hands of the law, his liberty might be a menace to the community--but he was not a murderer, his life forfeit for a crime he had never committed!

If he, Jimmie Dale, could only in some way have arranged with the Tocsin out there to keep the Magpie away altogether! But it could not be done without arousing the Magpie's suspicions; and, as a corollary to that, afterward, with the subsequent events, would come--the deluge! The law of the underworld was clear, concise, and admitting of no appeal on that point; to double cross a pal meant, sooner or later, a knife thrust, a blackjack, or--But what difference did it make what form the execution of the sentence took? And, since, then, that was out of the question, since he could not keep the Magpie away without practically risking his own life, the Magpie at least must have his chance.

Jimmie Dale was at the library door now, that, according to the plan the Tocsin had drawn for the Magpie, and as he remembered her description when she had told him her story earlier in the evening, was just at the foot of the staircase. How dark it was! Though the stairs could be only a few feet away, he could not see them. And how intense the silence was again! Here, where he stood, the slightest stir from above must have reached him--but there was not a sound.

His hand felt out for the doork.n.o.b, found it, turned it, and pushed the door open. He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him.

The safe, according to the Tocsin's plan again, was in that sort of alcove at the lower end of the library. Jimmie Dale's flashlight played inquisitively about the room. There was the window, the only one in the room, the window through which the Magpie proposed to enter; there was the archway of the alcove, with its--no, there were no longer any portieres; and there was the safe, he could see it quite plainly from where he stood at the upper end of the room.

The flashlight went out for the s.p.a.ce of perhaps thirty seconds--thirty seconds of absolute silence, absolute stillness--then the round, white ray of the light again, but glistening now on the nickel k.n.o.bs and dial of the safe--and Jimmie Dale was on his knees before it.

A low, scarcely breathed exclamation, that seemed to mingle anxiety and hesitation, escaped him. He, who knew the make of every safe in the country, knew this one for its true worth. Twenty-five minutes! Could he open it in that time, let alone with any time to spare! It was not like the one in Spider Jack's; it was the kind that the Magpie, however clever he might be in his own way, would be forced to negotiate with "soup," and, with the attendant noise, double his chance of discovery and capture--and the responsibility for what might have happened UPSTAIRS! No; the Magpie must have his chance! And, besides, the money in the safe apart, why should not he, Jimmie Dale, have his own chance, as well? All this would help. The motive--robbery; the perpetrator, there was grim mockery on his lips now as the light went out and the sensitive fingers closed on the k.n.o.b of the dial, the perpetrator--the Gray Seal. It would afford excellent food for the violent editorial diatribes under which the police again would writhe in frenzy!

Stillness again! Silence! Only a low, tense breathing; only, so faint that it could not be heard a foot away, a curious scratching, as from time to time the supersensitive fingers fell away from the dial to rub upon the carpet--to increase even their sensitiveness by setting the nerves to throbbing through the skin surface at the tips. And then Jimmie Dale's head, ear pressed close against the safe to catch the tumbler's fall, was lifted--and the flashlight played again on the dial.

"Twenty-eight and a quarter--left."

How fast the time went--and how slowly! Still the black shape crouched there in the darkness against the safe. At times, in strange, ghostly flashes, the nickel dial with the ray upon it seemed to leap out and glisten through the surrounding blackness; at times, the quick intake of breath, as from great exertion; at times, faint, musical little clicks, as, after abortive effort, the dial whirled, preparatory to a fresh attempt. And then, at last--a gasp of relief:

"Ah!"

Came the sound, barely audible, as of steel sliding in well-oiled grooves, the m.u.f.fled thud of metal meeting metal as the bolts shot back--and the heavy door swung outward.

Jimmie Dale stretched his cramped limbs, and wiped the moisture from his face--then set to work again upon the inner door. This was an easier matter--far easier. Five minutes, perhaps a little more, went by--and then the inner door was open, and the flashlight's ray was flooding the interior of the safe.

A queer little sound, half of astonishment, half of disappointment, issued from Jimmie Dale's lips. There was money here, a great deal of money, undoubtedly, but there was no such sum as he had, somehow, fantastically imagined from the Magpie's evidently overcoloured story that there would be; there was money, ten packages of banknotes neatly piled in the bottom compartment--but there was no half million of dollars! He picked up one of the packages hurriedly--and drew in his breath. After all, there was a great deal--the notes were of hundred-dollar denomination, and on the bottom were two one-thousand-dollar bills! Calculated roughly, if each of the other nine packages contained a like amount, the total must exceed a hundred thousand.