It was black here in the lane, and now, possibly a distance of a hundred yards up from the street, Jimmie Dale’s fingers, feeling along the left-hand fence, came upon the latch of a small, narrow door—the courtyard’s access to the lane. He passed through, and stood still—listening—looking sharply about him. He knew the place well. It was the heart and centre, the core of its own particular and vicious section of the underworld. Ahead of him, flanking the two-story, tumble-down building that was the Spider’s home, was a narrow alleyway, then a small and filthy courtyard, and, its rear upon this and fronting the street, the alleyway again at the side, the “The Yellow Lantern” that he had been careful to avoid a dance hall of the lowest type. The Spider had not unshrewdly chosen his location; nor the proprietor of “The Yellow Lantern” his—their clientèle was a common one, and their interests did not clash!
From the direction of “The Yellow Lantern” came a hilarious uproar, subdued somewhat by the distance, out of which arose the strident notes of a tinny piano beating blatantly the measure of a turkey trot. There was no other sound. There were lights from the rear of the dance hall, enough, Jimmie Dale knew, to throw a murky illumination over the front windows of the antique shop; but there were no lights showing from the Spider’s dwelling itself, that loomed black on the side of the alleyway at his right hand—the old couple that kept the Spider’s house were doubtless long since in bed in their own particular apartments upstairs.
Jimmie Dale moved softly forward now, gained the back entrance of the Spider’s house, and tried the door cautiously. It was locked. From one of the little pockets in the girdle under his shirt came a black silk mask, which he slipped over his face; from another of the pockets came a little steel picklock. He was pressed close against the door now, his body merged with the black shadows of the wall. A minute passed—and then the door swung open, and closed without a sound. Another minute passed, and still another. From upstairs came the sound of stertorous breathing, nothing else, only quiet, and a silence that was heavy in itself—and then the round, white ray of Jimmie Dale’s flashlight winked through the blackness. As between himself and the Wolf, he was first, at least, on the ground!
He was in the kitchen of the house. On the opposite side of the room from him were two doors, one of them, the one to the left, open—and the flashlight, playing through, disclosed a passageway leading, obviously, to the shop at the front, and continuing to the stairway. He crossed to the right-hand door noiselessly, opened it, and, with a low ejaculation of satisfaction, stepped in over the threshold. It was the room he sought—the Spider’s bedroom, or, better perhaps, the Spider’s den that served the man for all purposes. The Spider, it was very plain, was not fastidious! The room was dingy beyond description; the furnishings poor and poverty-stricken in appearance. It was here the Spider met his clients of a sort—and drove his bargains. There was no hint of affluence—the room was miserly.
The flashlight swept in a circle around the room. There was a bed in one corner, a table and two chairs in another, and a miserable washstand in still another. The centre of the room, save for an old carpet on the floor, was quite bare of furnishings. Jimmie Dale’s survey of the appointments, however, was most cursory—they concerned him little. The flashlight’s ray was even lifted above them, as it moved about. There was only one door—the door by which he had entered; and only one window—which, with a sudden frown, he mentally noted did not open on the alleyway, for the very sufficient reason that the alleyway was on the other side of the house. He stepped quickly to the window, and looked out. It was a moment before he could see; and then, with a quick nod of his head, he began, with extreme caution to loosen the window catches on the sill. There was a narrow space between the house and what was the blank brick wall of the building next to it, and this space extended to the rear, and therefore, indirectly, by circling the house at the back, led to the house and the door in the fence again.
Jimmie Dale smiled grimly, as he swung the old-fashioned windows back on either side. So far he was in luck to-night, and, with luck, in a very few minutes now be out and away from the house by the same way he had entered it—but luck sometimes was a fickle thing, and a goddess most to be trusted by those who looked after themselves!
He walked back to the doorway, and levelled his flashlight across the room directly in front of him. The ray fell upon the wooden panelling, and, holding the light steadily on the same spot, he moved forward across the floor to the opposite wall, dropped on his hands and knees, and began to examine the woodwork critically. It was beautiful work, this panelling that went all around the room, very old, but very beautiful work, and of very beautifully matched wood—it was entirely out of place with the rest of the room, or would have been, were it not that the panelling itself bore witness to the fact that it had been built in there when the house itself had been built, and bore witness, too, to the fact that in those days, long gone by, a relic perhaps even of Dutch handiwork, the house had not been unpretentious amongst its fellows of that generation.
“Behind panelling in bedroom directly opposite the door,” she had written. Inch by inch, over an area a yard square, those sensitive finger tips of Jimmie Dale felt their way, lingering here over a knot in the wood, and there over a joint or crevice. Five minutes went by—and the five became ten. An exclamation of annoyance, low, guarded, escaped him. There was nothing—he could find nothing. The Spider’s ingenuity had not been over-rated! Somewhere there must be the secret spring which operated the panel, but there was no sign of it; neither was there the slightest sign or indication that any portion of the panelling was even movable.
He drew back for an instant, frowning. Perhaps—and then he shook his head—no, the Tocsin did not make mistakes of that kind. The safe was unquestionably behind the panelling in front of him. Well, there was a way—it was distasteful to him because it was crude and bungling, but he could afford no more time in a search, that he had already convinced himself was hopeless.
From the girdle came a half dozen little blue-steel tools. A jimmy found and nosed its way into the joint between two panels. There was a low, faint creak of rending wood. A wedge followed the jimmy. A faint creak again—and now one a little louder—and Jimmie Dale, half turned, listened intently—the narrow board was in his hand. There was nothing—no sound—save that interrupted, stertorous breathing from above, and the tinny jangle of the piano from the direction of “The Yellow Lantern.”
And now Jimmie Dale smiled again—that curious flicker on his lips that mingled whimsicality and a deadly earnestness. The Tocsin had made no mistake. Showing through the aperture, gleaming under the flashlight’s ray, was the nickel dial of a safe. He worked rapidly now. The first panel out, the remainder came much more readily—and finally the entire face of the safe was disclosed. Jimmie Dale stared at it—and pursed his lips. It was an ugly safe, extremely ugly—from a cracksman’s point of view! Also, there seemed a hint of irony, a jeer almost, in the impassive wall of steel that confronted him. It was one of his own make—one that had helped, in the old days, to amass the millions that his father had left to him—and it was one of the best!
In an abstracted, deliberate way, his eyes pondering the safe, the blue-steel tools were replaced in the pockets of the leather girdle; and then the long, slim, tapering fingers closed upon the dial’s knob and twirled it tentatively, and his head bent forward until his ear was pressed hard against the face of the safe.
It was very still now—only the breathing from above that seemed in cadence with those strange and paradoxical palpitations that are known only in a great silence—the piano for the moment had ceased its jangle. Jimmie Dale’s fingers, from the dial, sought the floor, and frictioned briskly over the rough, threadbare carpet, until the nerves tingled under the delicate skin—and then they shot to the dial again.
Strained, every faculty keyed up to its highest tension, he crouched there against the safe. Again and again his fingers rubbed over the rough carpet, and again the sweat beads oozed out upon his forehead with the strain—and then there came through the stillness a long-drawn intake of his breath. The handle swung the bolt with a low metallic thud—the safe was open.
There was the inner door now. Again those slim fingers, almost raw,