But now he worked, seemingly at least, with even greater rapidity than before. Imagination had had one effect, if it had had no other—it was a spur, a reminder that at any moment there might well be a footstep, and one that was born only of the imagination! His jaws clamped. He had not counted on this—an old-fashioned iron monstrosity that was dismaying only in its appearance, perhaps—but not this! He had been here far longer now than he—
‘Ah’—tense, low, that deep intake of the breath again.
The inner door swung wide; the flashlight’s ray leaped, dazzling white, into the interior, and, on the lower shelf, upon a flat, narrow, black tin box—the cash-box.
In an instant, Jimmie Dale had picked it up. It was not locked, and he lifted the cover. From within there scintillated back the gleam of diamonds—a handful of pendants, brooches, ear-rings lay there disclosed, and, too, a string of pearls. Ten thousand dollars! It was a modest figure! He reached his hand inside the box—and on the instant snatched it back, and thrust the box swiftly into his pocket. The flashlight was out. The room was in darkness.
This time it was not imagination—nor, he knew now, had it been imagination before. There was a faint creak of the flooring in the kitchen, a single incautious step that he placed as having come from near the doorway of the passage—and now some one had halted on the threshold of the room itself. Jimmie Dale’s brain was working with lightning speed. There had been no time to reach the window—time only to snatch up his automatic and retreat a little from the immediate vicinity of the safe. Had the other heard the slight sound—it was only the brushing of his coat against the wall! Much less had there been time to close the safe—nor would it have done any good—he could not have replaced the broken panelling! And now—what? The man, with a stealth that he, Jimmie Dale, except for that one incautious footfall, could not have excelled, must have entered through a window from the alleyway into the passage. It was dark, utterly dark—save that the window showed dimly like a faint transparent square set in the blackness.
He could not see, but he could sense the other standing there in the doorway, motionless, silent, as though listening. Perhaps a minute passed. There was something nerve-racking now in the silence, something sinister, something pregnant with menace. And then, suddenly, there came a low, scratching sound, and a match flame spurted through the darkness, and lighted up a face—a face that was thrust forward through the doorway with a sort of pent-up and malicious eagerness; a vicious face, with sharp, restive black eyes under great, hairy eyebrows; a face with a huge jaw, outflung now, that was like the jaw of a beast. It was the Wolf!
Chapter X.
The Chase
It held for the fraction of a second, that light—no more. It travelled upward past the face, as though the Wolf were holding it above his head to get his bearings; and then, with a sharp and furious oath, the match was hurled to the floor, there was a scuffling sound—and then silence again.
Jimmie Dale’s automatic was thrust a little forward in his hand, as he crouched against the wall. He could have shot the man, as the other stood in the doorway. The Wolf had offered a target that it would have been hard to miss—and it would, one day, have saved the law the same task! He was a fool, perhaps, that he had not taken what was, perhaps again, the one chance he had for his life, for he was at a decided disadvantage now, since he knew intuitively that the Wolf, scuttling back, had now craftily protected himself behind the jamb of the door, and yet at the same time still commanded the interior of the room. But he could not have fired in cold blood like that—even upon the Wolf, devil though the man was, murderer a dozen times over though he the man to be! He, Jimmie Dale, had never shot to kill not yet—but in a fight, cornered, if there was no other way…!
He moved a little, a bare few inches, then a few more—without a sound. In the light of the match, the Wolf must have seen the dismantled panelling and the open safe, and a masked figure crouched against the wall—and the Wolf would have marked the position of that crouched figure against the wall!
Silence—a minute of it—still another!
Again Jimmie Dale moved inch by inch—toward the window. And yet to attempt the window was to invite a shot and expose himself, for, dark as it was, his body would show plainly enough against the background of that lesser gloom of window square.
Jimmie Dale’s eyes strained through the blackness across the room. He could just make out the configuration of the doorway. The Wolf was just on the other side of it, just inside the kitchen, he was sure of that. Almost a smile was flickering over Jimmie Dale’s tight-pressed lips. There was a way—there was a way now, if the Wolf did not get him with a chance shot. He moved again, and reached the window, crouched low beneath the sill—and passed by the window.
And then the Wolf spoke from the doorway in a hoarse whisper, and in the whisper there was a low, taunting laugh.
“I been waitin’ for you to try the window, but you’re too foxy—eh? All right, my bucko—then I’ll get you another way—with just one shot, see? And then—good-night! And say, whoever t’hell you are, thanks for crackin’ the box for me!”
The man’s voice came from the right of the doorway—and the door opened inward—and he, Jimmie Dale, remembered that he had opened it wide. It was slow, very slow, this creeping inch by inch through the darkness. It seemed as though his breath were as stertorous as that breathing from above, and that the Wolf must hear.
And then the Wolf laughed low again.
There was a curious crackling noise, as of paper being torn—and then, quick, in the doorway, came a yellow flame, and the Wolf’s hand showed from around the edge of the jamb, and, making momentary daylight of the room, a flaming piece of paper, tossed in, fell upon the floor.
There was a flash, the roar of the report—and another—as the Wolf fired! There was the sullen spat of a bullet upon the panelling an inch from Jimmie Dale’s head—and a sharp and sudden pain, as though a hot iron had seared his leg.
And now Jimmie Dale’s automatic, too, cut flashes with its vicious flame-tongues through the black. Coolly, steadily, he was firing at the doorway—to hold the Wolf there—to keep the Wolf now in the position of the Wolf’s own choosing. The paper was but a dull cinder in the centre of the room; twisted too tightly, it had gone out almost immediately.
There came screams, loud, terrified, in a woman’s voice from the floor above—and the hoarser tones of a man shouting. A window was flung open. Snarling blasphemous, furious oaths, the Wolf was firing at the flashes of Jimmie Dale’s revolver—but each time as Jimmie Dale fired, the sound drowned in the roar of the report, he moved a good yard forward.
Came the trampling of feet from overhead now; and now, as the woman still screamed, answering shouts and yells came from the dance hall. Jimmie Dale had the foot of the bed now near the corner. He again, and instantly flung himself flat upon the floor—and, in the answering flash of the Wolf’s shot, placed the exact location of the door itself. There was tumult enough now to deaden the slight sound he made. He crept swiftly past the bed to the wall, against which the door, wide open, was swung back, felt