“White! Playing white! Oh, my God!” Clarie Archman had lurched up from the chair to his feet. His face, haggard and drawn, was the face of one damned.
“Good-night!” said Laroque callously. “You know the way out! You’ve got till four o’clock. If you’re not back here then—” He shrugged his shoulders significantly. “You see, I’m not even asking you what you are going to do. We don’t care. It’s up to you. Either way suits us. And now—beat it!”
Jimmie Dale drew back for a second time that night into the hallway. A step, slow, faltering, unsteady, like that of a man blinded, passed out from the inner room, and passed on down the length of the front room—and the door opened and closed. Clarie Archman, with God alone knew what purpose in his heart, was gone.
From the thin metal case, by means of the tiny tweezers, Jimmie Dale took out a gray seal, laid the seal on his handkerchief, folded the handkerchief carefully, placed it in his pocket—and crept forward toward the inner door again. The two men were bending over the table, over the money on the table, dividing it. Jimmie Dale’s lips were mercilessly thin; a fury, not the white, impetuous heat of passion, but a fury that was cold, deadly, implacable, possessed his soul. He crept nearer—still nearer.
“The crowd that put this up says we keep it between us for our work,” said Laroque shortly. “A third for you, the rest for me. You sure you put all they gave you in the safe—Niccolo?” He screwed up his eyes suspiciously. “You sure you ain’t trying to hold anything out on me? If you are, I’ll make you—”
The words died short on his lips—his jaw sagged helplessly.
Jimmie Dale was standing in the doorway.
“Niccolo, drop that revolver!” said Jimmie Dale softly. His automatic held a bead on the two men.
The revolver clattered to the table top. Neither of the men spoke—only their faces worked in a queer, convulsive sort of way, as they gazed in startled fascination at Jimmie Dale.
“Thank you!” said Jimmie Dale politely. He stepped briskly into the room, shoved Sonnino unceremoniously to one side, shoved his revolver muzzle none too gently into Laroque’s ribs, and went through the latter’s clothes. “Yes,” he said, “I thought quite possibly you might have one.” He pocketed Laroque’s revolver, and also Sonnino’s from the table. “And now that letter—thank you!” He whipped the letter from Laroque’s inside coat pocket and transferred it to his own, then stepped back, and smiled—but the smile was not inviting. “I’ve only about five minutes to spare,” murmured Jimmie Dale. “I’m in a hurry, Niccolo. I see some wrapping paper and string over there on top of the safe. Get it!”
The man obeyed mechanically, in a stupefied sort of way, and placed several of the sheets and a quantity of string upon the table. Laroque, silent, sullen, under the spell of Jimmie Dale’s automatic, watched the proceedings without a word.
“Now,” said Jimmie Dale, and an icy note began to creep into the velvet tones, “you two are going to make the first charitable contribution you ever made in your lives—say, to one of the city hospitals. Make as neat and as small a parcel of that money as you can, Niccolo.”
“Not by a damned sight!” Laroque roared out suddenly. “Who the blazes are you! Curse you, I—” He shrank hastily back before the ominous outthrust of Jimmie Dale’s automatic.
“Wrap it up, Niccolo, and tie a string around it!” snapped Jimmie Dale.
And again, but snarling, cursing now, the man obeyed.
Jimmie Dale’s hand went into his pocket, and came out with his handkerchief. He carried the handkerchief to his mouth, moistened the adhesive side of the gray paper seal, and pressed the handkerchief down upon the top of the parcel.
“It would hardly do for any one to know where the money really came from—would it?” observed Jimmie Dale, and smiled uninvitingly again.
The two men were leaning, straining forward, their eyes on the diamond-shaped gray seal—and into their faces there crept a sickly fear.
“The Gray Seal!” Sonnino stumbled the words.
“Put an outside wrapper around that package!” instructed Jimmie Dale coldly. He watched Sonnino perform the task with trembling fingers; and then, placing the package under his arm, Jimmie Dale backed to the door. There was a key in the lock on the inner side. He transferred it coolly to the outer side—and his voice rasped suddenly with the fury that found vent at last.
“You are a pair of hell hounds,” he said between his teeth; “but you are angels compared with the gang that hired you for this. Well, the game is up! David Archman will settle with them when they face the investigation—and I will settle with you! One night, a year ago, in last January, a certain Fourth Avenue bank was looted of eighteen thousand dollars—do you remember, Laroque? Ah, I see you do! The police are still looking for the man who pulled that job. What would you say, Laroque, would be the sentence handed out for that little affair to a man with, say, your past record?”
Laroque’s lips were twitching; his face had gone gray.
“Fourteen years would be a light sentence, wouldn’t it?” resumed Jimmie Dale, an even colder menace in his voice. “And you remember Stangeist, and the Mope, and Australian Ike, don’t you, Laroque—you remember they went to the death house in Sing Sing—and you remember that the Gray Seal sent them there? Yes, I see you do; I see your memory is good to-night! Listen, then! I have heard it said that Gentleman Laroque, with his gangsters behind him, would stop at nothing where Gentleman Laroque’s own skin was concerned. I have heard it said that where Gentleman Laroque was known he was feared. Very well, Laroque, it is your turn to choose. You can choose between yourself and this ‘Private Club Ring’ who have purchased your services in this game to-night. I fancy you can find a means of inducing Sonnino here to keep his mouth shut; and I fancy that of the two evils—holding young Archman as a club over his father, or of your employers facing their trial and conviction—you can convince the ‘Private Club Ring’ that the lesser, the lesser as regards your risk, say, is to face that trial and conviction. Do I make myself plain—Laroque? It is simply a question of not a word being said of what has happened to-night—or fourteen years in Sing Sing for you! I do not think you will find the task difficult when you add, to whatever arguments of your own you may see fit to employ, the fact that the Gray Seal, if your principals make a move, will expose them for this night’s work on top of what they will already have to answer for. Well—Laroque?”
There was silence for a minute. Sonnino, cringing, the suavity, the oiliness of manner gone, a man afraid, kept his eyes on the table, and kept passing his hands one over the other. Laroque was the gambler—a twisted smile was forced to his lips.
“You win,” he said hoarsely. “You can take it from me, I’ll go up the river for fourteen years for no one—I’ll take blasted good care of that! But you”—a rage, ungovernable and elemental, found voice in a sudden torrent of blasphemous invective—“you—we’ll get you yet! Some day we’ll get you, you cursed snitch, you—”
“Good-night!” said Jimmie Dale grimly, and, stepping swiftly back over the threshold, shut and locked the door.
He gained the street, gained his car in front of The Sphinx—and, twenty minutes later, after a break-neck run in which Benson for the second time that night defied all speed laws, Jimmie Dale alighted from his car at a street corner well uptown, dismissed Benson for the night, retraced his way half the distance back along the block, disappeared into a lane, and presently, taking a high fence