The Pippin pushed his hand away.
“It’s no use,” said the Pippin. “I’m—I’m done for. But—but I don’t understand. When you came to the window, I went to the door and tipped them off that you were there, and the gang that was waiting started around into the lane so that you wouldn’t get any chance to make a break that way. I—I don’t understand. Where—where did the police come from?”
“I sent them—from Melinoff’s,” said Jimmie Dale grimly.
The Pippin came up on his elbow.
“You!” he gasped. “You—you know what happened there—you were wise to everything all the time?”
“No,” said Jimmie Dale. “I only knew you had murdered Melinoff. You left one of your cuff links there.”
“Did I?” said the Pippin. He sank back on the floor again. “I didn’t know it. It—it must have fallen out of my shirt when I undressed. I came away wearing women’s things, and carrying my own clothes in a bundle.” He laughed shortly, huskily. “That’s what was the matter with Melinoff. It was the old fool’s own fault! I didn’t want to hurt him! He didn’t understand at first when I was pawing all his stuff over, but when he saw me try the things on, and tumbled that I was—was going to play Silver Mag, he said he wouldn’t stand for it. Ha, ha! Silver Mag!” The Pippin’s voice had taken on a queer mumbling note, and his mind seemed to be functioning suddenly in a half-wandering way. “Some role, Silver Mag! I was the star to-night! You remember Silver Mag—how she used to go around in the old days and hand out the silver coins, never a bill, just coins, to the families whose men were doing spaces up the river in Sing Sing? She kept old Melinoff’s wife going while he was in limbo—that’s what he said. I didn’t want to hurt the old fool, but he wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. Ha, ha! Silver Mag! It was some play on the boards to-night! Clever brain, the Big Fellow’s got! It wasn’t any good if Silver Mag and Larry the Bat were together, but Silver Mag was seen buying a ticket and getting on a train for Chicago last night—and last night, later than that, the Gray Seal sent the Forrester stuff to the police—so they couldn’t have been together this evening unless he went afterwards to Chicago, too—and he didn’t do that because all the trains were watched. It was the biggest chance that ever came across of getting the Gray Seal in a trap. Some stage setting—some play—clever brain that—”
The voice trailed off. Outside there was quiet now, save for the crunch of an occasional footstep. The police who, as Jimmie Dale understood quite clearly now, had run into the Mole’s gang as the two converged at the rear of the Mole’s house, had evidently now got the better of the gangsters. And that convergence, too, explained why the Pippin had accompanied him so meekly toward the shed—the Pippin’s one aim and object at that moment had been to avoid the police! He leaned suddenly forward over the man—the Pippin was going fast now. There was one thing yet, a thing that was vital, paramount, above all others.
“Pippin,” he said quietly, “you’re going out. Who put up this plant? It wasn’t the Mole, he’s not big enough, he’s only a tool like yourself. Who was it?”
“No—not the Mole,” murmured the Pippin. “He—he isn’t big enough. Clever brain—clever brain—clever—”
“Who was it? Answer me, Pippin!”
“Yes,” said the Pippin, and the queer smile came again, “I—I’ll tell you. It—it was some one”—Jimmie Dale could scarcely hear the words—“some one—who will—get you yet!”
The smile was still on the Pippin’s lips—but the man was dead. Jimmie Dale stood up again, and then Jimmie Dale, too, smiled; but it was a grim smile, hard and ominous. In his mind he had answered his own question.
It was that unseen hand of last night—only to-night the challenge had been direct. Well, he would pick up the gauntlet again—and at the same time, perhaps, add a little “atmosphere” to Carruthers’ scoop! From his pocket came the thin, metal insignia case; and, lifting it with the tiny tweezers, moistening the adhesive side with his tongue, Jimmie Dale stooped down and fastened a grey seal on the floor by the Pippin’s side.
And then Jimmie Dale crept out of the shed toward Foo Sen’s, and crept into the dark areaway, and, as he had come, by alleyways and lanes, and through yards, and by ill-lighted, unfrequented streets, returned again to the Sanctuary—alone.
Chapter XXII.
The Tocsin’s Story
It was a whimsical movement, a whimsical trick of Jimmie Dale’s—that outward thrust of his hand that he might study it in a curiously impersonal, yet mercilessly critical way. He laughed a little harshly, as he allowed his hand to drop again to the arm of his chair. No, there was no tremor there—mentally he might be near the breaking point, his nerves raw and on edge; but physically, outwardly, he gave no sign of the strain that, cumulative in its anxiety, had increased hourly, it seemed, in the three days that had passed since the night he had so narrowly escaped the trap laid by that unknown master criminal, whose cunning, power and malignant genius was dominating and making itself felt in every den and dive of the underworld, and for whom the Pippin and the Mole that night had been but blind tools, pawns moved at the will of this unseen, evil strategist upon a chessboard of inhuman deviltry.
An evening newspaper lay open on the table. Jimmie Dale’s eyes fixed for an instant on a glaring headline, then travelled slowly around the little room—one of the St. James’ Club’s private writing rooms—and came back to the paper again. The failure of that night, the Pippin’s death, the stir and publicity, the stimulus given to police activity, had, it seemed, in no way acted as a deterrent upon the sinister ingenuity which, he made no doubt, was likewise the author of the mysterious crime that to-night was upon every tongue in the city—the murder of one of New York’s most prominent bankers under almost incredible circumstances, and the coincident disappearance of a number of documents which were vaguely hinted at as being of international importance and of priceless worth. The crime had been committed in broad daylight, in mid-afternoon, in the banker’s private office, and within call of the entire staff of the bank. No one had been seen either to enter or leave the office during an interval of some fifteen to twenty minutes, previous to which time it had been established by one of the staff that the banker was engaged in his usual occupation at his desk, and at the expiration of which he had been discovered by the cashier lying dead upon the floor, his skull fractured by a blow that had evidently been dealt him from behind, the desk in disorder as though it had been hurriedly searched, and the papers, known to have been in the banker’s possession at that time, gone.
Jimmie Dale brushed his hand across his eyes in a dazed way. No, of course, he did not know, he could not actually know that it was the same guiding evil genius at work here that had murdered both Forrester and old Melinoff, but something beyond actual proof, a sense of intuition, made of it a certainty in his own mind, at least, which left no room for argument. There had been viciously clever work here, as daring and crafty as it was remorseless in its brutality, and—he laughed suddenly, harshly as before, and, rising abruptly from his chair, stepped to the window, pushed aside the portières, and stood staring down on Fifth Avenue, whose great, wide, lighted thoroughfare seemed a curiously and incongruously lonely spot now in its evening quiet and emptiness.
Suppose it was so! Granted that his intuition was in no way astray! What did it matter? It was a thing extraneous, of no personal significance to him! It was even strange that it had succeeded in intruding itself upon his thoughts at all, when mind and soul in these last few days had fought and groped and stumbled against the sickness of a fear that, growing upon him, had blotted out all other things from his consciousness. The Tocsin! Where was she? What had happened? Had she——no, he dared not let himself believe what a brutal logic told him now he should believe. He would not! He could not! And yet since that night when