The Greatest Works of Frank L. Packard (30+ Titles in One Volume). Frank L. Packard

the Bat again, working with feverish intensity, with almost sleepless continuity, he had exhausted every means and effort within his power of running Marre, alias Clarke, to earth. There seemed nothing now left to do but to wait until Marre should resume his own identity; nothing left but the promise of a vengeance that—again Jimmie Dale laughed harshly, and, as the laugh died away, a smile took its place on the thinned lips that was not good to see. Yes, she was right in that; he knew Marre—he knew Marre, with his thin, cruel face, his black, sleepy eyes; his suave, ingratiating manner that hid under its veneer a devil’s treachery! Nor, well as he knew the man, was it strange that he had not known Clarke as Peter Marre, for he had seen Clarke only once—that night in the long ago, in Spider Jack’s when the man, with consummate art, a master of disguise, had impersonated Travers, the dead chauffeur, and had succeeded in fooling even Spider Jack himself. But he, Jimmie Dale, knew now. Yes, she had been right—a whiteness came and gathered on his lips—in that sense she could not fail, Marre at least would pay! But perhaps not quite as she suggested, perhaps not quite by the simple act of a denunciation to the police, perhaps not quite in so simple a way as that, for, after all—his hand clenched over the sheets of her letter—though it would be easy enough to establish Marre’s alias now that the alias was known, there might be another way in which Marre would answer, a more intimate way, a more personal way! Not murder—the skin was ivory white across his knuckles—not murder, but—

      Jimmie Dale was quietly folding the sheets of paper in his hand. Some one was knocking at the door.

      “Come in!” said Jimmie Dale—and slipped the letter back into his pocket, as the door opened.

      It was one of the club’s attendants.

      “I beg pardon, Mr. Dale, sir,” said the man; “but there is a ‘phone call for you.” He glanced toward the telephone on the table. “I was not sure just where you were, sir. Shall I ask them to connect you here?”

      “Thank you!” said Jimmie pleasantly. “Very good, Masters. No—I’ll attend to it myself.”

      The man withdrew, and closed the door again. Jimmie Dale rose from his chair, and, stepping to the table, picked up the instrument.

      “There is a call for me, I believe,” he said. “This is Mr. Dale.”

      There was a moment’s silence, then Jimmie Dale spoke again.

      “Yes—hello!” he said. “Yes, this is Mr. Dale. What—”

      The room seemed suddenly to swirl about him—the hand so steady a few moments ago was trembling palpably now as it held the instrument. Her voice? No—he was mad! It was his brain, overwrought, strained, not to the breaking point, but beyond, that had broken at last, and was mocking at him now in some cruel phantasy. Her voice? No, it could not be, for she—for she was—

      “Jimmie! Jimmie!”—the voice came hurriedly again, almost frantically this time. “Jimmie—are you there?”

      “You!” His lips were dry, he moistened them with his tongue. “You!” he whispered hoarsely. “You, Marie—and I thought—I thought that you were—”

      “Jimmie,” she broke in, a quick, wistful catch in her voice, “I cannot stay here a moment—you understand, don’t you? There is not an instant to lose—on the floor by the Sanctuary window—a note—will you hurry, Jimmie—good-bye.”

      She was gone. Mechanically he replaced the receiver on the hook. She was gone—but it was her voice he had heard—hers—and she was alive. The play of emotion upon him robbed him for the moment of coherent thought, and came and swept over him in a mighty surge and engulfed him; and now in the sudden revulsion from despair and the bitterest of agony his mind was dazed and numbed. It seemed as though he were obeying some subconscious power, as he turned and left the room; as though some influence outside of, and extraneous to, himself gave him a spurious self-mastery, a self-command, a mask of nonchalance, as he walked calmly through the club lobby and out to the street.

      Benson, his chauffeur, held the door of his car open for him.

      “Where to, sir?” Benson asked.

      “The Palace—Bowery,” Jimmie Dale answered. “And hurry, Benson!”

      Chapter XXIII.

       Hunchback Joe

       Table of Contents

      Jimmy Dale flung himself back on the seat of the big touring car. It was an address, the Palace Saloon on the Bowery, that he had often given Benson before—the nearest point to which Benson, trusted as Benson was, had ever been permitted to approach the Sanctuary itself. The night air, the sweep of the wind was grateful, as the machine sped forward. He did not reason, he could not reason—his mind was in turmoil still. Only two things were clear, distinct, rising dominant out of that turmoil—that he had heard her voice, her voice that he had never thought to hear again; and that there was need, a desperate need for haste now, because he must reach the Sanctuary without an instant’s loss of time.

      And then gradually his brain began to clear, to adjust itself, to function normally; and when finally the car drew up at a corner on the Bowery, it was a Jimmie Dale, keen, self-possessed and alert, who sprang briskly to the pavement.

      “Will you need me any further, sir?” Benson asked.

      Jimmie Dale was lighting a cigarette deliberately—it was the same question that he was pondering in his own mind, but the answer was dependent upon the contents of that note which was waiting for him in the Sanctuary.

      “I am not quite sure, Benson,” he replied. “In any case, you had better wait here for twenty, minutes. If I am not back in that time, you may go home. Don’t wait any longer.”

      “Very good, sir,” Benson answered.

      It was only a short distance to the Sanctuary—down the cross street, a turn into another only to emerge again on one that parallelled the first, and then Jimmie Dale, walking slowly now, was sauntering along an ill-lighted thoroughfare flanked on either side with a miscellany of small shops and tenements of the cheaper class. There were but few pedestrians in sight; but, as he neared the tenement that made the corner of the lane ahead, Jimmie Dale’s pace became still more leisurely. A man and a woman were strolling up the street toward him. They passed. Jimmie Dale, at the corner of the lane now, glanced behind him. The two were self-absorbed. And then, like a shadow merging with the darkness of the lane, Jimmie Dale had disappeared.

      In an instant, he had gained the loose board in the high fence; and in another, pressing close to the rear wall of the tenement, he had reached the little French window that gave on the dingy courtyard. There was an almost inaudible sound, a faint metallic snip, as, kneeling, his fingers loosened the hidden catch beneath the sill—and the window on well-oiled hinges swung silently inward, and closed as silently again behind Jimmie Dale as he entered.

      The top-light, high up near the ceiling, threw a misty ray of moonlight along the greasy, threadbare carpet, and threw into relief a folded piece of dark-coloured paper at Jimmie Dale’s feet. He stooped and picked it up—and then moving close to the window again, his fingers, in the darkness, felt over the dilapidated roller shade to assure himself that the rents were securely pinned together against the possibility of prying eyes. He stepped quickly then across the room, tested the door lock; and then the single gas-jet, air-choked, hissing spitefully, illuminated the room with a wavering meagre yellow flame.

      Under the light, Jimmie Dale unfolded the paper, his face hardening suddenly. It was not like any note she had ever written him before—there was no white envelope here, no paper of fine and delicate texture, no ink-written message carefully penned; instead, evidence enough of her desperate haste, the desperate circumstances probably under which she had written it, the message was on a torn piece of brown wrapping paper, and the words, in pencil, were scrawled in hurried, broken sentences. And standing there, fighting for a grip upon himself, Jimmie