But now the sound was still more clearly defined, and he placed it exactly. Rather than a gnawing, it was a scratching at the wall outside and below the window; and as it continued it seemed at times to grow almost human with impatience and irritability as it quickened its tempo.
And then suddenly Jimmie Dale turned his head. Imagination? No, there was another sound—and it, too, now repeated itself, low, cautious, stealthy. Some one was creeping down the third story stairs from the top of the house.
For an instant Jimmie Dale stood without movement, then a hard, quick smile compressed his lips. That scratching sound outside the window, which still persisted, had not been loud enough to awaken anybody. It was rather curious, rather singular! His ears, acute, trained to the slightest sound, caught the footfalls coming now along the upper hall, still low, still cautious and stealthy—and Jimmie Dale slipped across the threshold, and in an instant had passed into the library and was crouched behind the portières that hung between the two rooms.
A minute passed. A tread creaked softly on the main staircase; then a form bulked in irregular outline in the doorway of the little den, paused for the fraction of a second, came into the room, closed the door, and glided swiftly to the window. The window was cautiously opened. There was the soft pad of feet as a man crawled through and dropped to the floor. A hoarse whisper vibrated through the room.
“Damn it, why didn't you keep me there all night?” a voice demanded angrily. “You didn't go to sleep, did you, or forget to leave the window of your room open so's you could hear?”
Another voice answered. The words came in a choked, broken way, as though with great effort:
“No; I—I didn't go to sleep. Not likely! I heard you the minute you came, but—but I couldn't help it. I had a—a bit of a turn. I came as soon as I could. I—I was sick.”
A ray of a flashlight lanced through the blackness. It played on the tall, gaunt figure of an old, gray-haired man arrayed in a dressing gown, and on a face that was drawn and pallor-like in colour.
Then darkness again.
Behind the portière, Jimmie Dale's face suddenly hardened. There were little gray “mutton-chop” side whiskers, that was the only change. He recognised the man in an instant. It was the “Minister,” alias Patrick Denton, one of the cleverest “inside” crooks that had ever infested New York. The man, pronounced an incurable heart case, and even then supposed to be in a dying condition, had been pardoned two years ago while serving a sentence in Sing Sing. Since then he had dropped out of sight; and indeed, generally, was supposed to be dead.
There was a callous grunt from the man at the window.
“Well, you look it!” said the man. “And that's no lie!” He laughed shortly. “And maybe it's a good thing. You could get away with the faithful-butler-mourning-for-his-dead-master stuff without batting an eyelid, if you had to.”
There was no answer.
Jimmie Dale's hand slipped into his pocket and came out again with his automatic. So that was it! He began to understand. The Minister was back at his old inside game again—this time in the rôle of Jathan Lane's butler!
The man who had crawled in through the window spoke again—sharply now:
“Well, let's get busy! We've lost too much time as it is. If a light's safe, shoot her on; we can work quicker that way.”
“Yes,” said the Minister. “It's—it's safe enough.” He stifled a cough. “The rest are all asleep; and on account of what happened this afternoon, I had every shade in the house drawn. I——” He broke off with a quick gasp, as coincident with the faint click of an electric-light switch, a single, shaded incandescent on the desk in front of the safe went on. “You!” he exclaimed. “I—I thought it was to be Hunchback Joe.”
The fold of the portière in Jimmie Dale's hand drew closer in against the edge of the wall projection until there was left but the veriest crack. A pucker came and nested in little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was not so sure, after all, that he had begun to understand. In view of the Tocsin's letter, he did not understand at all. The man who stood there in the room beside the Minister, the man with the cool, contemptuous black eyes, the thin, cunning lips parted in a grim smile, was Gentleman Laroque.
“So it was,” said Laroque coolly. “You've got it straight. Hunchback Joe was to come here for the sparklers, smear the trail by bringing them back to me, and then I was going to slip them to old Isaac Shiftel. But Hunchback Joe couldn't come, and as it's a rather fussy job I didn't dare trust any one else, so I came myself. I'll take them direct from here to Shiftel's.”
The pucker cleared from Jimmie Dale's eyes. Shiftel—old Isaac Shiftel—the fence! The man was an outstanding figure in the underworld! Yes, he did begin to understand. But for once, for the first time since those days in the years gone by when the Tocsin had begun to sound those “calls to arms,” the Tocsin was astray. It was not her fault. It was nothing that she could by any possibility have foreseen. Only as matters now stood the police trap at Laroque's would be abortive—it should have been at Isaac Shiftel's! Jimmie Dale's lips pressed together. Well, he knew where Isaac Shiftel lived, and instead of the police, it would perhaps be——
Jimmie Dale's mental soliloquy ended abruptly. The Minister was walking with weak, unsteady steps across the room, groping at the desk for support, and speaking as he went.
“There isn't anything the matter, is there?” he asked anxiously. “I mean nothing's gone wrong with that other thing to keep Hunchback Joe away? He's safe, isn't he?”
An oath fell softly from Gentleman Laroque's lips. He still smiled; but the cool contempt had gone from his eyes, and in its place was a smouldering passion.
“Wrong?” he echoed. “No; nothing's gone wrong, except that the whole plant is blown, the papers pinched by the police, and Hunchback Joe is dead.”
“What's that, you say?” The old man swayed on his feet, his face a ghastly white. “Dead! You said—dead? I——”
Jimmie Dale straightened up involuntarily. The old man was undeniably ill, desperately ill. He had reeled and would have fallen had not Laroque caught him and placed him in a chair.
“Brandy!” the old man gasped. “Over there—on—on that cabinet.”
Laroque procured the stimulant. The Minister gulped it down eagerly. It seemed to revive him. He stared anxiously at Laroque.
“How—what—what happened?” he whispered hoarsely.
“The police were tipped off by some one you don't know, and by some one you do,” said Laroque between his teeth. “The some one you know was—the Gray Seal.”
“My God!” The white face was set with fear. “The police—and—Hunchback Joe dead! We—we can't go on with this—we'd——”
“We couldn't if Joe weren't either trapped or dead,” Laroque broke in sharply. “Pull yourself together! We've no time to waste. Don't you understand? It's safer than ever it was! If Klanner, the bank janitor, had got his, and the fake evidence had been found the way we planted it, this little deal here to-night was all tucked away neat enough. But Klanner's skin was saved, by luck as we thought then, though we know better now, and that put everything up in the air as far as this was concerned—until the police copped Joe with the goods, and Joe snuffed out. That gave them the motive again for the murder this afternoon, and gave them the man who did it. The case is closed now tighter than we figured it could be sewed up even in the first place. Get me?”
The old man shook his