“I got him!” screamed Limpy Mack's voice exultantly. “I got him, Sweeney! I beaned him with the loaded handle of my cane.”
But though dazed, lurching, scarcely able to keep his feet, Jimmie Dale was still fighting like a wildcat. Twice since Little Sweeney had grappled with him, he had managed to strike the other with the butt of his automatic. He had only one chance now—to end it quickly—he was too nearly gone himself. He wrenched himself suddenly free, and swung again with all his strength. A gurgling voice—Little Sweeney's—answered the blow:
“Look out—Limpy—beat it—you know why—that paper—beat it—I——”
Again and again Jimmie Dale brushed his hand across his eyes. He fought desperately to clear his brain. His head was sick and dizzy. What was that sound, that strange, queer sound? Tap, tap, tap! Little Sweeney—that black outline on the floor was Little Sweeney—Little Sweeney wouldn't trouble any one for an hour or so—but that tap, tap, tap—it sounded from the direction of the rear door. And now it was gone, and there was silence—just silence. But the silence, as nothing else had done, seemed now to penetrate Jimmie Dale's swimming head, and seemed to bring with it a sudden, swift significance.
Fool! He stumbled madly toward the rear door. Limpy Mack was gone—gone with the tap, tap, tapping of his cane. That paper! A clue to that super-crook perhaps, that the Tocsin called the Phantom, and Mother Margot called the Voice!
He was outside now. No, not too late! That was Limpy Mack there, wasn't it? That figure running, running! God, how his brain swam! His knees seemed weak under him, as though they were going to double up like the blades of a knife—but he was running too. His surroundings seemed mechanically, subconsciously, to be absorbed—just a back yard that ended in the black, irregular outline of the rear of what was evidently a three or four-story tenement.
On Jimmie Dale stumbled. He could not be more than ten or fifteen yards behind that figure ahead, which, to his whirling brain, seemed to take on the aspect of some grotesque jumping-jack, bobbing up and down in the darkness, until suddenly it disappeared through the back door of the tenement.
Jimmie Dale prodded himself into a spurt, reached the tenement door, found it open, and reeled inside. His faculties seemed miserably unreliable. Couldn't he think any more! He stood stock still, and again his hand swept fiercely across his eyes. The man couldn't have gone out of the front door, nor have gained the landing above, because he, Jimmie Dale, had been too close at the other's heels, and would have heard him, would be hearing him now. And there was not a sound—nothing but pitch, inky blackness. Therefore Limpy Mack must be somewhere here in the blackness.
That was better! At least his brain was striving to fight its way back to normal. But his eyes ached brutally. He bit his lips to keep back a groan of pain, and leaned against the wall for support. One of them, he or Limpy Mack, must sooner or later make a move. He forced a twisted smile. If the blow from the loaded cane had not proved too much for him after all, it would not be he who made that move!
And now, after a time, where he had heard no sound before, he became conscious of many sounds—the low indistinct sound of muffled things, the night sounds of a tenanted building filtering vaguely out from behind closed doors only to integrate themselves in a queer, throbbing way into the very silence itself. How long had he been standing here? Once he clutched frantically, but noiselessly, at the wall to keep himself erect. Perhaps it would not be Limpy Mack who moved first! His brain was swimming in that sick, nauseating way again. Perhaps it would be——
A door began to open cautiously a few yards along the hall. And then a man's head and shoulders, a man with a clean shaven face and slouch hat showing quite distinctly in the lighted doorway, was thrust out. The man peered around; then from the threshold he whispered back into the room:
“It's a cinch he thought you beat it straight out through the front door, and went out after you. I'll take a look, and if he's still hanging around outside I'll spot him. You keep under cover, Limpy. You're safe here anyway. I'll be back in ten minutes. Savvy?”
The man, a broad-shouldered, well set-up fellow, stepped out into the hall, and closed the door behind him. His footsteps echoed back as he walked rapidly toward the front of the tenement; then the front door opened and closed again; the footsteps rang faintly from the pavement without, died away—and Jimmie Dale was standing before the door of the room.
He had not heard the door being locked. He was sure of that, in spite of the fact that his head was whirling like a top. His fingers closed silently on the doorknob—and with a swift movement, standing in the hall, his automatic thrown forward, he flung the door wide open.
And then for a moment he stood there like a man stunned. The room was empty. No, not empty! Dangling from the gas-jet hung Limpy Mack's rubber-tipped cane; and stuck upon the cane, flaunting itself in grim, ironical, mocking challenge—was a diamond-shaped gray paper seal.
A smile of understanding, bitter in its chagrin, flickered across Jimmie Dale's lips. He had stuck a gray seal on the back of Shiftel's hand that night two weeks ago. This one, he was sure, could have come from nowhere else; and, if that were so, then Shiftel, and Gentleman Laroque, and Limpy Mack, and Limpy Mack in still another guise, in the guise of the man who had just tricked him so neatly, were all one. And from that encounter in Shiftel's rooms, and one other encounter long before that at Niccolo Sonnino's place, Gentleman Laroque, alias Isaac Shiftel, in the character of Limpy Mack to-night, had known that he was dealing with the Gray Seal from the moment his room under Sen Yat's had been entered—could not help but have known it. And at the last here, the man, being then disarmed, had had no choice but to resort to his wits as the only means of escape. Yes, he, Jimmie Dale, quite understood!
He had sought, and found, and lost again—the Phantom.
VII.
The Message
Days of searching! Days of futility! Days that had brought no reward! Since the night of Limpy Mack's disappearance there had been only failure. Nowhere had he been able to pick up again a thread or clue that would set him once more upon the Phantom's trail—until to-night. And to-night? Jimmie Dale shook his head. He was at sea, troubled—about to-night.
Threadbare, gaunt-cheeked, dissolute in appearance, his battered old felt hat pulled down over his eyes, he was slouching now, as Smarlinghue, with apparent aimlessness along the street. Past him, going to and fro, other figures shuffled by—for the most part Chinamen, their crossed hands tucked in the sleeves of their blouses. A slumming party from a “gape-wagon” disembarked its load of candidates for initiation into those most dark, drear, shivery and hidden things of Chinatown, whose storied mysteries in this more enlightened generation were now within the reach of all—for the insignificant sum of one dollar a ticket!
A twisted smile flickered across Jimmie Dale's lips. This jostling little crowd that was being herded into line now by the stentorian voiced barker would see many things, for the stage was always set. They would see most fearsome opium dens that reeked with the sickly sweetish smell of poppy, where no poppy was; they would see the worshippers at the Shrine of the Thousandth Ancestor; they would see the council chambers where the Tong wars were declared, and most ghastly murders hatched; they would see the Chinamen at their fan-tan; and—Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders—they would undeniably get their money's worth. It was quite innocent, and everybody would be satisfied; but into Hip Foo's, for instance, where he was going now, from whose tortuous, bunk-lined, connecting sub-cellars there were two exits separated one from the other by almost a block, and again from the entrance by an entirely different street, their tickets would not take them. Hip Foo made no money from the