“Get the police!” he croaked hoarsely, as he recognised as Bunty Myers a man who was elbowing his way forward. “Get the police! I want the police! Some one bust in here and said if I made a peep he'd lay me out. I—I was scared for a minute, mabbe two, and then I—I started something.”
“Sure! You look it!” snapped Bunty Myers. He swung fiercely on the little crowd and brushed them back to the doorway. “Get outer here!” he snarled. “Dis ain't yer hunt!” He turned again to Jimmie Dale. “Blast youse, Smarly!” he swore. “I ain't blamin' youse, but if youse'd kept quiet we'd have had him cornered cold. He's got away now down the lane.” He lowered his voice. “Wot I come back for was to find out if youse'd got a better look at him dan some of de boys wid me on account of his mask, an' if youse'd know him again if youse saw him?”
Jimmie Dale shook his head.
“No, I didn't get no look at him,” he said viciously. “But I'll have the police on him, and——”
“De police!” Bunty Myers' laugh was forced, unmirthful. “De police'll be a long time findin' dat bird, youse can take it from me! Say, youse give me de pip, Smarly! Dat was de Gray Seal!”
Jimmie Dale's jaw dropped. He stared helplessly.
“My God!” gasped Jimmie Dale. “The Gray Seal! Him!”
And he was still staring in a dazed and helpless way about him as Bunty Myers swung hurriedly from the room again, presumably to join his companions in their search along the lane.
X.
Beggar Pete
The street lights showed mistily, like vague, filmy patches in the darkness. It was raining in torrents, pitilessly. The water dripped from the brim of Smarlinghue's old felt hat, and beating into his face soaked the bandage around his cheek, threatening to displace it. He smiled grimly in reminiscence, as he raised his hand and tightened the dressing a little in its place.
It was four nights ago now since his accident when he had made his escape from Pedler Joe's window, and subsequently had saved himself by playing the dual rôle in the imaginary fight he had staged between Smarlinghue and the Gray Seal in the Sanctuary; and since then the character of Smarlinghue had virtually been a little Old Man of the Sea that had clung with almost sinister tenacity to him, and that he had not been able to shake off and discard as before at will. It was strange! A queer trick of fate, perhaps; and not an over-kindly one, for it had tied his hands, and for the moment had left him seriously crippled in his efforts to pick up the clues, already found and lost so many times, that must eventually, if there were ever to be life and freedom for the Tocsin, happiness for himself and the woman that he loved, lead to—the Phantom.
Jimmie Dale's face grew hard, anxious, perturbed. Things had not gone well in those four days. Smarlinghue, if such a thing were possible when his life itself had been the stake, had played his part too well that night in the Sanctuary! Already one of the acknowledged aristocracy of the underworld, he had been suddenly elevated to the status of little less than demi-god. Smarlinghue had been in actual, physical combat with the Gray Seal! Smarlinghue had become the idol of a morbid awe and curiosity! It was subsiding now, but while it lasted it had made the “disappearance” of Smarlinghue, even for a few hours, far too dangerous a move to consider; he had been too much the attraction, too much on exhibition, as it were. But even if this had not been so, there was still another and perhaps even stronger reason that had temporarily chained him to the rôle of the drug-wrecked artist and to the environment of the Sanctuary. The underworld had eyes and ears, and so too had the police; while, still more to be feared as one who seemed to reach out with cunning versatility into so many different spheres, as one who, of all others, would have his suspicions the most quickly aroused, there was the Phantom. Jimmie Dale, if he had returned to his ordinary life, would have had to do so with a bandaged face curiously like Smarlinghue's! It invited far too much! And so he had telephoned to Jason, that peer of butlers, that he had been called out of town for a few days; and whatever personal fears the old man might have entertained for the safety of his young master, whom, as he was wont to say, he had dandled on his knee as a child, Jason could be trusted to account, both ingeniously and to the entire satisfaction of any one interested, for the temporary absence of Jimmie Dale from his usual haunts.
In a personal sense, therefore, there had been no serious cause for anxiety; but in those four days it seemed, somehow, as though a wall, impenetrable, thick, had been reared across his path, halting him, and shutting out from both sight and hearing those things that concerned him far more than the consideration of his own security. There had been no word from the Tocsin, no note, no sign, no straw of evidence out of the whispered confidences in the hidden places of the underworld that he could grasp at as indicative of even her continued existence. The old question gnawed at his heart. Was she still alive to-night? What move had the Phantom made in those four days, and if any, had the man with his hell-born cunning been at last successful?
The days had been as a blank. Even Mother Margot had been denied him, for no mask could have hidden the bandages from her eyes. But yet, after all, he had not been idle. He had done what he could. The wave of notoriety that for the moment had swept him to a pinnacle high above his fellows of the underworld had seemed to present the only opportunity for activity left open to him, and he had seized upon it to cultivate the very men who were unconsciously responsible for the ruse to which he had been forced to resort that night in the Sanctuary to save his life, the men who had hammered at his door, voicing for the moment the one rallying cry that alone could unite the myriad, vicious interests of gangland in one common bond, “Death to the Gray Seal!” And in a measure he had been successful, though, as far as results had gone, he might, it seemed, have saved himself the effort. Bunty Myers, Muller and the rest—Gentleman Laroque's, alias the Phantom's, gang—had admitted him, rather pleased to bask in his reflected glory, to their hang-out in the upstairs rear room of Wally Kerrigan's ill-favoured “club,” which was half restaurant, half gambling den, and the resort of the worst in the Bad Lands, but he had learned nothing. They had loafed and smoked and played cards and drunk an amazing quantity of liquor, but that was all. There had always been Bunty Myers and Muller, and at times as many as three or four more, but had he, Jimmie Dale, not known that back of it all Gentleman Laroque, unseen, held these men in allegiance, he never would have discovered it there!
He had learned nothing; but though to-night, for perhaps the first time, he could have dispensed with the bandages to the extent of at least being able to use the black silk mask without the risk of Mother Margot suspecting the tell-tale hurt that lay beneath, he was on his way now to Kerrigan's again as the first part of his night's work. Afterwards—He shrugged his shoulders. Afterwards he would see! Certainly there was always a chance at Kerrigan's. He felt that he had already worked himself into an intimacy that was not far from breeding confidences. Their apparent inaction was also not without its measure of satisfaction, and this in itself alone was worth knowing. It might very well, and probably did, augur that the Phantom too was for the moment inactive, that there was a momentary stagnation, as it were, in that master crook's field of endeavour, and——
Jimmie Dale stopped short. He was opposite the swinging doors of a saloon, run by one Gypsy Dan, from which there emanated a stentorian-lunged voice high-pitched in song, accompanied by the thumping of many fists evidently upon the bar, and the stamping of many feet obviously upon the floor. Subconsciously, he was now aware, he had heard the row half a block away. It was not by any means a select and exclusive neighbourhood; it was one more of squalor than anything else and accustomed to disturbances more strenuous and decidedly more vicious than this, but it was at least within the purlieus of the city and supposedly under the