Jimmie Dale, a long coat, sodden with rain, covering his evening clothes, crept up the narrow tenement stairs, crept along a bare and dirty hallway, and halted before a closed door. Softly, cautiously, he tried the door. It was locked. His fingers reached in under his outer garments, and then shot swiftly to the door again. There was a moment of utter silence, then a faint snip, and the door began to open guardedly, the fraction of an inch at a time. Another instant and Jimmie Dale stood inside the room.
The door closed behind him. A minute he listened, then the round, white ray from his flashlight lanced through the blackness, swept its surroundings in a swift, comprehensive circle—and a low, startled exclamation, involuntary, before it could be checked, came from Jimmie Dale's lips. This was old Miser Scroff's squalid, hovel-like abode, niggardly alike in its furnishings and its cleanliness, since even cleanliness cost money—but—but—it was strange! He did not understand! He had not been very long on his trip to the Sanctuary and back. It had not taken him long. Certainly it could not even yet be half-past nine. And yet it seemed as though, in spite of that, he was already too late.
The flashlight circled again, but more slowly this time, as though puzzled and nonplussed itself. The small room was in dire confusion. The bedding from the cheap cot was flung here and there on the floor; the drawers of an old desk had been pulled out and their contents strewn about, and the desk itself had been hacked to pieces as though on the chance that it might have possessed a hidden receptacle; while even the ragged strip of oilcloth, that was the sole floor covering, had been ripped up and flung into a corner. Where a hiding place might have existed before, there existed now nothing but a pitiful state of wreckage!
Jimmie Dale's mind seemed to echo the confusion. It did not seem possible that Bunty Myers and his companions could already have been here. And besides—the flashlight's ray shot suddenly to the rear of the room—what had all this to do with the panelled wall?
An ironic smile tinged his lips now. Yes, it might by a stretch of imagination be called panelled, but it was simply an extra height of boarding that ran up to meet the plaster all around the room some three or four feet from the flooring. He stepped quickly across the room, and knelt, as nearly as he could judge his position by the flashlight, in front of the middle boards. He nodded grimly. These were at least intact if nothing else in the room was! From a pocket in the leather girdle around his waist he drew out now a small, but incredibly strong and powerful “jimmy.” It would have been a useless waste of time to seek for any secret spring that, while it probably existed, was also certainly well and cleverly hidden.
He was working rapidly now, the point of the “jimmy” prying tentatively into, and up and down, the joints of the boards. A low-breathed exclamation of satisfaction came almost instantly from his lips. The “jimmy” had slipped through one of the cracks into an open space behind. It was here, then, the hiding place of old Miser Scroff's hoard that Bunty Myers——
Jimmie Dale stood suddenly erect, tense, every muscle rigid, listening. A footstep, low and stealthy though it was, had caught his ear from the hall outside. It was not another lodger, it was too cautious for that, too guarded; and for the same reason it could not be Miser Scroff. It was not Bunty Myers and his confederates, because there was only one footstep. The Phantom, then! The Phantom had required time for something somewhere. And he, Jimmie Dale, had dared to hope that it might be here. Luck! If he was in luck at last, he would play it to the full. He was crossing the room swiftly, without a sound. There would be a settlement this time from which there would be no escape! It was almost at the door now, that footstep; but he, too, was at the door—on the inside, crouched against the wall.
A grim smile twisted his lips as he stood there, his automatic flung forward, his flashlight ready in his left hand. Here was a good place for that settlement, here in old Miser Scroff's room, here on the scene of one of the Phantom's hell-hatched crimes—there could be no better place for that final reckoning!
The doorknob turned, the door began to open slowly. A form, shadowy, a little blacker than the surrounding blackness, bulked in the opening, then stole across the threshold, and the door closed.
And then Jimmie Dale spoke in a cold, merciless whisper, as the stream of his flashlight cut through the black, and his automatic lifted to a level with the line of light:
“Put up your——”
The sentence died on his lips. It seemed to Jimmie Dale that the room was whirling around him, that he was robbed of all power of movement, that his brain had lost the faculty of reason. The light was boring into a pair of brown eyes, startled, it was true, but brave, calm, self-reliant brown eyes that looked out from a wondrously glorious face, the only face in all the world. And then his pulses leaped, and the blood in a furious tide went whipping through his veins. The Tocsin! The Tocsin! Was he mad? Could it be true? The Tocsin!
“Marie!” he cried out hoarsely.
“Jimmie! Is it you? I could not see with the light in my eyes. Oh, Jimmie!” Her voice faltered. Relief was there, but relief was not the note he caught; it was love, yearning, the woman's soul that was in her tones.
The flashlight, the automatic, were thrust into his pockets. She was in his arms. He held her close. Years had gone since he had held her there before! He had fought for this, risked all and everything for this, hoped for it when hope itself seemed dead, and now she was here, close to him, clinging to him—and it was not just for the moment, not just a stolen, pitiful instant out of all eternity, but for always, for all time. He had her now. She would never go again. There was no power on earth would keep him from her side now!
Half laughing, half crying, she struggled to free herself a little.
“Jimmie,” she breathed, “don't you know that you are terribly strong, dear?”
He released her a little, grudgingly, but still he held her close. His lips found hers, her eyes, her hair—the dark silken strands that, playing truant from under her hat, swept his face.
Her hand had crept up and found his mask, slipped under it, and was resting gently against the strips of plaster on his cheek.
“I—I know of course about the night when—when you got this,” she said brokenly. “All the underworld has been talking about Smarlinghue. They very nearly caught you, Jimmie. Oh, Jimmie, why will you do it? I have begged you so, done all I could to keep you out of this. And now to-night again! What are you doing here? What brought you here?”
His arms tightened about her again.
“To find you,” he said.
She drew away in amazement, her hands on his shoulders now, holding him at arms'-length.
“To find me!” she echoed helplessly. “But how could you have expected to find me here? You did not know. I sent you no note, no word, for after I heard about that night at Pedler Joe's and what happened later in the Sanctuary, I made up my mind not to——”
He laid his hand softly across her lips.
“I have not been anywhere, done anything, since that night on the East River, Marie,” he said quietly, “except with the one end in view of finding you. And had I not found you again now I should still have kept on in the same way. I'm quite sure you know every move that Smarlinghue has made, and you therefore ought to know that I have already gone too far, that I've already been too close to the Phantom more than once to have let anything you did keep me out of this, Marie. The fewer the notes, the more I should have worried, and the harder I should have worked. But that's all at an end now, thank God! There'll be no more separation. We'll work together from now on until we've found the Phantom.”
For a moment she did not answer, then she turned her head away.
“No, Jimmie!” she said firmly. “I cannot! I will not! Nothing has been changed since that night on the East River. I cannot prevent you from doing as you have been doing, but there is a great difference between your actions as the Gray Seal and as one who is known to be working hand in glove with Marie LaSalle. It—it would make it almost