Jimmie Dale crouched there in the shadows. Pedestrians passed up and down. Perhaps a quarter of an hour went by. Then the side door of Kerrigan's opened, and a shawled figure stepped out and scurried away. Mother Margot! And then presently the door opened again, and Little Sweeney and Bunty Myers came out together.
Jimmie Dale slipped out on the street, and, on the opposite side, followed the two men as they went down the block. At the corner they separated, and Jimmie Dale took up Little Sweeney's trail.
Block after block the man traversed. Jimmie Dale, hugging the shadows of the buildings, kept a position as nearly opposite the man across the street as he dared, wary always of a corner around which the man might turn, and, with too great a distance separating them, disappear into some place—should that be his objective—before he, Jimmie Dale, could round the corner and pick up the trail again.
Little Sweeney walked fast, obviously unconscious of pursuit, and obviously with some set and fixed destination in view. The chase headed down toward the water front. The quarter now was one of small stores and dwellings, dark for the most part, save for the saloons. Jimmie Dale's face set grimly. It was not an over-inviting neighbourhood.
And then suddenly Little Sweeney swung around a corner.
Jimmie Dale quickened his step, and reached the corner himself in time to see the other, after skirting a fence that enclosed either a vacant lot or a store yard of some sort, turn abruptly at the end of the fence and disappear. In an instant, Jimmie Dale, silent in his movements, though he was running now, crossed the street, and in turn was skirting the fence. There was a lane beyond, of course—that was it! Little Sweeney had not entered any house; he had just turned around the far corner of the fence, and—Jimmie Dale stood suddenly stock still. Out from the corner of the fence, flooding the sidewalk, came streaming a powerful ray of light.
And then Little Sweeney's voice, rasping:
“Of course, it's me! Shut off them damned lights!”
The light disappeared as quickly as it had come. Footsteps crunched faintly in the lane, receding. Jimmie Dale edged quickly forward to the corner of the fence, and peered cautiously around it.
It was quite clear now; there was nothing mysterious about the light that had flung its beams across the sidewalk; it was even commonplace. From a rickety-looking metal garage, which was perhaps twenty-five yards back from the street and in which there stood an automobile, some one had sent the headlights playing along the lane.
For a moment Jimmie Dale stood there watching. There was a single incandescent light burning in the garage which illuminated the place dimly, and, aside from Little Sweeney who was just stepping inside, he could make out the forms of two men standing beside the car. He dared not enter the lane, of course. It would be the act of a fool! A chance sound, those headlights switched upon him, and——
The slouching, bent, almost decrepit figure of Smarlinghue drew back; and the next instant, after a swift glance around him to make sure that he was unobserved, with a spring, lithe and agile as a cat, he swung himself over the fence from the sidewalk, and dropped without a sound to the yard on the other side. He began to move noiselessly along the section of the fence which flanked the lane. It ran straight to the edge of the garage, he had observed from the street, and—yes, it ended there! He was in luck! He was crouched now against the wall of the garage itself, which obviously, though it was too dark to see, served to complete the enclosure, in lieu of fence, at this corner of the yard.
He could hear them talking now as plainly as though he were inside, for he was separated from them only by the thin metal sheeting of the garage; and, furthermore, just above his head, shoulder high, where a faint light seeped out, the window was open.
“This is a sweet, juicy place for a meeting!” Little Sweeney's voice grumbled.
“Wot's de matter wid it?” another voice demanded, with a hint of truculency. “It's as good as anywhere else, I guess, an' a blamed sight better'n most. I told youse I had to make a trip first with some swag for a friend of mine.”
“Oh, all right, Goldie!” said Little Sweeney placatingly. “All right! I know you did. Forget it!”
Jimmie Dale raised himself cautiously, and, back at an angle from the window sash that precluded the possibility of being seen, looked inside. His lips tightened suddenly. The other two were no strangers, either to any one in the underworld or to the police. Goldie Kline and the Weasel! Goldie Kline was one of the cleverest box-workers in the business; the Weasel, a shrivelled little runt, was without a peer as a second-story man.
It was the Weasel now who spoke.
“Me,” he said, “I tell youse straight I wouldn't touch dem stones on a bet if any one but old Shiftel was goin' to fence 'em, 'cause dere ain't no one else could get away wid 'em. De Melville-Dane emerald necklace! Swipe me! Dere ain't a stone in de bunch dat ain't known all over de lot, an' it'll take some shovin', even by Shiftel, to cash in on 'em. De lady wid de name parted in de middle'll be——”
“Close your face!” said Little Sweeney politely. “You've seen Shiftel, haven't you, and he's settled that to your satisfaction? All you fellows have to do is get the stones to-night, and leave the rest to him.”
“Sure!” said the Weasel blithely. “I ain't kickin'! I'm only sayin' dat I wouldn't go in on de deal wid nobody else but Shiftel. Well, spill de rest of it! We're to slip him de stones as soon as we pinches 'em. Dat's understood. An' youse have come down here to tell us where he's layin' low to-night, an' where we're goin' to find him; so let's have it.”
Jimmie Dale leaned forward a little in strained attention. Shiftel! The one man he would risk, that he had risked, limb and life and liberty to reach! He had made no mistake in following Little Sweeney!
And then a blank look, that changed swiftly to one of bitter dismay, settled on Jimmie Dale's face. The roar of the engine starting up had suddenly drowned out all other sound. No—it was subsiding a little now. He caught Goldie Kline's voice:
“Aw, we can talk in de car. I gotta get dat job I was tellin' youse about done before ten o'clock. Dat's de only t'ing dere's any hurry about. De necklace job don't come off till de early mornin' when de dame's gone bye-bye. Jump in, Sweeney; we'll drop youse anywhere youse like.”
They were gone—the car, Little Sweeney, the Weasel, Goldie Kline! Jimmie Dale stood there alone in the blackness of the yard. He could not follow them. They were gone. It had seemed that success at last had been actually within his grasp. It numbed him now somehow that it had been so swiftly and unexpectedly snatched away. He had little or no chance of finding Little Sweeney again to-night; he might, with luck, pick up the trail of Goldie Kline or the Weasel somewhere in the underworld, but—He had turned away from the garage, making his way back toward the street, and now he halted abruptly, staring into the darkness.
Had he lost his wits? What was this that his subconscious mind had kept whispering over and over to him as the key-note of everything from the moment the name had been mentioned? Melville-Dane! Melville-Dane! That was in his own world, wasn't it? They were his own friends. Strange! Curious! Yes, he remembered now. Soon after he had ventured home again following his “absence” from the city, due to that night at Pedler Joe's, he had found an invitation to some affair, a reception, if he were not mistaken, at the Melville-Danes' for to-night. He had sent his regrets, it was true; but he was on too intimate a footing with them to have that make any difference.
And now Jimmie Dale moved on again, reached the fence, and gained the sidewalk on the other side. He was also well acquainted with that emerald necklace—a priceless thing that seldom left the shelter of its safe deposit vault. Mrs. Melville-Dane was evidently wearing it to-night at the reception!
He started on along the street. A word of warning, then, to the Melville-Danes—or the police? He shook his head. By the time Goldie Kline and the Weasel attempted the proposed robbery in the Melville-Dane home, they would be in possession of something far more valuable to him, Jimmie Dale,