He could hear her moving ahead of him. Half bent over, he followed. Soft earth was under foot. It was a low, narrow tunnel of some sort, that was evident. An underground passage, of course. Morley's drug-den was well equipped!
His brain was in chaos. Shiftel, Bunty Myers, the emerald necklace, Little Sweeney! And the Tocsin here!
“Marie, I don't understand!” he burst out.
“It was the trap I warned you about,” she answered back.
“Yes; I know that now,” he said. “But Shiftel! That wasn't Shiftel up there. It was Little Sweeney.”
“He was the cat's-paw,” she said.
He stumbled on. Where did this passage lead to? Was there no end to it?
“Hold on a minute, Marie! Stop!” he pleaded suddenly. “You——”
“There is no time; there is not an instant to lose,” she broke in swiftly “I—I—but never mind that. I can tell you in a few words what you do not understand as we go on. Are you listening, Jimmie?”
Listening! Listening to her, to her voice!
“Yes,” he said; “since you will not wait.”
“Well, then,” she said rapidly, “the Phantom was not fool enough to close his eyes to what looked as though there were a leak somewhere on the inside. The Gray Seal had put in an appearance with too great regularity. He thought, too, at last, as I wrote you, that you were after him in a personal way. Therefore he meant to strike first. And so for to-night's work he sent out his orders and his plans through the usual channels. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” said Jimmie Dale, as he groped his way along.
“If, then, there was a leak,” she went on, “the plan for the night's work would reach the Gray Seal also as usual. But though the Phantom inclined strongly to the belief that he was the one you were after, and that the spoils of the various affairs in which you had intervened were a secondary matter, he was still not absolutely sure of it—and therefore, whether he was right or wrong, and while he hoped to get you by offering what you would believe to be himself as a bait, it was not his intention to take any chances with that emerald necklace to-night, and—” She broke off suddenly. “I don't see how you found that out!”
Jimmie Dale brought up abruptly against a sharp turning in the tunnel. He bit his lips in chagrin. In the utter darkness, in spite of the cramped posture he was forced to assume, he had tried to catch up with her, reach her.
“I followed Little Sweeney from Kerrigan's,” he said. “He met Goldie Kline and the Weasel, and I overheard enough to know what was going on before I lost Little Sweeney again. They got away in an automobile.”
“I see.” Her voice floated back. “Well, that part of the plan was not passed out through the usual channels. All that was given out to the gang was that Shiftel would be here at Morley's to-night to receive some swag; but it was not until the last minute, not until an hour ago that the gang themselves were ordered to be on hand to get you if you came. After that they were kept together so that a leak then, when a leak would no longer be a lure but a warning, was impossible. If you were only after spoils, you would know nothing about the necklace, and so would not get it; but if you were after him you would come here, and he would get you! Do you still understand, Jimmie?”
“Yes,” he answered; “all but Little Sweeney's part.”
“It was risky business playing the part of Shiftel—something might go wrong,” she said bitterly. “And the Phantom takes no risks—when he can let some one else assume them! That is why he had some one play the part of Shiftel. Little Sweeney received his orders through Limpy Mack with whom, as you know, he had worked before, not knowing that Limpy Mack and Shiftel and the unknown 'Chief' were one; and Little Sweeney of course thought it was a clever way to induce two crooks to steal the jewels, for Little Sweeney was made to believe that Shiftel had left the country for good. Limpy Mack supplied the disguise, which was actually of course the one worn by himself when he masqueraded as Shiftel.”
“Good God!” gasped Jimmie Dale. “I see now!”
“Yes!” she said. “There is not much more. Little Sweeney was chosen because he had been away during your later appearances, and was therefore free from suspicion that any leak had come through him; and Goldie Kline and the Weasel were chosen for the same reason—they were wholly outsiders. That's all—except my share. I had sent you no word, no note. I didn't think you could possibly know anything about to-night; and so I didn't expect you would come here, and in that respect I thought the Phantom would fail. But I knew that Shiftel was to be here at this hour—for I believed then that it was actually Shiftel himself—and so I notified the police. If they got Shiftel, then that was the end of our troubles. They—they are there now. They came just as I reached the trap door—but”—her voice seemed to dull a little—“they haven't got the Phantom.”
Jimmie Dale made no answer. His lips were tight and grimly set. The Phantom was still alive, still at liberty, still free to carry on his fiendish machinations! But—Jimmie Dale's face relaxed a little the next instant—it was not all utter failure and defeat. She was here! The Tocsin was here with him. And he, Jimmie Dale, was alive, where but a few minutes before he had seen no chance of life. They were together—Marie and himself. In a moment more now the tunnel must end, and she——
Her voice, suddenly low and guarded, reached him.
“Wait!” she whispered. “Stay where you are. I'll see if the way is clear.”
He stood still.
A minute passed, and then she called again:
“It's all right. Come on!”
His hands still groped out before him as he moved forward again, and, groping, discovered that the tunnel here took an abrupt right-angled bend. And then as he turned the corner, and a cool, fresh current of air fanned his face, he found himself on a flight of steps, and he could straighten up and there was head room as he mounted them.
And then he was standing outside a doorway on a dark and deserted street. He could hear the sound of shouts, of revolver shots, but the sounds came faintly from the distance. They were safe now, quite safe, the Tocsin and himself. He looked quickly, eagerly around him. He called her softly.
But there was no answer—and of the Tocsin there was no sign.
XV.
Behind the Doors of the Underworld
Jimmie Dale turned softly, without sound, upon the bunk, easing his position. Around him were whisperings, murmurings, the stir of humans in troubled sleep, a hundred conglomerate, sinister sounds; and everywhere the sickly sweetish smell of opium.
His face was haggard, worn, drawn, in sharp, pinched lines, and there was a dull, weary look about the eyes that no “make-up” could have supplied, as a smile, grim, unbidden, settled now upon his lips. Was this reality? Perhaps it was all a dream—a dream such as the poppy brought to these dregs and lees of the underworld who stole in here, where no daylight had ever shone, to burn their suicidal incense to the God of Gray Things!
Reality! Could even his existence in itself be reality? Was it any more reality than he, as Smarlinghue, as one known far and wide throughout the underworld as a hopelessly confirmed dope fiend, represented reality? He was not Smarlinghue. There was no such person as Smarlinghue. And yet in that very character which he had created, unkempt and ragged, he lay here now in one of Hip Foo's “private” rooms, hidden deep down in the chain of sub-cellars that housed perhaps the most infamous opium joint in all New York! He was not a dope fiend. Neither taste nor drop of the drug had he ever known. And yet he had burned a thousand “pills,”