Jimmie Dale was running now. In an instant he had crossed the yard; and then, as he poised to swing himself over the fence, he drew suddenly back instead, and crouched down in the shadows. Some one was climbing over the fence from the lane not ten yards away from where he stood. A voice, muffled, gruff, reached him:
“Look out for that damned nail, sergeant!”
The police! A form, silhouetted against the night, showed on the top of the fence for a moment, then dropped to the ground. It was followed by another. Jimmie Dale crouched closer in against the fence in the shadows. He gnawed his lip now in bitter chagrin. He was not afraid of being discovered, it was far too dark for that; but he knew that with this further delay any hope of finding the Phantom again was definitely at an end.
The two men were joined by a third. They crossed the yard, and disappeared inside the house.
Cautiously now, Jimmie Dale moved farther on along the side of the fence away from the house. With the Phantom gone, it became purely a question of self-preservation now. Smarlinghue found here by the police and subjected to a search, held perhaps until the make-up, worn off in a police cell, disclosed Jimmie Dale, was but little more pleasant to contemplate than was the present realisation of the Phantom's escape!
Well, it should be safe enough here. He was at the far end of the yard now; and silently, quickly, he swung himself over the fence into the lane. He broke into a run, swerved into an alleyway that crossed the lane some fifty yards farther on, and, following this, finally emerged on a cross street a block away from the old jeweller's house.
There was a certain strange, abnormally cold composure upon him now; a sort of philosophical acceptance of the fact that the Phantom had got away. But his mind was probing, sifting, searching for the answer that would explain the direct cause of the Phantom's escape, leaving him, Jimmie Dale, victor only to the extent of having saved for the old jeweller the contents of his safe. Who was it who had given that signal, which, so evidently now, had been a warning that the police were at hand? And how did it happen that the police had known anything about what was going on in Max Linesthal's? It wasn't the shot or Max Linesthal's screams—there hadn't been any disturbance up to the time the doorbell had rung!
Jimmie Dale, shuffling along, as Smarlinghue always shuffled, went up the block, turned the corner of the street on which Max Linesthal's house stood—and as though suddenly attracted by the little crowd that had gathered in front of the old jeweller's, made his way forward in that direction. He reached the fringe of the crowd as a man in the uniform of a police lieutenant, jumping from a car, pushed his way unceremoniously through the rather tough-looking aggregation on the sidewalk, and halted before a policeman who stood on duty at the door. Jimmie Dale's eyes narrowed for an instant. That was Klinger, a lieutenant in the precinct. It might be worth while!
Jimmie Dale, as Smarlinghue, was apparently actuated now by no other motive than an ill-mannered, morbid curiosity that prompted him to secure the best vantage point that he could, for, as he wormed and elbowed his way nearer the lieutenant, his mouth was agape, breathless with interest, in a sort of senile way.
He caught the lieutenant's quick flung question to the officer at the door:
“Did you get him, Lynch?”
“No, sir,” the man answered.
“You didn't! How's that? That woman, whoever she was, handed us a fake tip over the phone, then?”
Smarlinghue's ragged form edged still closer to the two officers, as though his curiosity were now beyond the bounds of restraint, as though he were not only utterly oblivious to, but quite innocent of the impropriety of standing there with blear, blinking eyes and gaping mouth, greedily drinking in a conversation by no means intended for his ears. The woman, whoever she was! It was the Tocsin, then, who had sent the warning to the police. It couldn't have been any one else.
“No, sir,” the man addressed as Lynch answered. “It was straight enough, only there was an outside worker on the job, I guess. Anyway, just as we got to the corner over there and started to cross the street, a man ran up to Linesthal's door here, and then beat it like blazes down the street, and got away.”
“Did you get a look at him? Know who he was?”
“We aren't sure,” Lynch replied. “But O'Grady said he thought it looked like the Kitten.”
The Kitten! Jimmie Dale was fumbling with his battered hat. The crowd, as it jostled, had suddenly pushed him none too gently against the police lieutenant's elbow.
Lieutenant Klinger swung sharply around.
“Send this damned mob about their business!” he snapped at the policeman. “And maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to run in one or two of them while you're at it. Some of 'em look as though they were due for it!” He stared suddenly into Jimmie Dale's face. “You, eh, Smarlinghue? Hop-fighting, I suppose! What the hell are you doing around here?”
“Me?” Smarlinghue circled his lips with his tongue. “I—I ain't doing nothing,” he mumbled—and shrinking back through the crowd, and casting furtive glances over his shoulder in the direction of the police lieutenant while the crowd laughed, Smarlinghue scurried hurriedly down the street.
XVIII.
The Voice
It was like the glow of a firefly. It flitted here and there, lancing its tiny stabs of light indefatigably through the darkness. From somewhere without, in the distance, muffled, there came faintly the rumbling of wheels, the clatter of a horse's hoofs on the pavement. There was no other sound.
Jimmie Dale rose from his hands and knees, and, with the diminutive flashlight switched off now, stood staring around him in the darkness. Under the black silk mask his forehead furrowed. This was one of Mother Margot's rooms—the room from which the Phantom had so mysteriously disappeared on that first night. He had searched here before—more than once—in an effort to discover the secret of the Phantom's disappearance. But he had never found anything. To-night, because he had never been satisfied with his previous efforts, and because he had now been afforded a better opportunity of searching the place than ever before, he had returned to it again. He had been at it for two hours now. And still he had found nothing.
Both Mother Margot and the Tocsin had warned him to beware of the place—that it was a trap. Both had warned him that the Phantom asked nothing better than to lure him here. He shook his head. That might well have been true of a month ago, when, in the guise of Isaac Shiftel, alias Gentleman Laroque, the Phantom's unaccountable disappearance from this room before his, Jimmie Dale's, eyes, might naturally have been relied upon to bring him back without loss of time in the hope of getting at the bottom of the mystery. But not to-day. It was too long ago now. If, as a trap, it had not proved effective almost immediately after it was baited, the Phantom, from the standpoint of pure logic, must long since have given over any hope of it ever proving effective as a trap at all.
Jimmie Dale smiled grimly. He had, in spite of warnings, invaded the place almost immediately after that night—and he had not been able to find even a trap, let alone the secret of the Phantom's disappearance! Nor was Mother Margot in the secret. He was convinced of that. True, she had been installed here by the Phantom when the latter had been forced to vacate the premises after the police raid, and she had obviously been installed here for the purpose of keeping any stranger from renting the rooms, and therefore, by her occupancy, of safeguarding that secret for the Phantom, but of its nature he was sure she was ignorant. He doubted, indeed, if the Phantom trusted any one to that extent!