With a low cry, Jimmie Dale leaned suddenly with his elbows on the window sill, staring out into the blackness of the night. It seemed to be beckoning, calling to him.
She was out there somewhere.
Was she? Was he even certain that she was still alive? Something cold, an icy grip, seemed to clutch at his heart. Since the night at Miser Scroff's, true to her stated determination to keep him out of the shadows, as she called them, that enveloped her, that held her life in peril, he had had no word from her.
Jimmie Dale was gnawing at his lips now; his arms fell from the window sill, and his hands clenched at his sides. She had simply kept her word. That was what she had said she would do. Why then this sudden access that verged on panic? He laughed out shortly again. It wasn't sudden. It wasn't a new phase. It hadn't just at this moment germinated in his brain. It was what had been growing there ever since he had lain wounded in bed. It was the seat of that constant disquiet and restlessness that was culminating now in—What?
He was on his feet; and now he began to pace the room. To protect her life she had arrayed herself against the merciless cunning of the Phantom—not a man; a monster. There was no middle course between them. There was but one end. One of the two must fall. And the Phantom was still safe, still secure, still at his hell-born deviltries.
And she?
A bead of moisture oozed out on Jimmie Dale's forehead. He flirted it away with a sweep of his hand. It meant little that her silence was exactly in accordance with what she herself had stated was her proposed line of action. There was something that meant infinitely more. She might propose, but immeasurably true was the trite old saying applied to her that she could not always dispose! He, as Smarlinghue, as the Gray Seal, excluded from working in conjunction with her, had worked nevertheless in the days and weeks that were gone with identically the same end in view as she, working independently, had had—the unearthing of the Phantom. Why had their paths then, in spite of herself, not crossed since that night in Miser Scroff's room, save perhaps on the one occasion when he had presumed that the tip to the police in reference to the jewel robbery at Linesthal's had come from her? He had been in touch with the Phantom, with the Phantom's criminal efforts since then. And if she were still free, still alive, and making progress in her fight, how was it that she and he had not inevitably been brought into contact with each other?
His hands clenched tighter. And there was more even than that; one outstanding brutal thing, ugly in its promise, that brought him a deadly fear. She had made progress while she had been mistress of her actions; she had said so in her notes up to the time when those notes had ceased; her appearance at Miser Scroff's that night had proved that she had penetrated the Phantom's outer defences, and had had a certain foreknowledge of the man's proposed coups. Therefore the presumption was that, had all still been well with her, she would have had knowledge of what had happened three nights ago, and she would have known that he, Jimmie Dale, had been shot.
His brain seemed to whirl; the blood to pound in hammer beats at his temples. Not a sign had come from her, not a word over the telephone, not a message of any kind, direct or indirect. His mind, his soul, seemed to falter now before the ugly deduction that flung itself pitilessly at him. She loved him, as he loved her. He knew that. She loved him with a love so great and unselfish that daily, hourly she had faced alone the peril that menaced her so that he might not also be in danger, so that he might be sheltered from it. Would she then, if she knew he had been shot, and if she were able even with her last effort to communicate with him, have remained silent, made no attempt to discover how serious was his condition, or whether indeed he were alive or dead?
Alive or dead! The phrase battered at his brain. It applied to her. White-faced he stood at the window again, and stared out into the darkness. It was black! How black it was! And she was out there in the night somewhere—somewhere—alive or dead.
Inactive! His wound as an excuse! He swore savagely now in his emotion. What was he—a weakling! Too long he had stayed here now inactive when she—she was out there somewhere—perhaps dead. Something caught in his throat. His hands raised above his head and clenched until under the tightened skin the knuckles showed like knobs, bloodless, white.
If she were dead! He laughed! It was a merciless sound. He swung from the window and went into the dressing room. He began to dress. How should he dress? Tweeds or dinner clothes? That sounded queer—as though his brain were unhinged. He wasn't going to a party! Foolish word that—party!
He began to get into his dinner clothes. He knew what he was doing now. There had been what Jason would have called a rush of blood to the head for an instant, blurring him a bit, as it were. His side wasn't so bad—a twinge or two—nothing to speak of. There was something else out there in the night—a clue to pick up somewhere. He didn't know how—or where. It might be as Smarlinghue, somewhere in one of the hidden sink-holes of the underworld, that he would pick up the trail of Bunty Myers, or Bunty Myers' pal, the Kitten; or, if Mother Margot were back——Well, it was as a man in a dinner coat and mask that Mother Margot knew the Gray Seal. He was dressing for Mother Margot. Quite the thing, wasn't it—to dress for the ladies?
Damn it! He must hold himself in! He stepped to the liqueur stand and poured himself out a little brandy, and drank it. He responded instantly to the stimulant. It steadied him. Over his underclothes he strapped on the leather girdle with its kit of blued-steel implements nestling in the little upright pockets, and where nestled, too, the thin metal case that contained the diamond-shaped, gray-paper, adhesive seals, the insignia of the Gray Seal. He put on his shirt, his waistcoat and jacket, and into the side pocket of his jacket he slipped his automatic. He was dressed now.
He stared at himself in the glass. Jason would have to be told. It wasn't fair to the faithful old man to slip out without a word. Jason would be mad with anxiety if he found him gone. Jimmie Dale rang the bell.
The reflection in the mirror returned him a twisted contortion of the lips. The damned thing was trying to ape a smile, wasn't it? It looked like a death's-head, gaunt and pasty-white, with lines like an old man's. Well, what of it? He felt all right, except that the bandage was infernally tight.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” said Jimmie Dale.
Jason's white head appeared in the doorway—and then the door was shut with nervous haste, and the old butler came hurriedly forward across the room.
“Master Jim, sir!” he gasped. “Master Jim, what—what are you doing, sir?”
Jimmie Dale smiled.
“I'm going out, Jason,” he said.
The old man cast an anxiously suspicious glance at his master.
“Yes, of course, Master Jim, sir,” he said soothingly. “But the exertion of dressing, sir—if you'll just sit down for a little while now, Master Jim, then by and by——”
“Jason,” said Jimmie Dale, whimsically, “you couldn't be a fraud even in a minor degree—you're too transparent. I'm quite myself. I'm not in delirium. I'm simply going out.”
The old man's face grew a little white.
“You can't mean it, Master Jim,” he faltered. “In the state you're in, sir, it's likely to cost you your life to go out.”
“It's likely to cost me more than that to stay in,” said Jimmie Dale, quietly.
The