Five minutes later Jimmie Dale was staring at Benson's back through the plate glass, as the big limousine, continuing its progress in a downtown direction, rolled rapidly along.
He was frowning heavily. He did not like this! He did not like having Benson along like this. Not because Benson could not be trusted to the uttermost, but for Benson's own sake. There wasn't much risk for Benson, of course; in fact there wasn't any, as far as he could see, but he would have felt easier in his mind had he been alone. They were going ostensibly now to the Silver Dragon, a famous resort of slumming parties in Chinatown, and Benson would park outside where other cars were parked, and simply wait. But for all that, there was——
He shrugged his shoulders. What else could he do? His side was behaving very nicely so far, better than he had hoped for, in fact, but that condition was dependent, he knew very well, on saving himself all he could. That was why, for example, he had not gone to the Sanctuary, and, as Smarlinghue then, gone alone to Sadie Foy's. There would have been time—ample time. But he wasn't fit to play the rôle of Smarlinghue to-night.
He dismissed the subject from his mind. He had done what had seemed the wisest and best thing. The rest was in the lap of the gods. He began a little mental calculation as he took out his watch. It was twenty minutes to eleven now. It was roughly about ten minutes ago when Mother Margot had started on her errand. She should be at Curley's by now. That left a leeway of twenty minutes for somebody to telephone Curley and, presumably, make the rendezvous at Sadie Foy's at eleven o'clock.
Jimmie Dale replaced the watch in his pocket—and stared again at the back of Benson's head. The black box! Sadie Foy's! He shook his head. The combination meant nothing to him, of course. But Sadie Foy herself was quite a different matter. In Chinatown Sadie Foy was a celebrity—a very shady and notorious celebrity. She was seldom sober. She was a white woman, old now, who had married a Chinaman. But Charley Foy, her husband, had perished in a Tong feud. That was many years ago. Since then she had lived in a little rat-hole of a place as dissolute as herself, a few blocks from Chatham Square, supported, according to the police, by a pension from the Tong for which her lamented Charlie Foy had given up his life.
A queer smile flickered across Jimmie Dale's lips. As Larry the Bat in the days of old, as Smarlinghue of to-day, he was in this particular very much better informed than the police. There was no question whatever about the pension; but the pension was not based on purely philanthropic motives, or due to a deep-seated sorrow for Charlie Foy's untimely and violent decease. It satisfied the police. Actually, Sadie Foy drove a lively trade in bulk opium, or in anything else of an illicit character that promised her a profit. The bulk opium accounted for the pension; an innate evilness and cunning accounted for her general depravity. It was a choice place for a rendezvous of any questionable sort, or for any purpose!
The minutes passed as the car sped along. Jimmie Dale half closed his eyes. Sadie Foy, or for that matter her iniquities, meant nothing—it was the trail now that so obviously led to Sadie Foy's door. The Phantom was interested in something at Sadie Foy's at eleven o'clock. Would the trail broaden—or break? What did the night hold? A final reckoning with the Phantom? Freedom for her—if she still lived? Success, partial or whole? Failure? What?
The car slowed, and stopped. Jimmie Dale stepped to the sidewalk.
“We'll raise the limit a little this time, Benson,” he said. “Wait an hour.”
Jimmie Dale mounted the steps of the garishly lighted restaurant before which the car had stopped, and passed inside. The place was a riot of noise; the clatter of dishes, laughter, song, the never ceasing hum of numberless voices from numberless tables where the diners sat. He walked leisurely from room to room, making for the rear of the establishment—and here nonchalantly walked out into the cross street behind. The Silver Dragon was blest with two entrances.
And now Jimmie Dale quickened his step. He was in a narrow, twisting, ill-lighted little street in the heart of Chinatown. Shuttered windows threw out stealthy gleams of light from their interstices; scuffling figures sidled by him. He passed a small frame house, mouldy and in decay, weather-streaked, which paint had not touched in years. It was in complete darkness; not a light showed from it anywhere. And then in another minute he had slipped into the adjacent lane, and in still another was creeping cautiously across a filthy back yard—with the rear of the small house that was mouldy and in decay looming up before him. This was Sadie Foy's.
His eyes narrowed now a little grimly. It was black here all around him, but the house itself was not quite so dark at the rear as it had been in front! From a lower window just ahead of him little undulating threads of light seeped out from behind the edges of a drawn shade. It was the air did that, of course—made the shade sway slightly. Therefore the window must be open.
Voices, in what seemed like low, guttural undertones, began to reach him. He stole cautiously forward. There was refuse in the yard, and it was pitch black. It was not easy to assure silence even from step to step. A tin can became an object of dire menace. A minute, two, passed—and then Jimmie Dale, from a stooping position, stood upright. His head was just on a level with the window sill. He could hear now distinctly.
“Well, we're gettin' fed up waitin'!” said a silky voice. “It's eleven o'clock, and we've been patient for about a couple of hours. If youse ain't comin' across nice an' pleasant, mabbe we can help yer memory a little more de other way. Sadie's got everything locked up nice for de night in front, an' nobody'll disturb us. Ain't youse, Sadie?”
Jimmie Dale's dark eyes lighted with a sudden gleam. He could see little, scarcely more than a group of shadows on the shade, but he had recognised the purring voice. The trail was here! It was the Kitten's voice—and with the Kitten at work, hand in glove with him somewhere should be the Phantom and Bunty Myers. If the light breeze would only stir that shade a little more—just half an inch!
A woman cackled hoarsely.
“Sure! I'll take care of dat! Don't youse worry!”
“D'ye hear?” It was the Kitten's voice again. “We've let youse off easy so far, but we're gettin' fed up. I ask youse for de last time before youse gets hurt some more, where's de black box? Yer brother didn't take it up de river wid him; an' de mob of boobs youse played for suckers ain't got it, 'cause dey're mostly on de street now wid de kids pickin' up deir free lunches in de gutters; an' it wasn't left around loose in de crib w'en yer sweet little Banco Santos was pinched; an' youse've been hidin' all de time—so where is it?”
There was no answer. In the silence Jimmie Dale, almost involuntarily, startled, had drawn back a little. The Banco Santos! He did not need to see in there. He knew what the black box was now! The trial was scarcely a week old. The papers had been full of it. Two brothers, two Portuguese, Georges and Manuel Santos, had run a private bank, garnering in the savings of, for the most part, the poorer element among the foreign class, the tenement dwellers. They had played the game craftily, with vicious patience, for nearly two years, piling up the savings of the poor—only the final coup had been disrupted a little by a sudden suspicion that had arisen in the minds of the authorities. And one evening, as the latter had descended on the place, the two brothers had decamped by the back window, one of them carrying under his arm a black, oblong security box. One of the brothers, as likewise the black box, had not been seen or heard of since. The other brother, Georges, had been caught, and only a few days ago had started to serve a fifteen-years' sentence in Sing Sing. The missing funds were estimated at between twenty-five and thirty thousand dollars.
The Kitten purred again:
“Ain't it too bad he's lost his voice as well as his memory! An' we ain't done hardly anythin' but be civil to him since we runs into him back dere in Mickey de Cobbler's dump. Mabbe he's sore 'cause we didn't go right up an' shake hands wid him den! But youse see we was just sittin' around havin' a drink, an' thought mabbe we'd had one too many an' was seein' things w'en de cellar door opens, an' one of dese guys here says he'll bet a million bucks dat it was Manuel Santos, an' by de time we gets our breaths back he's slipped out. We hadn't never travelled together none of us before, but