Jimmie Dale stooped suddenly forward and picked up the speaking tube. He wasn't racing any more then against the Kitten on whom he had a known start. He was racing against “some one” else, some one who would race like mad so as to keep the Kitten in countenance and not force his stalling to become apparent through lingering on the road when his hungry dupes would be urging speed.
“Faster, Benson!” he said sharply. “All you've got the rest of the way!”
He leaned back in his seat again. It was clear enough now. But who was this “some one?” It wasn't the Phantom himself, for the Phantom had sent the message. Who, then, was the Phantom's delegate? Jimmie Dale's lips drooped curiously until grim little lines formed at the corners of his mouth. It was more likely than any one else to be the man he had started out to find—Bunty Myers. He frowned quickly. Had he made a mistake? Should he have remained at Sadie Foy's? This delegate must have been there somewhere at eleven—when the Kitten was going out again with the excuse of getting a closed car. And then he shook his head impatiently. Perhaps! If he had known what he was so sure of now, he might have acted differently—perhaps not. This, after all, was the surer way, both of finding that delegate, and securing possession of the black box.
The car was eating up the miles now, keeping check almost with the minutes as they passed.
He ran his hand through his hair. Dog eat dog! It was dirty, miserable work all the way through, beginning with Manuel Santos, who was perhaps the most despicable of the lot. His hands clenched suddenly. If nothing else came of it, getting that money back to those to whom it meant their all was worth whatever it might cost him to-night. Thirty thousand dollars! There was something fiendish, damnable, in the vicious premeditation, the vicious patience with which the two Portuguese had worked! He remembered in the account of the trial it had come out in evidence that the authorities had not been lax. Always on demand securities in the shape of bonds had been produced to make the balances. Of course! And of a sudden those bonds had been transferred into cash, and—presto!—the squalid little bank was no more! He smiled grimly. It was probably the steady demand for so many bills of large denominations during the two or three days prior to the end that had first aroused the suspicions of the authorities, and——
The car was slowing down. And now it jolted over rough ground. A branch slapped smartly against the window pane. The headlights, streaming out, threw tree trunks into spectral relief against a background of utter blackness. And then the headlights went off, and the car stopped.
Jimmie Dale stepped out.
“You're sure of the place, Benson, and that you're hidden from the road?” he asked crisply.
“Yes, sir,” Benson answered. “Quite sure, sir.”
“Very well!” said Jimmie Dale. “Keep your lights off, wait for me, and don't leave the car under any circumstances.” He sensed a protest anent himself rising to Benson's lips, and he turned quickly away. “I'll be back in a few minutes, Benson,” he said.
XXIV.
The Black Box
Jimmie Dale moved forward through the trees. It could not be far, not more than three or four hundred yards, for the Santos house lay between himself and the Martin-Holmes estate. That was why he had told Benson to stop half a mile this side of the latter place. The general direction, he knew, was a diagonal one—toward the Martin-Holmes' residence, and toward the shore, away from the road. He smiled a little queerly to himself as he went along. He remembered that during a week-end visit to Holmes a year or so ago, the latter had expressed his annoyance at what he had called an unsightly shack that two Portuguese had put up on the beach close to his place. He, Jimmie Dale, had not been very much interested then; he was vitally interested in that so-called shack now!
He frowned suddenly. He had been making fair progress, and should have reached his destination by now; but, instead, he was still in the woods and the ground was growing wet and soggy underfoot. He edged off in the direction of the shore—the house was at the water's edge, Holmes had said—and went on for another hundred yards. It grew worse. He could hear now the lapping of the waves. The trees grew fewer, and began to be replaced by a reedy growth—and then of a sudden Jimmie Dale halted. A glimmer of moonlight flickered on water and waving marsh grass. It was impassable—it reached out into the Sound itself.
It was disaster! He felt his face whiten. He must already have been ten minutes on the way—and ten minutes was the utmost limit of margin he had any right to count upon. Ten minutes! It was far worse than that! It would take that much more to retrace his steps and circle around the other way before he could get started again.
He gnawed at his lips now as he turned and began to run. It was almost certain disaster; disaster to the moral responsibility he had assumed, disaster to the hope he had cherished that to-night—He stumbled. He could not be careful of his footing now. Defeat, yes, perhaps—but he would not accept it. He ran doggedly. Again he stumbled, and again. And now he winced with pain. This hurt his side brutally. It wasn't like riding on the cushions of a luxurious limousine, or even of walking when no unusual effort was required.
He went on. His breath came hard. He swept beads of moisture away from his forehead—and then once he reeled. It was hours, wasn't it, since he had started over again? There wasn't much chance—one perhaps in a thousand—not that much! His jaws clamped hard together. He was making a mess of it with that cursed side, and——
Jimmie Dale came suddenly out of the edge of the woods. Well, at least, this was better! Fifty yards away across a clearing a house loomed shadowy out of the darkness. He listened intently. There was no sound. He darted silently across the clearing and gained the house. It was a small place so close to the shore that, as he crept now noiselessly up the steps of a verandah that apparently ran all around the house, he could make out a little wharf and what looked like an old, neglected boat drawn up on the beach. Certainly, there was no mistaking the house for there was no other of this description, he knew, in the neighbourhood.
A pick-lock came from a pocket in the leather girdle, and with it again the black silk mask. A moment more, and Jimmie Dale stood inside the house. And now he listened again, straining his ears for the slightest sound. Nothing! His face was white and haggard. There was only one answer of course—the Phantom's delegate had been and gone. There had been time enough—so much and to spare that even the Kitten was due now.
He took out a flashlight and circled it around him. The place was crude, to a certain extent unfinished; exactly what Manuel Santos himself had called it—a camp. It seemed to be divided into several rooms by thin, unpainted partitions. Here at his right, steps led upward. Well, he had come this far, and even if the chances now were all against him, he was still going up there, but he had to think of the Kitten now—the possibility of being trapped himself by the Kitten and his thugs. There was time enough now to take the precaution of arming himself with a knowledge of the general plan of the place. He stepped hurriedly through the several rooms that made the depth of the house. He nodded in quick understanding. The “camp” was of uniform design. One took his choice as to which was the rear and which was the front. Here, where he stood now, a door opened on the verandah; and here, too, a rough staircase led to the upper story, or attic, as Manuel Santos had called it.
Well, the attic now! That window! He went quickly up the stairs. At the top, his flashlight disclosed a