The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard
suddenly to have possessed the underworld, he could at least have asked for no better or more thoroughly posted informant than the Wowzer. And now his curiosity was aroused. For an instant the idea that it might be Melinoff’s murder flashed across his mind; but he dismissed that idea at once. Murder was too trite a thing in the underworld to cause any widespread commotion!
“Hello, Wowzer!” he returned, as he shook his head. “No, I ain’t heard anything.”
“Youse can take it from me den,” said the Wowzer, “dat dere’s something doin’! Dey got her!”
“Got who?” enquired Jimmie Dale in a puzzled way.
The Wowzer leaned forward secretively.
“Silver Mag!” he said.
It seemed to Jimmie Dale as though the clutch of an icy hand was suddenly at his heart, as though the ground beneath his feet had grown suddenly unstable and that the Wowzer’s face, close to his own, was swirling around and around in swift and endless gyrations—but he was conscious, too, that he was master of himself. The muscles of his face twitched—but it was to express incredulity. His tongue carried the cigarette butt languidly back to the other corner of his mouth.
“Aw, go on!” said Jimmie Dale. “Try it on somebody else! Silver Mag croaked out the night they had that fire down there in the old tenement.”
“Yes, she did—nix!” scoffed the Wowzer, with a short laugh. “De same way dat blasted snitch of a Gray Seal did—eh? Say, Smarly, I’m handin’ it to youse straight. Dey caught her snoopin’ around one of de en-trays into Foo Sen’s half an hour ago. Say, de whole mob all de way up de line’s been tipped off. I’m givin’ youse de real thing. Youse must have been asleep somewhere, or youse’d have been wise before.”
“Sure—I believe you!” said Jimmie Dale earnestly. “Who caught her, Wowzer?”
“De Mole,” replied the Wowzer. “An’ he’s got her now over in his layout.”
It was a moment before Jimmie Dale spoke. There seemed to be a horrible, ghastly dryness in his mouth; there seemed to well up from his soul and overwhelm him a world of mocking and sardonic irony. The Mole! The Mole was the leader of the gang with which the Pippin was allied; it was at the Mole’s place that the Pippin usually lived; it was at the Mole’s place that the police would first institute their search for the Pippin—and five minutes ago, through Carruthers, he had unleashed the police! The Wowzer’s face seemed to be swirling around and around in front of him again. To get away—and think! He could have groaned, cried out aloud!
“Say, thanks, Wowzer, for piping me off!” said Jimmie Dale effusively.
“Oh, dat’s all right,” responded the Wowzer graciously. “Only keep it under yer hat except wid de crowd. De bulls ain’t on, an’ de Mole saw her first—see? Dere ain’t goin’ to be no buttin’ in till she gets hers! An’ de word’s out not to do any pushin’ an’ crowdin’ around de Mole’s fer front seats, ‘cause den de bulls ‘d get wise—savvy? Just leave it to de Mole—get me?”
“Sure—I get you,” said Jimmie Dale. “Well, so long, Wowzer—and thanks again.”
“S’long, Smarly,” replied the Wowzer.
Chapter XXI.
Silver Mag
It was not far to the Sanctuary, only halfway down the short block to the corner of the lane; but it seemed a distance interminable to Jimmie Dale. His brain was whirling in a chaotic turmoil; and the turmoil seemed barbed with a horrible fear that robbed him for the moment of his mental poise. It was as a man dazed, unconscious of the physical process by which he had arrived there, that he found himself standing in the Sanctuary, leaning like a man spent with effort against the door which, mechanically, he had closed behind him.
In hideous, baleful, jeering reiteration those words which she had written were racing through his brain. “I am very happy to-night, and I wanted to tell you so … happy to-night … happy to-night … happy to-night.” Happy to-night—what depth of irony! Happy to-night—and they had caught her—as the “way was clearing”——with the end of peril, with the end of the miserable, hunted existence she had been forced to lead just in sight! Silver Mag—the Tocsin! And he—he, who, too, had been happy to-night, he, who had known that mighty uplift upon him, he, who had dreamed that the morrow might bring life and love and sunshine—he was facing now a blackness of despair that he had never known before. Unwittingly, if such danger as she was in could be made the greater, he had made it so. If the underworld was the implacable enemy of Silver Mag, because Silver Mag was known as the ally in the old days of Larry the Bat, and known, therefore, as the ally of the Gray Seal; so, for the same reason exactly, the police were her implacable enemy! And, whether she fell into the hands of one or the other, the end ultimately differed only in the method by which her death would be accomplished; it was murder at the hands of the Mole and his gang; it was the death chair in Sing Sing as an accomplice of the Gray Seal at the hands of the police. “Death to the Gray Seal!”——that was the slogan of the underworld. “The Gray Seal dead or alive—but the Gray Seal”—that was the fiat of the police. And both held good for Silver Mag! With the Mole alone there might have been a chance—but now, he had launched the police as well against her, had sent them to the Mole’s, for that was the first place they would raid in their hunt for the Pippin.
The sweat beads started out on Jimmie Dale’s forehead. She had discarded the character of “Silver Mag” that night in the tenement fire when he had discarded the character of “Larry the Bat”—and “Silver Mag” had never been seen again until to-night. But he, Jimmie Dale, had appeared since then as Larry the Bat—and for some reason to-night she must have found it necessary, in working out her plans to their consummation no doubt, to have assumed again the character of Silver Mag—and she had been caught! But the Mole, it was absolutely certain, if left alone, would first exhaust every means within his power of forcing from Silver Mag the information that he would naturally believe she had concerning the whereabouts of the Gray Seal, before wreaking the vengeance of the underworld upon her; but equally the Mole, if interrupted by the police, would, in a sort of barbarous rivalry, if he, Jimmie Dale, knew the underworld at all, never surrender Silver Mag—alive. It would be the old cry, hideously worded, as he had heard it that night of the long ago in the attack on the old Sanctuary—the Gray Seal and Silver Mag were their “meat!” Something like a moan was wrung from Jimmie Dale’s lips. With the police out of it there would have been time; with the police a factor, granted even that the Mole gave her up, her death was certain.
The mind works swiftly. An eternity seemed bridged as he stood there against the door, his hands pressed to his temples—in reality scarcely a second had passed. Time! It was like a clarion call, that word, clearing his brain, lashing him into instant action. There was time, a small, pitifully inadequate margin, but yet a margin—the few minutes left before Carruthers would have the police hammering at the Mole’s door. There was a chance, still a chance to save her life. And if he succeeded in getting her away from the Mole’s—what then! It would be touch and go! What of the afterwards—a means of retreat—a temporary sanctuary? Yes, yes—he must think of everything!
He was working with mad speed now, stripping off his clothes, delving into that secret hiding place behind the movable section of the base-board near the door. And now the gas, with its poverty-stricken, meagre, yellow flame, illuminated the place dimly—and Jimmie Dale, with his make-up box and a cracked mirror, worked against the flying minutes. There was only one way to go—as Larry the Bat. It would give the Mole and the underworld nothing to work on afterwards if Larry the Bat went to the rescue of Silver Mag; and if he won through there would then still be “Smarlinghue’s” sanctuary, this place here, as a temporary refuge. The transformation to Larry the Bat stole an extra minute or two from the priceless store, but it was the only way—to risk it as Smarlinghue