The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard
lips.
“Mark!” he whispered. “Marie—at last!”
Came the rip and tear and rend of wood, the thud of a falling door from the front of the shed, the rush of feet—but Jimmie Dale was in the boat now, and the packing case above was swung back into place.
“Right ahead, Jimmie!” she breathed. “The planks at the end of the pier swing aside—yes, there—no, a little to the right—yes!”
The boat shot out into the river—farther out—and the pier and shed merged into the shadows of the shore line and were lost.
And then Jimmie Dale let the oars swing loose. She was crouched in the bottom of the boat close beside him. He bent his head until his lips touched her hair, and lower still until his lips touched hers. And a long time passed. And the boat drifted on. And he drew her closer into his arms, and held her there. She was safe now, safe for always—and the road of fear lay behind. And into the night there seemed to come a great quiet, and a great joy, and a great thankfulness, and a wondrous peace.
And the boat drifted on.
And neither spoke—for they were going home.
THE END
JIMMIE DALE AND THE PHANTOM CLUE
VI. The Man with the Rubber-tipped Cane
VIII. Jimmie Dale Pays a Visit
IX. The House with the Broken Stairs
XV. Behind the Doors of the Underworld
I.
The Tocsin
The boat drifted on. In the distance a ferry churned its way across the river. From the farther shore the myriad lights of Brooklyn flung a soft glow into the sky, like a canopy between the city and the night.
And in the boat two figures merged as one in the darkness.
“Marie!” Jimmie Dale whispered. His arms tightened about her. “Marie!”
She made answer by a little pressure of her hand.
He looked behind him—in toward the nearer shore. Somewhere back there, somewhere amongst those irregular outlines that thrust out points of deeper darkness into the black, mirror-like surface of the water, was the old pier from beneath which they had escaped, and, above the pier, the shed where but a little while ago—or was it hours, or a lifetime ago?—Clarke, alias Wizard Marre, alias Hunchback Joe, had played his last card, and lost.
A grim smile touched Jimmie Dale's lips. Inside that shed the secret service men had found their quarry—dead. They were there now. In their hands lay the evidence that solved the murder of Jathan Lane; and in their hands, too, was the murderer himself—only Wizard Marre had taken the easier way, and was dead.
Jimmie Dale's smile softened. Inside that shed at the present moment there was commotion enough and light enough; but he could hear nothing, and he could see no light. The Tocsin here and himself were too far away. Too far away! Yes, that was it—at last! Too far away from the old life—forever. The road of fear lay behind them, and she was free, free to come out into the sunlight again. She had said so herself in that letter he had read at the club only a few hours ago. Free! Life lay before them now—and love. With the death of Wizard Marre there could now be an end of his, Jimmie Dale's, own rôles of the Gray Seal, and Larry the Bat, and Smarlinghue, and—no, not hers as the Tocsin, that could never change or terminate, for she would always be the Tocsin to him.
The Tocsin! Memory came surging upon him. That night in the long ago, before he had ever seen her, when he had known her only as the woman who addressed him as “Dear Philanthropic Crook” in those mysterious notes of hers that, supplying the data on which he had acted, the data for those “crimes,” where no crime save that of rendering abortive the crimes