The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard
dey got him,” he said miserably. “Dey got him cold. Dat's wot makes me t'ink now dat Connie pulled de job all right, 'cause dey're wise to him.”
“Yes,” said Jimmie Dale; “but who was it that laid you out?”
“I ain't dead sure,” said Pedler Joe. “I woke up last night in bed wid a pair of hands around my t'roat, chokin' me. It was pretty dark in the room. Dere was two of 'em, an' I wasn't sure, an' I ain't sure now, but I thought one of 'em, the little fellow, was Bunty Myers, who used to travel wid Gentleman Laroque's gang.”
Gentleman Laroque! The Phantom! Jimmie Dale was fumbling aimlessly with the brim of his battered old felt hat. Mother Margot, Hip Foo's, the Phantom—and Connie Pfeffer, alias the Mole! Was this what was at the bottom of the Tocsin's note? Intuitively he was instantly sure of it. It dovetailed perfectly. The Phantom was not likely to be playing two games to-night, therefore——
Pedler Joe was whispering hoarsely again:
“Youse're on de level, Smarly, an' on de inside everywhere. I—I thought mabbe youse'd help me. An' if youse heard anythin' or saw anythin' youse'd tip me off.”
Jimmie Dale held out his hand.
“Sure, I will, Joe!” he said. He leaned closer to the other. “You keep your map closed about having spoken to me—see? I know Bunty Myers. I'll do my best for you.”
“T'anks, Smarly,” said the old man gratefully. “I knew youse would.”
“Sure!” said Jimmie Dale again. “Well, that goes—and so-long, Joe.”
He turned and slouched on again down the street. His face was impassive, but his hands in his pockets were clenched now. So the Phantom's hand was in this, too, was it? And the old broken figure with the tray of collar buttons slung around his neck was one of the victims! It brought the hot anger surging upon him. There was something that struck deep to the root of his sympathy, something pathetic in the queer, strange loyalty, the curious love that old Pedler Joe, himself a thief by profession in the days gone by, held for the gutter snipe that he had tried—and failed—to bring up in the paths of virtue! The Phantom! Well, perhaps, to-night, if at Hip Foo's there was——
Jimmie Dale turned the corner, and halted suddenly in a dazed, stunned way. As at the door of Charlie Wong's back there on the other street, a wagon was drawn up here at the curb in front of Hip Foo's, and a little crowd was disembarking from the wagon and was being marshalled into line, but it was not a gape-wagon that stood at Hip Foo's front door; it was a wagon of quite a very different sort—a police van. And then in an instant, his wits at work again after the first shock of surprise, Jimmie Dale slouched back out of sight around the corner again. Here he broke into a run. A raid! Hip Foo's was being raided.
Jimmie Dale ran on at top speed. His chances were just even—that was all. There were two exits a block apart. He could not watch both at once. Which one would Mother Margot use? The police would not get her, nor any of those with her. The police would gather in a few Chinese attendants who would be as phlegmatic and informative as so many cows; the police would collect a little opium-smoking paraphernalia, and Hip Foo would be fined—but that would be all. Before the first blue-coat crossed the threshold of the entrance, the exodus through the sub-cellars would have begun.
And now Jimmie Dale drew into the shadows at the mouth of a dark and narrow lane. It was the toss of a coin. This one or the other! Yes—here they came now, like rats running from a sinking ship. He crouched against the wall unnoticed, or if noticed accepted as one of their own ilk, and watched them. Man after man, woman after woman, passed out into the street. The procession dwindled to a few belated stragglers—and ceased. He waited a minute longer. There was no one else.
Tight-lipped then, Jimmie Dale turned away. Mother Margot had not been amongst them. He had lost the toss, that was all. She had gone out the other way.
He walked rapidly now. There was only one thing left to do, one way left open to him. It would not be very difficult to find Mother Margot—at her home—in those rooms from which, on that first night, the Phantom had so mysteriously disappeared. He had even promised her a visit!
He smiled a little grimly. His promise so far had been unfulfilled. Not because the Tocsin had warned him that the place was a trap, and even Mother Margot, evidently terror-stricken that night at Mrs. Kinsey's, had done likewise; but because, prior to that warning and prior to Mother Margot's occupancy of the rooms, he had already searched the premises and found nothing; and because, until now, it had not seemed that there was anything to be gained by a move which might result in warning the Phantom that he, Jimmie Dale, had been in communication with Mother Margot.
But to-night there was no choice but to go there—unless perhaps she had gone back to her pushcart in Thompson Street. He would try that first, and if she were there call her to the phone as he always did, and arrange a meeting somewhere under conditions such that she would discover no more of his actual identity than that of the man in the mask whom she already knew as the Gray Seal.
He was hurrying now. Time, as measured in minutes, might or might not be precious. He did not know. What had taken place at Hip Foo's, whether for instance the rendezvous that Mother Margot had presumably had there had been prematurely interrupted by the raid, or what were the details of the scheme the Phantom was hatching, he did not know. But in any case, one thing was vital, not only to himself but to the Tocsin, vital to all he hoped for—that the character of Smarlinghue should not be endangered. And this, not only because it was in itself the key that opened for him the innermost portals of the underworld, that again and again had alone stood between him and recognition as the Gray Seal, but because to-night he must meet Mother Margot, not as Smarlinghue, but in the only character that she would recognise, and, yes—the grim smile came again—obey. And so, first of all, must come the Sanctuary; after that—his shoulders under the ragged coat lifted in a queer, almost fatalistic little shrug—who knew!
VIII.
Jimmie Dale Pays a Visit
It was Smarlinghue, the drug-wrecked artist, who, ten minutes later, by the street entrance, inviting even the nods of recognition from some of the loungers round about, entered the dingy tenement and scuffled along the musty, dark, unlighted hallway to the squalid rear room on the ground floor—the Sanctuary; it was Jimmie Dale, in dinner jacket, the millionaire clubman, who stealthily gained the street again by way of the old French window, the refuse-strewn courtyard, the board in the high fence that swung aside at a touch, and finally the lane.
Another ten minutes, and he was sauntering nonchalantly along a narrow crowded street, whose curbs were lined with pushcarts, whose sidewalks were thronged with shawled women and coatless, swarthy men, whose gutters were the playground for almost naked children. Thompson Street was in the heart of New York, just off West Broadway, not far from the homes of the old-time aristocracy of Washington Square, but it was also in a foreign land!
But Mother Margot with her pushcart was not here to-night. He had hardly expected she would be. His face was set as he made his way back now to the Bowery, and from there headed still deeper into the East Side. There was nothing for it now but Mother Margot's rooms.
A few blocks farther brought him within sight of the tenement that was his destination, and his pace slowed as he passed the narrow alleyway over which the police had kept abortive guard on the night they had pounded at Isaac Shiftel's door inside. There was a light in the window, the same window through which he and the Phantom, alias Isaac Shiftel, or perhaps better on that occasion, alias Gentleman Laroque, had first had warning that the police were without. Mother Margot, then, had presumably returned home.
He was opposite the tenement door now. He halted abruptly, ostensibly to watch the efforts of a man across the road who was attempting to start an old car that was back-firing viciously, in reality to allow some near-by pedestrians to pass by—and then suddenly Jimmie Dale had disappeared from