The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard
the Gray Seal was solved! It was Jimmie Dale, Jimmie Dale, Jimmie, Dale, the millionaire, the lion of society—and there was ignominy for an honoured name, and shame and disaster and convict stripes and sullen penitentiary walls—or death! A felon's death—the chair!
He was running now, his hands clenched at his sides; his mind, working subconsciously, urging him onward in a blind, as yet unrealised, objectless way. And then gradually impulse gave way to calmer reason, and he slowed his pace to a quick, less noticeable walk. The Wowzer! That was it! There was yet a chance—the Wowzer! A merciless rage, cold, deadly, settled upon him. It was the Wowzer who had stolen his pocketbook, and with it the letter. There could be no doubt of that. Well, there would be a reckoning at least before the end!
He was in a downtown subway train now—the roar in his ears in consonance, it seemed, with the turmoil in his brain. But now, too, he was Jimmie Dale again; and, apart from the slightly outthrust jaw, the tight-closed lips, impassive, debonair, composed.
There was yet a chance. As Larry the Bat he knew every den and lair below the dead line, and he knew, too, the Wowzer's favourite haunts. There was yet a chance, only one in a thousand, it was true, almost too pitiful to be depended upon—but yet a chance. The Wowzer had probably not worked alone, and he and his pal, or pals, would certainly not remain uptown either to examine or divide their spoils—they would wait until they were safe somewhere in one of their hell holes on the East Side. If he could find the Wowzer, reach the man BEFORE THE LETTER WAS OPENED—Jimmie Dale's lips grew tighter. THAT was the chance! It he failed in that—Jimmie Dale's lips drooped downward in grim curves at the corners. A chance! Already the Wowzer had at least a half hour's lead, and, worse still, there was no telling which one of a dozen places the man might have chosen to retreat to with his loot.
Time passed. His mind obsessed, Jimmie Dale's physical acts were almost wholly mechanical. It was perhaps fifteen minutes since he had discovered the loss of the letter, and he was walking now through the heart of the Bowery. Exactly how he had got there he could not have told; he had only a vague realisation that, following an intuitive sense of direction, he had lost not a second of time in making his way downtown.
And now he found himself hesitating at the corner of a cross street. Two blocks east was that dark, narrow alleyway, that side door that made the entrance to the Sanctuary. It would be safer, a hundred times safer, to go there, change his clothes and his personality, and emerge again as Larry the Bat—infinitely safer in that role to explore the dens of the underworld, many of them indeed unknown and undreamed of by the police themselves, than to trust himself there in well-cut, fashionable tweeds—but that would take time. Time! When, with every second, the one chance he had, desperate as that already was, was slipping away from him. No; what was apparently the greater risk at least held out the only hope.
He went on again—his brain incessantly at work. At the worst, there was one mitigating factor in it all. He had no need to think of her. Whatever the ruin and disaster that faced him in the next few hours, she in any case was safe. There was no clew to HER identity in the letter; and where he, for months on end, with even more to work upon, had failed at every turn to trace her, there was little fear that any one else would have any better success. She was safe. As for himself—that was different. The Gray Seal would be referred to in the letter, there would be the outline, the data for the "crime" she had planned for that night; and the letter, though unaddressed, being found in his pocketbook, where cards and notes and a dozen different things among its contents proclaimed him Jimmie Dale, needed no further evidence as to its ownership nor the identity of the Gray Seal.
Jimmie Dale's fingers crept inside his vest and fumbled there for a moment—and a diamond stud, extracted from his shirt front, glistened sportively in the necktie that was now tucked jauntily in at one side of his shirt bosom. He had reached the Blue Dragon, one of Wowzer's usual hang outs, and, swerving from the sidewalk, entered the place. There was wild tumult within—a constant storm of applause, derision, and hilarity that was hurled from the tables around the room at the turkey-trotting, tango-writhing couples on the somewhat restricted space of polished hardwood flooring in the centre. Jimmie Dale swaggered down the room, a cigar tilted up at an angle between his teeth, his soft felt hat a little rakishly on one side of his head and well over his nose.
At the end of the room, at the bar, Jimmie Dale leaned toward the barkeeper and talked out of the corner of his mouth. There were private rooms upstairs, and he jerked his head surreptitiously ceilingward.
"Say, is de Wowzer up dere?" he inquired in a cautious whisper.
The man behind the bar, well known to Jimmie Dale as one of the Wowzer's particular pals, favoured him with a blank stare.
"Never heard of de guy!" he announced brusquely. "Wot's yours?"
"Gimme a mug of suds," said Jimmie Dale, reaching for a match. He puffed at his cigar, blew out the match, and, after a moment, flung the charred end away—but on his hand, as, palm outward, he raised it to take his glass, the match had traced a small black cross.
The barkeeper put down the beer he had just drawn, wiped his hand hurriedly, and with sudden enthusiasm thrust it across the bar.
"Glad to know youse, cull!" he exclaimed. "Wot's de lay?"
Jimmie Dale smiled.
"Nix!" said Jimmie Dale. "I just blew in from Chicago. Used to know de Wowzer dere. He said dis place was on de level, an' I could always find him here, dat's all."
"Sure, youse can!" returned the barkeeper heartily. "Only he ain't here now. He beat it about fifteen minutes ago, him an' Dago Jim. I guess youse'll find him at Chang's, I heard him an' Dago say dey was goin' dere. Know de place?"
Jimmie Dale shook his head.
"I ain't much wise to New York," he explained.
"Aw, dat's easy," whispered the barkeeper. "Go down to Chatham Square, an' den any guy'll show youse Chang Foo's." He winked confidentially. "I guess youse won't bump yer head none gettin' around inside."
Jimmie Dale nodded, grinned back, emptied his glass, and dug for a coin.
"Forget it!" observed the barkeeper cordially. "Dis is on me. Any friend of de Wowzer's gets de glad hand here any time."
"T'anks!" said Jimmie Dale gratefully, as he turned away. "So long, then—see youse later."
Chang Foo's! Jimmie Dale's face set even a little harder than it had before, as he swung on again down the Bowery. Yes; he knew Chang Foo's—too well. Underground Chinatown—where a man's life was worth the price of an opium pill—or less! Mechanically his hand slipped into his pocket and closed over the automatic that nestled there. Once in—where he had to go—and the chances were even, just even, that was all, that he would ever get out. Again he was tempted to return to the Sanctuary and make the attempt as Larry the Bat. Larry the Bat was well enough known to enter Chang Foo's unquestioned, and—but again he shook his head and went on. There was not time. The Wowzer and his pal—it was Dago Jim it seemed—had evidently been drinking and loitering their way downtown from the theatre, and he had gained that much on them; but by now they would be smugly tucked away somewhere in that maze of dens below the ground, and at that moment probably were gloating over the biggest night's haul they had ever made in their lives!
And if they were! What then? Once they knew the contents of that letter—what then? Buy them off for a larger amount than the many thousands offered for the capture of the Gray Seal? Jimmie Dale gritted his teeth. That meant blackmail from them all his life, an intolerable existence, impossible, a hell on earth—the slave, at the beck and call of two of the worst criminals in New York! The moisture oozed again to Jimmie Dale's forehead. God, if he could get that letter before it was opened—before they KNEW! If he could only get the chance to fight for it—against ANY odds! Life! Life was a pitiful consideration against the alternative that faced him now!
From the Blue Dragon to Chang Foo's was not far; and Jimmie Dale covered the distance in well under five minutes. Chang Foo's was just a tea merchant's shop, innocuous and innocent enough in its appearance, blandly so indeed, and that was all—outwardly; but Jimmie Dale, as he reached his destination, experienced the first sensation of uplift