The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard
was the sound of chairs being moved across the floor. Jimmie Dale slipped the black silk mask over his face, opened the door on his side of the bathroom cautiously, and, without a sound, stepped into the bathroom that was lighted now, of course, by the light streaming in through the partially opened door of Hamvert's room. The two were talking earnestly now in lower tones. Jimmie Dale only caught a word here and there—his faculties for the moment were concentrated on traversing the bathroom silently. He reached the farther door, crouched there, peered through the crack—and the old whimsical smile flickered across his lips again.
The Palais-Metropole was high class and exclusive, and the Weasel for once looked quite the gentleman, and, for all his sharp, ferret face, not entirely out of keeping with his surroundings—else he would never have got farther than the lobby. The other was a short, thickset, heavy-jowled man, with a great shock of sandy hair, and small black eyes that looked furtively out from overhanging, bushy eyebrows.
"Well," Hamvert was saying, "the details are your concern. What I want is results. We won't waste time. You're to be back here by daylight—only see that there's no come-back."
"Leave it to me!" returned the Weasel, with assurance. "How's dere goin' ter be any come-back? Mittel keeps it in his safe, don't he? Well, gentlemen's houses has been robbed before—an' dis job'll be a good one. De geographfy stunt youse wants gets pinched wid de rest, dat's all. It disappears—see? Who's ter know youse gets yer claws on it? It's just lost in de shuffle."
"Right!" agreed Hamvert briskly—and from his inside pocket produced a package of crisp new bills, yellow-backs, and evidently of large denominations. "Half down and half on delivery—that's our deal."
"Dat's wot!" assented the Weasel curtly.
Hamvert began to count the bills.
Jimmie Dale's hand stole into his pocket, and came out with his handkerchief and the thin metal insignia case. From the latter, with its little pair of tweezers, he took out one of the adhesive gray seals. His eyes warily on the two men, he dropped the seal on his handkerchief, restored the thin metal case to his pocket—and in its stead the blue-black ugly muzzle of his automatic peeped from between his fingers.
"Five thousand down," said Hamvert, pushing a pile of notes across the table, and tucking the remainder back into his pocket; "and the other five's here for you when you get back with the map. Ordinarily, I wouldn't pay a penny in advance, but since you want it that way and the map's no good to you while the rest of the long green is, I—" He swallowed his words with a startled gulp, clutched hastily at the money on the table, and began to struggle up from his chair to his feet.
With a swift, noiseless side-step through the open door, Jimmie Dale was standing in the room.
Jimmie Dale's tones were conversational. "Don't get up," said Jimmie Dale coolly. "And take your hand off that money!"
The Weasel, whose back had been to the door, squirmed around in his chair—and in his turn stared into the muzzle of Jimmie Dale's revolver, while his jaw dropped and sagged.
"Good-evening, Weasel," observed Jimmie Dale casually. "I seem to be in luck to-night. I got into that room next door, but an empty room is slim picking. And then it seemed to me I heard some one in here mention five thousand dollars twice, which makes ten thousand, and which happens to be just exactly the sum I need at the present moment—if I can't get any more! I haven't the honour of your wealthy friend's acquaintance, but I am really charmed to meet him. You—er—understand, both of you, that the slightest sound might prove extremely embarrassing."
Hamvert's face was white, and he stirred uneasily in his chair; but into the Weasel's face, the first shock of surprised dismay past, came a dull, angry red, and into the eyes a vicious gleam—and suddenly he laughed shortly.
"Why, youse damned fool," jeered the Weasel, "d'youse t'ink youse can get away wid dat! Say, take it from me, youse are a piker! Say, youse make me tired. Wot d'youse t'ink youse are? D'youse t'ink dis is a tee-ayter, an' dat youse are a cheap-skate actor strollin' acrost de stage? Aw, beat it, youse make me sick! Why, say, youse pinch dat money, an' youse have got de same chanst of gettin' outer dis hotel as a guy has of breakin' outer Sing Sing! By de time youse gets five feet from de door of dis room we has de whole works on yer neck."
"Do you think so, Weasel?" inquired Jimmie Dale politely. He carried his handkerchief to his mouth to cloak a cough—and his tongue touched the adhesive side of the little diamond-shaped gray seal. Hand and handkerchief came back to the table, and Jimmie Dale leaned his weight carelessly upon it, while the automatic in his right hand still covered the two men. "Do you think so, Weasel?" he repeated softly. "Well, perhaps you are right; and yet; somehow, I am inclined to disagree with you. Let me see, Weasel—it was Tuesday night, two nights ago; wasn't it, that a trifling break in Maiden Lane at Thorold and Sons disturbed the police? It was a three-year job for even a first offender, ten for one already on nodding terms with the police and fifteen to twenty for—well, say, for a man like you, Weasel—IF HE WERE CAUGHT! Am I making myself quite plain?"
The colour in the Weasel's cheeks faded a little—his eyes were holding in sudden fascination upon Jimmie Dale.
"I see that I am," observed Jimmie Dale pleasantly. "I said, 'if he were caught,' you will remember. I am going to leave this room in a moment, Weasel, and leave it entirely to your discretion as to whether you will think it wise or not to stir from that chair for ten minutes after I shut the door. And now"—Jimmie Dale nonchalantly replaced his handkerchief in his pocket, nonchalantly followed it with the banknotes which he picked up from the table—and smiled.
With a gasp, both men had strained forward, and were staring, wild-eyed, at the gray seal stuck between them on the tabletop.
"The Gray Seal!" whispered the Weasel, and his tongue circled his lips.
Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders.
"That WAS a bit theatrical, Weasel," he said apologetically; "and yet not wholly unnecessary. You will recall Stangeist, The Mope, Australian Ike, and Clarie Deane, and can draw your own inference as to what might happen in the Thorold affair if you should be so ill-advised as to force my hand. Permit me"—the slim, deft fingers, like a streak of lightning, were inside Hamvert's coat pocket and out again with the remainder of the banknotes—and Jimmie Dale was backing for the door—not the door of the bathroom by which he had entered, but the door of the room itself that opened on the corridor. There he stopped, and his hand swept around behind his back and turned the key in the locked door. He nodded at the two men, whose faces were working with incongruously mingled expressions of impotent rage, bewilderment, fear, and fury—and opened the door a little. "Ten minutes, Weasel," he said gently. "I trust you will not have to use heroic measures to restrain your friend for that length of time, though if it is necessary I should advise you for your own sake to resort almost—to murder. I wish you good evening, gentlemen."
The door opened farther; Jimmie Dale, still facing inward, slipped between it and the jamb, whipped the mask from his face, closed the door softly, stepped briskly but without any appearance of haste along the corridor to the stairs, descended the stairs, mingled with a crowd in the lobby for an instant, walked, seemingly a part of it, with a group of ladies and gentlemen down the hall to the side entrance, passed out—and a moment later, after drawing on a linen dust coat which he took from under the seat, and exchanging his hat for a tweed cap, the car glided from the curb and was lost in a press of traffic around the corner.
Jimmie Dale laughed a little harshly to himself. So far, so good—but the game was not ended yet for all the crackle of the crisp notes in his pocket. There was still the map, still the robbery at Mittel's house—the ten-thousand-dollar "theft" would not in any way change that, and it was a question of time now to forestall any move the Weasel might make.
Through the city Jimmie Dale alternately dodged, spurted, and dragged his way, fuming with impatience; but once out on the country roads and headed toward New Rochelle, the big machine, speed limits thrown to the winds, roared through the night—a gray streak of road jumping under the powerful lamps; a village, a town, a cluster of lights flashing by him, the steady purr of his sixty-horse-power engines; the gray thread of open road again.
It