The Adventures of Jimmie Dale

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THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE

by Frank L. Packard




CONTENTS


PART ONE: THE MAN IN THE CASE


I. THE GRAY SEAL

II. BY PROXY

III. THE MOTHER LODE

IV. THE COUNTERFEIT FIVE

V. THE AFFAIR OF THE PUSHCART MAN

VI. DEVIL'S WORK

VII. THE THIEF

VIII. THE MAN HIGHER UP

IX. TWO CROOKS AND A KNAVE

X. THE ALIBI

XI. THE STOOL-PIGEON



PART TWO: THE WOMAN IN THE CASE


I. BELOW THE DEAD LINE

II. THE CALL TO ARMS

III. THE CRIME CLUB

IV. THE INNOCENT BYSTANDER

V. ON GUARD

VI. THE TRAP

VII. THE "HOUR"

VIII. THE TOCSIN

IX. THE TOCSIN'S STORY

X. SILVER MAG

XI. THE MAGPIE

XII. JOHN JOHANSSON--FOUR-TWO-EIGHT

XIII. THE ONLY WAY

XIV. OUT OF THE DARKNESS

XV. RETRIBUTION

XVI. "DEATH TO THE GRAY SEAL!"





PART ONE: THE MAN IN THE CASE



CHAPTER I

THE GRAY SEAL


Among New York's fashionable and ultra-exclusive clubs, the St. James
stood an acknowledged leader--more men, perhaps, cast an envious eye at
its portals, of modest and unassuming taste, as they passed by on Fifth
Avenue, than they did at any other club upon the long list that the city
boasts. True, there were more expensive clubs upon whose membership roll
scintillated more stars of New York's social set, but the St. James was
distinctive. It guaranteed a man, so to speak--that is, it guaranteed a
man to be innately a gentleman. It required money, it is true, to keep
up one's membership, but there were many members who were not wealthy,
as wealth is measured nowadays--there were many, even, who were pressed
sometimes to meet their dues and their house accounts, but the accounts
were invariably promptly paid. No man, once in, could ever afford, or
ever had the desire, to resign from the St. James Club. Its membership
was cosmopolitan; men of every walk in life passed in and out of
its doors, professional men and business men, physicians, artists,
merchants, authors, engineers, each stamped with the "hall mark" of
the St. James, an innate gentleman. To receive a two weeks' out-of-town
visitor's card to the St. James was something to speak about, and men
from Chicago, St. Louis, or San Francisco spoke of it with a sort of
holier-than-thou air to fellow members of their own exclusive clubs, at
home again.

Is there any doubt that Jimmie Dale was a gentleman--an INNATE
gentleman? Jimmie Dale's father had been a member of the St. James
Club, and one of the largest safe manufacturers of the United States, a
prosperous, wealthy man, and at Jimmie Dale's birth he had proposed his
son's name for membership. It took some time to get into the St. James;
there was a long waiting list that neither money, influence, nor pull
could alter by so much as one iota. Men proposed their sons' names for
membership when they were born as religiously as they entered them upon
the city's birth register. At twenty-one Jimmie Dale was elected to
membership; and, incidentally, that same year, graduated from Harvard.
It was Mr. Dale's desire that his son should enter the business and
learn it from the ground up, and Jimmie Dale, for four years thereafter,
had followed his father's wishes. Then his father died. Jimmie Dale had
leanings toward more artistic pursuits than business. He was credited
with sketching a little, writing a little; and he was credited with
having received a very snug amount from the combine to which he sold out
his safe-manufacturing interests. He lived a bachelor life--his mother
had been dead many years--in the house that his father had left him on
Riverside Drive, kept a car or two and enough servants to run his
menage smoothly, and serve a dinner exquisitely when he felt hospitably
inclined.

Could there be any doubt that Jimmie Dale was innately a gentleman?

It was evening, and Jimmie Dale sat at a small table in the corner of
the St. James Club dining room. Opposite him sat Herman Carruthers,
a young man of his own age, about twenty-six, a leading figure in the
newspaper world, whose rise from reporter to managing editor of the
morning NEWS-ARGUS within the short space of a few years had been almost
meteoric.

They were at coffee and cigars, and Jimmie Dale was leaning back in his
chair, his dark eyes fixed interestedly on his guest.

Carruthers, intently engaged in trimming his cigar ash on the edge of
the Limoges china saucer of his coffee set, looked up with an abrupt
laugh.

"No; I wouldn't care to go on record as being an advocate of crime," he
said whimsically; "that would never do. But I don't mind admitting quite
privately that it's been a positive regret to me that he has gone."

"Made too good 'copy' to lose, I suppose?" suggested Jimmie Dale
quizzically. "Too bad, too, after working up a theatrical name like that
for him--the Gray Seal--rather unique! Who stuck that on him--you?"

Carruthers laughed--then, grown serious, leaned toward Jimmie Dale.

"You don't mean to say, Jimmie, that you don't know about that, do you?"
he asked incredulously. "Why, up to a year ago the papers were full of
him."

"I never read your beastly agony columns," said Jimmie Dale, with a
cheery grin.

"Well," said Carruthers, "you must have skipped everything but the stock
reports then."

"Granted," said Jimmie Dale. "So go on, Carruthers, and tell me about
him--I dare say I may have heard of him, since you are so distressed
about it, but my memory isn't good enough to contradict anything you may
have to say about the estimable gentleman, so you're safe."

Carruthers reverted to the Limoges saucer and the tip of his cigar.

"He was the most puzzling, bewildering, delightful crook in the annals
of crime," said Carruthers reminiscently, after a moment's silence.
"Jimmie, he was the king-pin of them all. Clever isn't the word for him,
or dare-devil isn't either. I used to think sometimes his motive was
more than half for the pure deviltry of it, to laugh at the police and
pull the noses of the rest of us that were after him. I used to dream
nights about those confounded gray seals of his--that's where he got
his name; he left every job he ever did with a little gray paper affair,
fashioned diamond-shaped, stuck somewhere where it would be the first
thing your eyes would light upon when you reached the scene, and--"

"Don't go so fast," smiled Jimmie Dale. "I don't quite get the
connection. What did you have to do with this--er--Gray Seal fellow?
Where do you come in?"

"I? I had a good deal to do with him," said Carruthers grimly. "I was a
reporter when he first broke loose, and the ambition of my life, after
I began really to appreciate what he was, was to get him--and I nearly
did, half a dozen times, only--"

"Only you never quite did, eh?" cut in Jimmie Dale slyly. "How near did
you get, old man? Come on, now, no bluffing; did the Gray Seal ever even
recognise you as a factor in the hare-and-hound game?"

"You're flicking on the raw, Jimmie," Carruthers answered, with a wry
grimace. "He knew me, all right, confound him! He favoured me with
several sarcastic notes--I'll show 'em to you some day--explaining
how I'd fallen down and how I could have got him if I'd done something
else." Carruthers' fist came suddenly down on the table. "And I would
have got him, too, if he had lived."

"Lived!" ejaculated Jimmie Dale. "He's dead, then?"

"Yes," averted Carruthers; "he's dead."

"H'm!" said Jimmie Dale facetiously. "I hope the size of the wreath you
sent was an adequate tribute of your appreciation."

"I never sent any wreath," returned Carruthers, "for the very simple
reason that I didn't know where to send it, or when he died. I said he
was dead because for over a year now he hasn't lifted a finger."

"Rotten poor evidence, even for a newspaper," commented Jimmie Dale.
"Why not give him credit for having, say--reformed?"

Carruthers shook his head. "You don't get it at all, Jimmie," he said
earnestly. "The Gray Seal wasn't an ordinary crook--he was a classic.
He was an artist, and the art of the thing was in his blood. A man like
that could no more stop than he could stop breathing--and live. He's
dead; there's nothing to it but that--he's dead. I'd bet a year's salary
on it."

"Another good man gone wrong, then," said Jimmie Dale capriciously. "I
suppose, though, that at least you discovered the 'woman in the case'?"

Carruthers looked up quickly, a little startled; then laughed shortly.

"What's the matter?" inquired Jimmie Dale.

"Nothing," said Carruthers. "You kind of got me for a moment, that's
all. That's the way those infernal notes from the Gray Seal used to
end up: 'Find the lady, old chap; and you'll get me.' He had a damned
patronising familiarity that would make you squirm."

"Poor old Carruthers!" grinned Jimmie Dale. "You did take it to heart,
didn't you?"

"I'd have sold my soul to get him--and so would you, if you had been in
my boots," said Carruthers, biting nervously at the end of his cigar.

"And been sorry for it afterward," supplied Jimmie Dale.

"Yes, by Jove, you're right!" admitted Carruthers, "I suppose I should.
I actually got to love the fellow--it was the GAME, really, that I
wanted to beat."

"Well, and how about this woman? Keep on the straight and narrow path,
old man," prodded Jimmie Dale.

"The woman?" Carruthers smiled. "Nothing doing! I don't believe there
was one--he wouldn't have been likely to egg the police and reporters on
to finding her if there had been, would he? It was a blind, of course.
He worked alone, absolutely alone. That's the secret of his success,
according to my way of thinking. There was never so much as an
indication that he had had an accomplice in anything he ever did."

Jimmie Dale's eyes travelled around the club's homelike, perfectly
appointed room. He nodded to a fellow member here and there, then his
eyes rested musingly on his guest again.

Carruthers was staring thoughtfully at his coffee cup.

"He was the prince of crooks and the father of originality," announced
Carruthers abruptly, following the pause that had ensued. "Half the time
there wasn't any more getting at the motive for the curious things he
did, than there was getting at the Gray Seal himself."

"Carruthers," said Jimmy Dale, with a quick little nod of approval,
"you're positively interesting to-night. But, so far, you've been kind
of scouting around the outside edges without getting into the thick of
it. Let's have some of your experiences with the Gray Seal in detail;
they ought to make ripping fine yarns."

"Not to-night, Jimmie," said Carruthers; "it would take too long." He
pulled out his watch mechanically as he spoke, glanced at it--and pushed
back his chair. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed. "It's nearly half-past
nine. I'd no idea we had lingered so long over dinner. I'll have to
hurry; we're a morning paper, you know, Jimmie."

"What! Really! Is it as late as that." Jimmie Dale rose from his chair
as Carruthers stood up. "Well, if you must--"

"I must," said Carruthers, with a laugh.

"All right, O slave." Jimmie Dale laughed back--and slipped his hand,
a trick of their old college days together, through Carruthers' arm as
they left the room.

He accompanied Carruthers downstairs to the door of the club, and saw
his guest into a taxi; then he returned inside, sauntered through the
billiard room, and from there into one of the cardrooms, where, pressed
into a game, he played several rubbers of bridge before going home.

It was, therefore, well on toward midnight when Jimmie Dale arrived at
his house on Riverside Drive, and was admitted by an elderly manservant.

"Hello, Jason," said Jimmie Dale pleasantly. "You still up!"

"Yes, sir," replied Jason, who had been valet to Jimmie Dale's father
before him. "I was going to bed, sir, at about ten o'clock, when a
messenger came with a letter. Begging your pardon, sir, a young lady,
and--"

"Jason"--Jimmie Dale flung out the interruption, sudden, quick,
imperative--"what did she look like?"

"Why--why, I don't exactly know as I could describe her, sir," stammered
Jason, taken aback. "Very ladylike, sir, in her dress and appearance,
and what I would call, sir, a beautiful face."

"Hair and eyes--what color?" demanded Jimmie Dale crisply. "Nose, lips,
chin--what shape?"

"Why, sir," gasped Jason, staring at his master, "I--I don't rightly
know. I wouldn't call her fair or dark, something between. I didn't take
particular notice, and it wasn't overlight outside the door."

"It's too bad you weren't a younger man, Jason," commented Jimmie Dale,
with a curious tinge of bitterness in his voice. "I'd have given a
year's income for your opportunity to-night, Jason."

"Yes, sir," said Jason helplessly.

"Well, go on," prompted Jimmie Dale. "You told her I wasn't home, and
she said she knew it, didn't she? And she left the letter that I was on
no account to miss receiving when I got back, though there was no need
of telephoning me to the club--when I returned would do, but it was
imperative that I should have it then--eh?"

"Good Lord, sir!" ejaculated Jason, his jaw dropped, "that's exactly what
she did say."

"Jason," said Jimmie Dale grimly, "listen to me. If ever she comes here
again, inveigle her in. If you can't inveigle her, use force; capture
her, pull her in, do anything--do anything, do you hear? Only don't let
her get away from you until I've come."

Jason gazed at his master as though the other had lost his reason.

"Use force, sir?" he repeated weakly--and shook his head. "You--you
can't mean that, sir."

"Can't I?" inquired Jimmie Dale, with a mirthless smile. "I mean every
word of it, Jason--and if I thought there was the slightest chance of
her giving you the opportunity, I'd be more imperative still. As it
is--where's the letter?"

"On the table in your studio, sir," said Jason, mechanically.

Jimmie Dale started toward the stairs--then turned and came back to
where Jason, still shaking his head heavily, had been gazing anxiously
after his master. Jimmie Dale laid his hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Jason," he said kindly, with a swift change of mood, "you've been a
long time in the family--first with father, and now with me. You'd do a
good deal for me, wouldn't you?"

"I'd do anything in the world for you, Master Jim," said the old man
earnestly.

"Well, then, remember this," said Jimmie Dale slowly, looking into the
other's eyes, "remember this--keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.
It's my fault. I should have warned you long ago, but I never dreamed
that she would ever come here herself. There have been times when it was
practically a matter of life and death to me to know who that woman is
that you saw to-night. That's all, Jason. Now go to bed."

"Master Jim," said the old man simply, "thank you, sir, thank you for
trusting me. I've dandled you on my knee when you were a baby, Master
Jim. I don't know what it's about, and it isn't for me to ask. I
thought, sir, that maybe you were having a little fun with me. But I
know now, and you can trust me, Master Jim, if she ever comes again."

"Thank you, Jason," said Jimmie Dale, his hand closing with an
appreciative pressure on the other's shoulder "Good-night, Jason."

Upstairs on the first landing, Jimmie Dale opened a door, closed and
locked it behind him--and the electric switch clicked under his fingers.
A glow fell softly from a cluster of shaded ceiling lights. It was a
large room, a very large room, running the entire depth of the
house, and the effect of apparent disorder in the arrangement of its
appointments seemed to breathe a sense of charm. There were great
cozy, deep, leather-covered lounging chairs, a huge, leather-covered
davenport, and an easel or two with half-finished sketches upon them;
the walls were panelled, the panels of exquisite grain and matching; in
the centre of the room stood a flat-topped rosewood desk; upon the floor
was a dark, heavy velvet rug; and, perhaps most inviting of all, there
was a great, old-fashioned fireplace at one side of the room.

For an instant Jimmie Dale remained quietly by the door, as though
listening. Six feet he stood, muscular in every line of his body, like
a well-trained athlete with no single ounce of superfluous fat about
him--the grace and ease of power in his poise. His strong, clean-shaven
face, as the light fell upon it now, was serious--a mood that became him
well--the firm lips closed, the dark, reliant eyes a little narrowed, a
frown on the broad forehead, the square jaw clamped.

Then abruptly he walked across the room to the desk, picked up an
envelope that lay upon it, and, turning again, dropped into the nearest
lounging chair.

There had been no doubt in his mind, none to dispel. It was precisely
what he had expected from almost the first word Jason had spoken. It was
the same handwriting, the same texture of paper, and there was the same
old haunting, rare, indefinable fragrance about it. Jimmie Dale's
hands turned the envelope now this way, now that, as he looked at it.
Wonderful hands were Jimmie Dale's, with long, slim, tapering fingers
whose sensitive tips seemed now as though they were striving to decipher
the message within.

He laughed suddenly, a little harshly, and tore open the envelope.
Five closely written sheets fell into his hand. He read them slowly,
critically, read them over again; and then, his eyes on the rug at his
feet, he began to tear the paper into minute pieces between his fingers,
depositing the pieces, as he tore them, upon the arm of his chair. The
five sheets demolished, his fingers dipped into the heap of shreds on
the arm of the chair and tore them over and over again, tore them until
they were scarcely larger than bits of confetti, tore at them absently
and mechanically, his eyes never shifting from the rug at his feet.

Then with a shrug of his shoulders, as though rousing himself to present
reality, a curious smile flickering on his lips, he brushed the pieces
of paper into one hand, carried them to the empty fireplace, laid them
down in a little pile, and set them afire. Lighting a cigarette, he
watched them burn until the last glow had gone from the last charred
scrap; then he crunched and scattered them with the brass-handled fender
brush, and, retracing his steps across the room, flung back a portiere
from where it hung before a little alcove, and dropped on his knees in
front of a round, squat, barrel-shaped safe--one of his own design and
planning in the years when he had been with his father.

His slim, sensitive fingers played for an instant among the knobs and
dials that studded the door, guided, it seemed by the sense of touch
alone--and the door swung open. Within was another door, with locks and
bolts as intricate and massive as the outer one. This, too, he opened;
and then from the interior took out a short, thick, rolled-up leather
bundle tied together with thongs. He rose from his knees, closed the
safe, and drew the portiere across the alcove again. With the bundle
under his arm, he glanced sharply around the room, listened intently,
then, unlocking the door that gave on the hall, he switched off the
lights and went to his dressing room, that was on the same floor. Here,
divesting himself quickly of his dinner clothes, he selected a dark
tweed suit with loose-fitting, sack coat from his wardrobe, and began to
put it on.

Dressed, all but his coat and vest, he turned to the leather bundle that
he had placed on a table, untied the thongs, and carefully opened it
out to its full length--and again that curious, cryptic smile tinged his
lips. Rolled the opposite away from that in which it had been tied
up, the leather strip made a wide belt that went on somewhat after
the fashion of a life preserver, the thongs being used for shoulder
straps--a belt that, once on, the vest would hide completely, and,
fitting close, left no telltale bulge in the outer garments. It was not
an ordinary belt; it was full of stout-sewn, up-right little pockets
all the way around, and in the pockets grimly lay an array of fine,
blued-steel, highly tempered instruments--a compact, powerful burglar's
kit.

The slim, sensitive fingers passed with almost a caressing touch over
the vicious little implements, and from one of the pockets extracted
a thin, flat metal case. This Jimmie Dale opened, and glanced
inside--between sheets of oil paper lay little rows of GRAY, ADHESIVE,
DIAMOND-SHAPED SEALS.

Jimmie Dale snapped the case shut, returned it to its recess, and from
another took out a black silk mask. He held it up to the light for
examination.

"Pretty good shape after a year," muttered Jimmie Dale, replacing it.

He put on the belt, then his vest and coat. From the drawer of his
dresser he took an automatic revolver and an electric flashlight,
slipped them into his pocket, and went softly downstairs. From the hat
stand he chose a black slouch hat, pulled it well over his eyes--and
left the house.

Jimmie Dale walked down a block, then hailed a bus and mounted to the
top. It was late, and he found himself the only passenger. He inserted
his dime in the conductor's little resonant-belled cash receiver, and
then settled back on the uncomfortable, bumping, cushionless seat.

On rattled the bus; it turned across town, passed the Circle, and
headed for Fifth Avenue--but Jimmie Dale, to all appearances, was quite
oblivious of its movements.

It was a year since she had written him. SHE! Jimmie Dale did not smile,
his lips were pressed hard together. Not a very intimate or personal
appellation, that--but he knew her by no other. It WAS a woman,
surely--the hand-writing was feminine, the diction eminently so--and had
SHE not come herself that night to Jason! He remembered the last letter,
apart from the one to-night, that he had received from her. It was
a year ago now--and the letter had been hardly more than a note. The
police had worked themselves into a frenzy over the Gray Seal, the
papers had grown absolutely maudlin--and she had written, in her
characteristic way:


Things are a little too warm, aren't they, Jimmie? Let's let them cool
for a year.


Since then until to-night he had heard nothing from her. It was a
strange compact that he had entered into--so strange that it could never
have known, could never know a parallel--unique, dangerous, bizarre, it
was all that and more. It had begun really through his connection with
his father's business--the business of manufacturing safes that should
defy the cleverest criminals--when his brains, turned into that channel,
had been pitted against the underworld, against the methods of a
thousand different crooks from Maine to California, the report of whose
every operation had reached him in the natural course of business,
and every one of which he had studied in minutest detail. It had begun
through that--but at the bottom of it was his own restless, adventurous
spirit.

He had meant to set the police by the ears, using his gray-seal device
both as an added barb and that no innocent bystander of the underworld,
innocent for once, might be involved--he had meant to laugh at them and
puzzle them to the verge of madness, for in the last analysis they would
find only an abortive attempt at crime--and he had succeeded. And then
he had gone too far--and he had been caught--by HER. That string of
pearls, which, to study whose effect facetiously, he had so idiotically
wrapped around his wrist, and which, so ironically, he had been unable
to loosen in time and had been forced to carry with him in his sudden,
desperate dash to escape from Marx's the big jeweler's, in Maiden Lane,
whose strong room he had toyed with one night, had been the lever which,
AT FIRST, she had held over him.

The bus was on Fifth Avenue now, and speeding rapidly down the deserted
thoroughfare. Jimmie Dale looked up at the lighted windows of the St.
James Club as they went by, smiled whimsically, and shifted in his seat,
seeking a more comfortable position.

She had caught him--how he did not know--he had never seen her--did not
know who she was, though time and again he had devoted all his energies
for months at a stretch to a solution of the mystery. The morning
following the Maiden Lane affair, indeed, before he had breakfasted,
Jason had brought him the first letter from her. It had started by
detailing his every move of the night before--and it had ended with an
ultimatum: "The cleverness, the originality of the Gray Seal as a crook
lacked but one thing," she had naively written, "and that one thing was
that his crookedness required a leading string to guide it into channels
that were worthy of his genius." In a word, SHE would plan the coups,
and he would act at her dictation and execute them--or else how did
twenty years in Sing Sing for that little Maiden Lane affair appeal to
him? He was to answer by the next morning, a simple "yes" or "no" in the
personal column of the morning NEWS-ARGUS.

A threat to a man like Jimmie Dale was like flaunting a red rag at a
bull, and a rage ungovernable had surged upon him. Then cold reason had
come. He was caught--there was no question about that--she had taken
pains to show him that he need make no mistake there. Innocent enough in
his own conscience, as far as actual theft went, for the pearls would in
due course be restored in some way to the possession of their owner, he
would have been unable to make even his own father, who was alive then,
believe in his innocence, let alone a jury of his peers. Dishonour,
shame, ignominy, a long prison sentence, stared him in the face,
and there was but one alternative--to link hands with this unseen,
mysterious accomplice. Well, he could at least temporise, he could
always "queer" a game in some specious manner, if he were pushed too
far. And so, in the next morning's NEWS-ARGUS, Jimmie Dale had answered
"yes." And then had followed those years in which there had been NO
temporising, in which every plan was carried out to the last detail,
those years of curious, unaccountable, bewildering affairs that
Carruthers had spoken of, one on top of another, that had shaken the old
headquarters on Mulberry Street to its foundations, until the Gray Seal
had become a name to conjure with. And, yes, it was quite true, he
had entered into it all, gone the limit, with an eagerness that was
insatiable.