The Adventures of Jimmie Dale

F >> Frank L. Packard >> The Adventures of Jimmie Dale


The bus had reached the lower end of Fifth Avenue, passed through
Washington Square, and stopped at the end of its run. Jimmie Dale
clambered down from the top, threw a pleasant "good-night" to the
conductor, and headed briskly down the street before him. A little
later he crossed into West Broadway, and his pace slowed to a leisurely
stroll.

Here, at the upper end of the street, was a conglomerate business
section of rather inferior class, catering doubtless to the poor,
foreign element that congregated west of Broadway proper, and to the
south of Washington Square. The street was, at first glance, deserted;
it was dark and dreary, with stores and lofts on either side. An
elevated train roared by overhead, with a thunderous, deafening clamour.
Jimmie Dale, on the right-hand side of the street, glanced interestedly
at the dark store windows as he went by. And then, a block ahead, on the
other side, his eyes rested on an approaching form. As the other reached
the corner and paused, and the light from the street lamp glinted on
brass buttons, Jimmie Dale's eyes narrowed a little under his slouch
hat. The policeman, although nonchalantly swinging a nightstick,
appeared to be watching him.

Jimmie Dale went on half a block farther, stooped to the sidewalk to
tie his shoe, glanced back over his shoulder--the policeman was not in
sight--and slipped like a shadow into the alleyway beside which he had
stopped.

It was another Jimmie Dale now--the professional Jimmie Dale. Quick as
a cat, active, lithe, he was over a six foot fence in the rear of a
building in a flash, and crouched a black shape, against the back door
of an unpretentious, unkempt, dirty, secondhand shop that fronted
on West Broadway--the last place certainly in all New York that the
managing editor of the NEWS-ARGUS, or any one else, for that matter,
would have picked out as the setting for the second debut of the Gray
Seal.

From the belt around his waist, Jimmie Dale took the black silk mask,
and slipped it on; and from the belt, too, came a little instrument
that his deft fingers manipulated in the lock. A curious snipping sound
followed. Jimmie Dale put his weight gradually against the door. The
door held fast.

"Bolted," said Jimmie Dale to himself.

The sensitive fingers travelled slowly up and down the side of the door,
seeming to press and feel for the position of the bolt through an inch
of plank--then from the belt came a tiny saw, thin and pointed at the
end, that fitted into the little handle drawn from another receptacle in
the leather girdle beneath the unbuttoned vest.

Hardly a sound it made as it bit into the door. Half a minute
passed--there was the faint fall of a small piece of wood--into the
aperture crept the delicate, tapering fingers--came a slight rasping of
metal--then the door swung back, the dark shadow that had been Jimmie
Dale vanished and the door closed again.

A round, white beam of light glowed for an instant--and disappeared. A
miscellaneous, lumbering collection of junk and odds and ends
blocked the entry, leaving no more space than was sufficient for bare
passageway. Jimmie Dale moved cautiously--and once more the flashlight
in his hand showed the way for an instant--then darkness again.

The cluttered accumulation of secondhand stuff in the rear gave place to
a little more orderly arrangement as he advanced toward the front of the
store. Like a huge firefly, the flashlight twinkled, went out, twinkled
again, and went out. He passed a sort of crude, partitioned-off
apartment that did duty for the establishment's office, a sort of little
boxed-in place it was, about in the middle of the floor. Jimmie Dale's
light played on it for a moment, but he kept on toward the front door
without any pause.

Every movement was quick, sure, accurate, with not a wasted second. It
had been barely a minute since he had vaulted the back fence. It was
hardly a quarter of a minute more before the cumbersome lock of the
front door was unfastened, and the door itself pulled imperceptibly
ajar.

He went swiftly back to the office now--and found it even more of a
shaky, cheap affair than it had at first appeared; more like a box stall
with windows around the top than anything else, the windows doubtless to
permit the occupant to overlook the store from the vantage point of the
high stool that stood before a long, battered, wobbly desk. There was
a door to the place, too, but the door was open and the key was in
the lock. The ray of Jimmie Dale's flashlight swept once around the
interior--and rested on an antique, ponderous safe.

Under the mask Jimmie Dale's lips parted in a smile that seemed almost
apologetic, as he viewed the helpless iron monstrosity that was little
more than an insult to a trained cracksman. Then from the belt came the
thin metal case and a pair of tweezers. He opened the case, and with
the tweezers lifted out one of the gray-coloured, diamond-shaped seals.
Holding the seal with the tweezers, he moistened the gummed side with
his lips, then laid it on a handkerchief which he took from his pocket,
and clapped the handkerchief against the front of the safe, sticking
the seal conspicuously into place. Jimmie Dale's insignia bore no finger
prints. The microscopes and magnifying glasses at headquarters had many
a time regretfully assured the police of that fact.

And now his hands and fingers seemed to work like lightning. Into the
soft iron bit a drill--bit in and through--bit in and through again.
It was dark, pitch black--and silent. Not a sound, save the quick, dull
rasp of the ratchet--like the distant gnawing of a mouse! Jimmie Dale
worked fast--another hole went through the face of the old-fashioned
safe--and then suddenly he straightened up to listen, every faculty
tense, alert, and strained, his body thrown a little forward. WHAT WAS
THAT!

From the alleyway leading from the street without, through which he
himself had come, sounded the stealthy crunch of feet. Motionless in the
utter darkness, Jimmie Dale listened--there was a scraping noise in the
rear--someone was climbing the fence that he had climbed!

In an instant the tools in Jimmie Dale's hands disappeared into their
respective pockets beneath his vest--and the sensitive fingers shot to
the dial on the safe.

"Too bad," muttered Jimmie Dale plaintively to himself. "I could have
made such an artistic job of it--I swear I could have cut Carruthers'
profile in the hole in less than no time--to open it like this is really
taking the poor old thing at a disadvantage."

He was on his knees now, one ear close to the dial, listening as the
tumblers fell, while the delicate fingers spun the knob unerringly--the
other ear strained toward the rear of the premises.

Came a footstep--a ray of light--a stumble--nearer--the newcomer was
inside the place now, and must have found out that the back door had
been tampered with. Nearer came the steps--still nearer--and then the
safe door swung open under Jimmie Dale's hand, and Jimmie Dale, that he
might not be caught like a rat in a trap, darted from the office--but he
had delayed a little too long.

From around the cluttered piles of junk and miscellany swept the
light--full on Jimmie Dale. Hesitation for the smallest fraction of a
second would have been fatal, but hesitation was something that in all
his life Jimmie Dale had never known. Quick as a panther in its spring,
he leaped full at the light and the man behind it. The rough voice, in
surprised exclamation at the sudden discovery of the quarry, died in a
gasp.

There was a crash as the two men met--and the other reeled back before
the impact. Onto him Jimmie Dale sprang, and his hands flew for the
other's throat. It was an officer in uniform! Jimmie Dale had felt the
brass buttons as they locked. In the darkness there was a queer smile on
Jimmie Dale's tight lips. It was no doubt THE officer whom he had passed
on the other side of the street.

The other was a smaller man than Jimmie Dale, but powerful for his
build--and he fought now with all his strength. This way and that the
two men reeled, staggered, swayed, panting and gasping; and then--they
had lurched back close to the office door--with a sudden swing, every
muscle brought into play for a supreme effort, Jimmie Dale hurled the
other from him, sending the man sprawling back to the floor of the
office, and in the winking of an eye had slammed shut the door and
turned the key.

There was a bull-like roar, the shrill CHEEP-CHEEP-CHEEP of the
patrolman's whistle, and a shattering crash as the officer flung his
body against the partition--then the bark of a revolver shot, the tinkle
of breaking glass, as the man fired through the office window--and past
Jimmie Dale, speeding now for the front door, a bullet hummed viciously.

Out on the street dashed Jimmie Dale, whipping the mask from his
face--and glanced like a hawk around him. For all the racket, the
neighbourhood had not yet been aroused--no one was in sight. From just
overhead came the rattle of a downtown elevated train. In a hundred-yard
sprint, Jimmie Dale raced it a half block to the station, tore up the
steps--and a moment later dropped nonchalantly into a seat and pulled an
evening newspaper from his pocket.

Jimmie Dale got off at the second station down, crossed the street,
mounted the steps of the elevated again, and took the next train uptown.
His movements appeared to be somewhat erratic--he alighted at the
station next above the one by which he had made his escape. Looking down
the street it was too dark to see much of anything, but a confused noise
as of a gathering crowd reached him from what was about the location of
the secondhand store. He listened appreciatively for a moment.

"Isn't it a perfectly lovely night?" said Jimmie Dale amiably to
himself. "And to think of that cop running away with the idea that I
didn't see him when he hid in a doorway after I passed the corner! Well,
well, strange--isn't it?"

With another glance down the street, a whimsical lift of his shoulders,
he headed west into the dilapidated tenement quarter that huddled for
a handful of blocks near by, just south of Washington Square. It was
a little after one o'clock in the morning now and the pedestrians were
casual. Jimmie Dale read the street signs on the corners as he went
along, turned abruptly into an intersecting street, counted the
tenements from the corner as he passed, and--for the eye of any one who
might be watching--opened the street door of one of them quite as though
he were accustomed and had a perfect right to do so, and went inside.

It was murky and dark within; hot, unhealthy, with lingering smells of
garlic and stale cooking. He groped for the stairs and started up.
He climbed one flight, then another--and one more to the top. Here,
treading softly, he made an examination of the landing with a view,
evidently, to obtaining an idea of the location and the number of doors
that opened off from it.

His selection fell on the third door from the head of the stairs--there
were four all told, two apartments of two rooms each. He paused for an
instant to adjust the black silk mask, tried the door quietly, found it
unlocked, opened it with a sudden, quick, brisk movement--and, stepping
in side, leaned with his back against it.

"Good-morning," said Jimmie Dale pleasantly.

It was a squalid place, a miserable hole, in which a single flickering,
yellow gas jet gave light. It was almost bare of furniture; there was
nothing but a couple of cheap chairs, a rickety table--unpawnable. A
boy, he was hardly more than that, perhaps twenty-two, from a posture
in which he was huddled across the table with head buried in out-flung
arms, sprang with a startled cry to his feet.

"Good-morning," said Jimmie Dale again. "Your name's Hagan, Bert
Hagan--isn't it? And you work for Isaac Brolsky in the secondhand shop
over on West Broadway--don't you?"

The boy's lips quivered, and the gaunt, hollow, half-starved face,
white, ashen-white now, was pitiful.

"I--I guess you got me," he faltered "I--I suppose you're a
plain-clothes man, though I never knew dicks wore masks."

"They don't generally," said Jimmie Dale coolly. "It's a fad of
mine--Bert Hagan."

The lad, hanging to the table, turned his head away for a moment--and
there was silence.

Presently Hagan spoke again. "I'll go," he said numbly. "I won't make any
trouble. Would--would you mind not speaking loud? I--I wouldn't like her
to know."

"Her?" said Jimmie Dale softly.

The boy tiptoed across the room, opened a connecting door a little,
peered inside, opened it a little wider--and looked over his shoulder at
Jimmie Dale.

Jimmie Dale crossed to the boy, looked inside the other room--and his
lip twitched queerly, as the sight sent a quick, hurt throb through his
heart. A young woman, younger than the boy, lay on a tumble-down bed, a
rag of clothing over her--her face with a deathlike pallor upon it, as
she lay in what appeared to be a stupor. She was ill, critically ill;
it needed no trained eye to discern a fact all too apparent to the most
casual observer. The squalor, the glaring poverty here, was even more
pitifully in evidence than in the other room--only here upon a chair
beside the bed was a cluster of medicine bottles and a little heap of
fruit.

Jimmie Dale drew back silently as the boy closed the door.

Hagan walked to the table and picked up his hat.

"I'm--I'm ready," he said brokenly. "Let's go."

"Just a minute," said Jimmie Dale. "Tell us about it."

"Twon't take long," said Hagan, trying to smile. "She's my wife. The
sickness took all we had. I--I kinder got behind in the rent and things.
They were going to fire us out of here--to-morrow. And there wasn't any
money for the medicine, and--and the things she had to have. Maybe you
wouldn't have done it--but I did. I couldn't see her dying there for the
want of something a little money'd buy--and--and I couldn't"--he caught
his voice in a little sob--"I couldn't see her thrown out on the street
like that."

"And so," said Jimmie Dale, "instead of putting old Isaac's cash in
the safe this evening when you locked up, you put it in your pocket
instead--eh? Didn't you know you'd get caught?"

"What did it matter?" said the boy. He was twirling his misshappen hat
between his fingers. "I knew they'd know it was me in the morning when
old Isaac found it gone, because there wasn't anybody else to do it.
But I paid the rent for four months ahead to-night, and I fixed it so's
she'd have medicine and things to eat. I was going to beat it before
daylight myself--I"--he brushed his hand hurriedly across his cheek--"I
didn't want to go--to leave her till I had to."

"Well, say"--there was wonderment in Jimmie Dale's tones, and his
English lapsed into ungrammatical, reassuring vernacular--"ain't that
queer! Say, I'm no detective. Gee, kid, did you think I was? Say, listen
to this! I cracked old Isaac's safe half an hour ago--and I guess there
won't be any idea going around that you got the money and I pulled a
lemon. Say, I ain't superstitious, but it looks like luck meant you to
have another chance, don't it?"

The hat dropped from Hagan's hands to the floor, and he swayed a little.

"You--you ain't a dick!" he stammered. "Then how'd you know about me and
my name when you found the safe empty? Who told you?"

A wry grimace spread suddenly over Jimmie Dale's face beneath the mask,
and he swallowed hard. Jimmie Dale would have given a good deal to have
been able to answer that question himself.

"Oh, that!" said Jimmie Dale. "That's easy--I knew you worked there.
Say, it's the limit, ain't it? Talk about your luck being in, why all
you've got to do is to sit tight and keep your mouth shut, and you're
safe as a church. Only say, what are you going to do about the money,
now you've got a four months' start and are kind of landed on your feet?

"Do?" said the boy. "I'll pay it back, little by little. I meant to. I
ain't no--" He stopped abruptly.

"Crook," supplied Jimmie Dale pleasantly. "Spit it right out, kid; you
won't hurt my feelings none. Well, I'll tell you--you're talking the way
I like to hear you--you pay that back, slide it in without his knowing
it, a bit at a time, whenever you can, and you'll never hear a yip out
of me; but if you don't, why it kind of looks as though I have a right
to come down your street and get my share or know the reason why--eh?"

"Then you never get any share," said Hagan, with a catch in his voice.
"I pay it back as fast as I can."

"Sure," said Jimmie Dale. "That's right--that's what I said. Well, so
long--Hagan." And Jimmie Dale had opened the door and slipped outside.

An hour later, in his dressing room in his house on Riverside Drive,
Jimmie Dale was removing his coat as the telephone, a hand instrument on
the table, rang. Jimmie Dale glanced at it--and leisurely proceeded
to remove his vest. Again the telephone rang. Jimmie Dale took off his
curious, pocketed leather belt--as the telephone repeated its summons.
He picked out the little drill he had used a short while before, and
inspected it critically--feeling its point with his thumb, as one might
feel a razor's blade. Again the telephone rang insistently. He reached
languidly for the receiver, took it off its hook, and held it to his
ear.

"Hello!" said Jimmie Dale, with a sleepy yawn. "Hello! Hello! Why the
deuce don't you yank a man out of bed at two o'clock in the morning and
have done with it, and--eh? Oh, that you, Carruthers?"

"Yes," came Carruthers' voice excitedly. "Jimmie, listen--listen! The
Gray Seal's come to life! He's just pulled a break on West Broadway!"

"Good Lord!" gasped Jimmie Dale. "You don't say!"



CHAPTER II

BY PROXY


"The most puzzling bewildering, delightful crook in the annals of crime,"
Herman Carruthers, the editor of the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS, had called the
Gray Seal; and Jimmie Dale smiled a little grimly now as he recalled
the occasion of a week ago at the St. James Club over their after-dinner
coffee. That was before his second debut, with Isaac Brolsky's
poverty-stricken premises over on West Broadway as a setting for the
break.

SHE had written: "Things are a little too warm, aren't they, Jimmie?
Let's let them cool for a year." Well, they had cooled for a year, and
Carruthers as a result had been complacently satisfied in his own mind
that the Gray Seal was dead--until that break at Isaac Brolsky's over on
West Broadway!

Jimmie Dale's smile was tinged with whimsicality now. The only effect
of the year's inaction had been to usher in his renewed activity with
a furor compared to which all that had gone before was insignificant.
Where the newspapers had been maudlin, they now raved--raved in
editorials and raved in headlines. It was an impossible, untenable,
unbelievable condition of affairs that this Gray Seal, for all his
incomparable cleverness, should flaunt his crimes in the faces of the
citizens of New York. One could actually see the editors writhing in
their swivel chairs as their fiery denunciations dripped from their
pens! What was the matter with the police? Were the police children;
or, worse still, imbeciles--or, still worse again, was there some one
"higher up" who was profiting by this rogue's work? New York would not
stand for it--New York would most decidedly not--and the sooner the
police realised that fact the better! If the police were helpless, or
tools, the citizens of New York were not, and it was time the citizens
were thoroughly aroused.

There was a way, too, to arouse the citizens, that was both good
business from the newspaper standpoint, and efficacious as a method.
Carruthers, of the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS, had initiated it. The MORNING
NEWS-ARGUS offered twenty-five thousand dollars' reward for the capture
of the Gray Seal! Other papers immediately followed suit in varying
amounts. The authorities, State and municipal, goaded to desperation,
did likewise, and the five million men, women, and children of New York
were automatically metamorphosed into embryonic sleuths. New York was
aroused.

Jimmie Dale, alias the Gray Seal, member of the ultra-exclusive St.
James Club, the latter fact sufficient in itself to guarantee his
social standing, graduate of Harvard, inheritor of his deceased father's
immense wealth amassed in the manufacture of burglar-proof safes, some
of the most ingenious patents on which were due to Jimmie Dale himself,
figured with a pencil on the margin of the newspaper he had been
reading, using the arm of the big, luxurious, leather-upholstered
lounging chair as a support for the paper. The result of his
calculations was eighty-five thousand dollars.

He brushed the paper onto the Turkish rug, dove into the pocket of his
dinner jacket for his cigarettes, and began to smoke as his eyes strayed
around the room, his own particular den in his fashionable Riverside
Drive residence.

Eighty-five thousand dollars' reward! Jimmie Dale blew meditative rings
of cigarette smoke at the fireplace. What would she say to that? Would
she decide it was "too hot" again, and call it off? It added quite a
little hazard to the game--QUITE a little! If he only knew who "she"
was! It was a strange partnership--the strangest partnership that had
ever existed between two human beings.

He turned a little in his chair as a step sounded in the hallway
without--that is, Jimmie Dale caught the sound, muffled though it was by
the heavy carpet. Came then a knock upon the door.

"Come in," invited Jimmie Dale.

It was old Jason, the butler. The old man was visibly excited, as he
extended a silver tray on which lay a letter.

Jimmie Dale's hand reached quickly out, the long, slim tapering fingers
closed upon the envelope--but his eyes were on Jason significantly,
questioningly.

"Yes, Master Jim," said the old man, "I recognised it on the instant,
sir. After what you said, sir, last week, honouring me, I might say, to
a certain extent with your confidence, though I'm sure I don't know what
it all means, I--"

"Who brought it this time, Jason?" inquired Jimmie Dale quietly.

"Not the young person, begging your pardon, not the young lady, sir. A
shuffer in a big automobile. 'Your master at once,' he says, and shoves
the letter into my hand, and was off."

"Very good, Jason," said Jimmie Dale. "You may go."

The door closed. Yes, it was from HER--it was the same texture of paper,
there was the same rare, haunting fragrance clinging to it.

He tore the envelope open, and extracted a folded sheet of paper. What
was it this time? To call the partnership off again until the present
furor should have subsided once more--or the skilfully sketched outline
of a new adventure? Which? He glanced at the few lines written on the
sheet, and lunged forward from his chair to his feet. It was neither one
nor the other. It was--

Jimmie Dale's face was set, and an angry red surge swept his cheeks. His
lips moved, muttering audibly fragments of the letter, as he stared at
it.

"--incredible that you--a heinous thing--act instantly--this is ruin--"

For an instant--a rare occurrence in Jimmie Dale's life--he stood like a
man stricken, still staring at the sheet in his hand. Then mechanically
his fingers tore the paper into little pieces, and the little pieces
into tiny shreds. Anger fled, and a sickening sense of impotent dismay
took its place; the red left his cheeks, and in its stead a grayness
came.

"Act instantly!" The words seemed to leap at him, drum at his ears with
constant repetition. Act instantly! But how? How? Then his brain--that
keen, clear, master brain--sprang from stunned inaction into virility
again. Of course--Carruthers! It was in Carruthers' line.

He stepped to the desk--and paused with his hand extended to pick up the
telephone. How explain to Carruthers that he, Jimmie Dale, already knew
what Carruthers might not yet have heard of, even though Carruthers
would naturally be among the first to be in touch with such affairs! No;
that would never do. Better get there himself at once and trust to--

The telephone rang.

Jimmie Dale waited until it rang again, then he lifted the receiver from
the hook.

"Hello?" he said.

"Hello! Hello! Jimmie!" came a voice. "This is Carruthers. That you,
Jimmie?"

"Yes," said Jimmie Dale and sat down limply in the desk chair.

"It's the Gray Seal again. I promised you I'd let you in on the ground
floor next time anything happened, so come on down here quick if you
want to see some of his work at firsthand."

Jimmie Dale flirted a bead of sweat from his forehead.

"Carruthers," said Jimmie languidly, "you newspaper chaps make me tired
with your Gray Seal. I'm just going to bed."

"Bed nothing!" spluttered Carruthers, from the other end of the wire.
"Come down, I tell you. It's worth your while--half the population of
New York would give the toes off their feet for the chance. Come down,
you blast idiot! The Gray Seal has gone the limit this time--it's
MURDER."

Jimmie Dale's face was haggard.

"Oh!" he said peevishly. "Sounds interesting. Where are you? I guess
maybe I'll jog along."