The Adventures of Jimmie Dale

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


"I should think you would!" snapped Carruthers. "You know the Palace on
the Bowery? Yes? Well, meet me on the corner there as soon as you can.
Hustle! Good--"

"Oh, I say, Carruthers!" interposed Jimmie Dale.

"Yes?" demanded Carruthers.

"Thanks awfully for letting me know, old man."

"Don't mention it!" returned Carruthers sarcastically. "You always were
a grateful beast, Jimmie. Hurry up!"

Jimmie Dale hung up the receiver of the city 'phone, and took down the
receiver of another, a private-house installation, and rang twice for
the garage.

"The light car at once, Benson," he ordered curtly. "At once!"

Jimmie Dale worked quickly then. In his dressing room, he changed from
dinner clothes to tweeds; spent a second or so over the contents of a
locked drawer in the dresser, from which he selected a very small but
serviceable automatic, and a very small but highly powerful magnifying
glass whose combination of little round lenses worked on a pivot, and,
closed over one another, were of about the compass of a quarter of a
dollar.

In three minutes he was outside the house and stepping into the car,
just as it drew up at the curb.

"Benson," he said tersely to his chauffeur, "drop me one block this
side of the Palace on the Bowery--and forget there was ever a speed law
enacted. Understand?"

"Very good, sir," said Benson, touching his cap. "I'll do my best, sir."

Jimmie Dale, in the tonneau, stretched out his legs under the front
seat, and dug his hands into his pockets--and inside the pockets his
hands were clenched and knotted fists.

Murder! At times it had occurred to him that there was a possibility
that some crook of the underworld would attempt to cover his tracks and
take refuge from pursuit by foisting himself on the authorities as the
Gray Seal. That was a possibility, a risk always to be run. But that
MURDER should be laid to the Gray Seal's door! Anger, merciless and
unrestrained, surged over Jimmie Dale.

There was peril here, live and imminent. Suppose that some day he should
be caught in some little affair, recognised and identified as the Gray
Seal, there would be the charge of murder hanging over him--and the
electric chair to face!

But the peril was not the only thing. Even worse to Jimmie Dale's
artistic and sensitive temperament was the vilification, the holding up
to loathing, contumely, and abhorrence of the name, the stainless name,
of the Gray Seal. It WAS stainless! He had guarded it jealously--as a
man guards the woman's name he loves.

Affairs that had mystified and driven the police distracted with
impotence there had been, many of them; and on the face of them--crimes.
But no act ever committed had been in reality a crime--none without
the highest of motives, the righting of some outrageous wrong, the
protection of some poor stumbling fellow human.

That had been his partnership with her. How, by what amazing means, by
what power that smacked almost of the miraculous she came in touch with
all these things and supplied him with the data on which to work he
did not know--only that, thanks to her, there were happier hearts and
happier homes since the Gray Seal had begun to work. "Dear Philanthropic
Crook," she often called him in her letters. And now--it was MURDER!

Take Carruthers, for instance. For years, as a reporter before he had
risen to the editorial desk, he had been one of the keenest on the scent
of the Gray Seal, but always for the sake of the game--always filled
with admiration, as he said himself, for the daring, the originality of
the most puzzling, bewildering, delightful crook in the annals of crime.
Carruthers was but an example. Carruthers now would hunt the Gray Seal
like a mad dog. The Gray Seal, to Carruthers and every one else, would
be the vilest name in the land--a synonym for murder.

On the car flew--and upon Jimmie Dale's face, as though chiselled in
marble, was a look that was not good to see. And a mirthless smile set,
frozen, on his lips.

"I'll get the man that did this," gritted Jimmie Dale between his teeth.
"I'll GET him! And, when I get him, I'll wring a confession from him if
I have to swing for it!"

The car swept from Broadway into Astor Place, on down the Bowery, and
presently stopped.

Jimmie Dale stepped out. "I shall not want you any more, Benson," he
said. "You may return home."

Jimmie Dale started down the block--a nonchalant Jimmie Dale now, if
anything, bored a little. Near the corner, a figure, back turned, was
lounging at the edge of the sidewalk. Jimmie Dale touched the man on the
arm.

"Hello, Carruthers!" he drawled.

"Ah, Jimmie!" Carruthers turned with an excited smile. "That's the boy!
You've made mighty quick time."

"Well, you told me to hurry," grumbled Jimmie Dale. "I'm doing my best
to please you to-night. Came down in my car, and got summoned for three
fines to-morrow."

Carruthers laughed. "Come on," he said; and, linking his arm in Jimmie
Dale's, turned the corner, and headed west along the cross street. "This
is going to make a noise," he continued, a grim note creeping into his
voice. "The biggest noise the city has ever heard. I take back all I
said about the Gray Seal. I'd always pictured his cleverness as being
inseparable with at least a decent sort of man, even if he was a rogue
and a criminal, but I'm through with that. He's a rotter and a hound
of the rankest sort! I didn't think there was anything more vulgar or
brutal than murder, but he's shown me that there is. A guttersnipe's got
more decency! To murder a man and then boastfully label the corpse is--"

"Say, Carruthers," said Jimmie Dale plaintively, suddenly hanging back,
"I say, you know, it's--it's all right for you to mess up in this sort
of thing, it's your beastly business, and I'm awfully damned thankful to
you for giving me a look-in, but isn't it--er--rather INFRA DIG for me?
A bit morbid, you know, and all that sort of thing. I'd never hear the
end of it at the club--you know what the St. James is. Couldn't I be
Merideth Stanley Annstruther, or something like that, one of your new
reporters, or something like that, you know?"

Carruthers chuckled. "Sure, Jimmie," he said. "You're the latest
addition to the staff of the NEWS-ARGUS. Don't worry; the incomparable
Jimmie Dale won't figure publicly in this."

"It's awfully good of you," said Jimmie gratefully. "I have to have a
notebook or something, don't I?"

Carruthers, from his pocket, handed him one. "Thanks," said Jimmie Dale.

A little way ahead, a crowd had collected on the sidewalk before a
doorway, and Carruthers pointed with a jerk of his hand.

"It's in Moriarty's place--a gambling hell," he explained. "I haven't
got the story myself yet, though I've been inside, and had a look
around. Inspector Clayton discovered the crime, and reported it at
headquarters. I was at my desk in the office when the news came, and, as
you know the interest I've taken in the Gray Seal, I decided to 'cover'
it myself. When I got here, Clayton hadn't returned from headquarters,
so, as you seemed so keenly interested last week, I telephoned you. If
Clayton's back now we'll get the details. Clayton's a good fellow with
the 'press,' and he won't hold anything out on us. Now, here we are.
Keep close to me, and I'll pass you in."

They shouldered through the crowd and up to an officer at the door.
The officer nodded, stepped aside, and Carruthers, with Jimmie Dale
following, entered the house.

They climbed one flight, and then another. The card-rooms, the faro,
stud, and roulette layouts were deserted, save for policemen here and
there on guard. Carruthers led the way to a room at the back of the
hall, whose door was open and from which issued a hubbub of voices--one
voice rose above the others, heavy and gratingly complacent.

"Clayton's back," observed Carruthers.

They stepped over the threshold, and the heavy voice greeted them.

"Ah, here's Carruthers now! H'are you, Carruthers? They told me you'd
been here, and were coming back, so I've been keeping the boys waiting
before handing out the dope. You've had a look at that--eh?" He flung
out a fat hand toward the bed.

The voices rose again, all directed at Carruthers now.

"Bubble's burst, eh, Carruthers? What about the 'Prince of Crooks'?
Artistry in crime, wasn't it, you said?" They were quoting from his
editorials of bygone days, a half dozen reporters of rival papers,
grinning and joshing him good-naturedly, seemingly quite unaffected by
what lay within arm's reach of them upon the bed.

Carruthers smiled a little wryly, shrugged his shoulders--and presented
Jimmie Dale to Inspector Clayton.

"Mr. Matthewson, a new man of ours--inspector."

"Glad to know you, Mr. Matthewson," said the inspector.

Jimmie Dale found his hand grasped by another that was flabby and
unpleasantly moist; and found himself looking into a face that was red,
with heavy rolls of unhealthy fat terminating in a double chin and a
thick, apoplectic neck--a huge, round face, with rat's eyes.

Clayton dropped Jimmie Dale's hand, and waved his own in the air. Jimmie
Dale remained modestly on the outside of the circle as the reporters
gathered around the police inspector.

"Now, then," said Clayton coarsely, "the guy that's croaked there is
Metzer, Jake Metzer. Get that?"

Jimmie Dale, scribbling hurriedly in his notebook like all the rest,
turned a little toward the bed, and his lower jaw crept out the fraction
of an inch. Both gas jets in the room were turned on full, giving ample
light. A man fully dressed, a man of perhaps forty, lay upon his back on
the bed, one arm outflung across the bedspread, the other dangling,
with fingers just touching the floor, the head at an angle and off the
pillow. It was as though he had been carried to the bed and flung upon
it after the deed had been committed. Jimmie Dale's eyes shifted and
swept the room. Yes, everything was in disorder, as though there had
been a struggle--a chair upturned, a table canted against the wall,
broken pieces of crockery from the washstand on the carpet, and--

"Metzer was a stool pigeon, see?" went on Clayton, "and he lived here.
Moriarty wasn't on to him. Metzer stood in thick with a wider circle of
crooks than any other snitch in New York."

Jimmie Dale, still scribbling as Clayton talked, stepped to the bed and
leaned over the murdered man. The murder had been done with a blackjack
evidently--a couple of blows. The left side of the temple was crushed
in. Right in the middle of the forehead, pasted there, a gray-colored,
diamond shaped paper seal flaunted itself--the device of the Gray Seal.
In Jimmie Dale' hand, hidden as he turned his back, the tiny combination
of powerful lenses was focused on the seal.

Clayton guffawed. "That's right!" he called out. "Take a good look.
That's a bright young man you've got, Carruthers."

Jimmie Dale looked up a little sheepishly--and got a grin from the
assembled reporters, and a scowl from Carruthers.

"Now, then," continued Clayton, "here's the facts--as much of 'em as I
can let you boys print at present. You know I'm stretching a point
to let you in here--don't forget that when you come to write up the
case--honour where's honour's due, you know. Well, me and Metzer there
was getting ready to close down on a big piece of game, and I was over
here in this room talking to him about it early this afternoon. We had
it framed to get our man to-night--see? I left Metzer, say, about three
o'clock, and he was to show up over at headquarters with another little
bit of evidence we wanted at eight o'clock to-night."

Jimmie Dale was listening--to every word. But he stooped now again over
the murdered man's head deliberately, though he felt the inspector's
rat's eyes upon him--stooped, and, with his finger nail, lifted back the
right-hand point of the diamond-shaped seal where it bordered a faint
thread of blood on the man's forehead.

There was a bull-like roar from the inspector, and he burst through the
ring of reporters, and grabbed Jimmie Dale by the shoulder.

"Here you, what in hell are you doing!" he spluttered angrily.

Embarrassed and confused, Jimmie Dale drew back, glanced around, and
smiled again a little sheepishly as his eyes rested on the red-flushed
jowl of the inspector.

"I--I wanted to see how it was stuck on," he explained inanely.

"Stuck on!" bellowed Clayton. "I'll show you how it's STUCK on, if you
monkey around here! Don't you know any better than that! Where were you
dragged up anyway? The coroner hasn't been here yet. You're a hot cub
of a reporter, you are!" He turned to Carruthers. "Y'ought to get out
printed instructions for 'em before you turn 'em loose!" he snapped.

Carruthers' face was red with mortification. There was a grin, expanded,
on the faces of the others.

"Stand away from that bed!" roared Clayton at Jimmie Dale. "And if you
go near it again, I'll throw you out of here bodily!"

Jimmie Dale edged away, and, eyes lowered, fumbled nervously with the
leaves of his notebook.

Clayton grunted, glared at Jimmie Dale for an instant viciously--and
resumed his story.

"I was saying," he said, "that Metzer was to come to headquarters at
eight o'clock this evening. Well, he didn't show up. That looked queer.
It was mighty important business. We was after one of the biggest hauls
we'd ever pulled off. I waited till nine o'clock, an hour ago, and I
was getting nervous. Then I started over here to find out what was the
matter. When I got here I asked Moriarty if he'd seen Metzer. Moriarty
said he hadn't since I was here before. He was a little suspicious that
I had something on Metzer--see? Well, by pumping Moriarty, he admitted
that Metzer had had a visitor about an hour after I left."

"Who was it? Know what his name is, inspector?" asked one of the
reporters quickly.

Inspector Clayton winked heavily. "Don't be greedy boys," he grinned.

"You mean you've got him?" burst out another one of the men excitedly.

"Sure! Sure, I've got him." Inspector Clayton waved his fat hand airily.
"Or I will have before morning--but I ain't saying anything more till
it's over." He smiled significantly. "Well, that's about all. You've
got the details right around you. I left Moriarty downstairs and came up
here, and found just what you see--Metzer laying on the bed there, and
the gray seal stuck on his forehead--and"--he ended abruptly--"I'll have
the Gray Seal himself behind the bars by morning."

A chorus of ejaculations rose from the reporters, while their pencils
worked furiously.

Then Jimmie Dale appeared to have an inspiration. Jimmie Dale turned a
leaf in his notebook and began to sketch rapidly, cocking his head now
on one side now on the other. With a few deft strokes he had outlined
the figure of Inspector Clayton. The reporter beside Jimmie Dale leaned
over to inspect the work, and another did likewise. Jimmie Dale drew
in Clayton's face most excellently, if somewhat flatteringly; and then,
with a little flourish of pride, wrote under the drawing: "The Man Who
Captured the Gray Seal."

"That's a cracking good sketch!" pronounced the reporter at his side.
"Let the inspector see it."

"What is it?" demanded Clayton, scowling.

Jimmie Dale handed him the notebook modestly.

Inspector Clayton took it, looked at it, looked at Jimmie Dale; then his
scowl relaxed into a self-sufficient and pleased smile, and he grunted
approvingly.

"That's the stuff to put over," he said. "Mabbe you're not much of
a reporter, but you can draw. Y're all right, sport--y're all right.
Forget what I said to you a while ago."

Jimmie Dale smiled too--deprecatingly. And put the notebook in his
pocket.

An officer entered the room hurriedly, and, drawing Clayton aside, spoke
in an undertone. A triumphant and malicious grin settled on Clayton's
features, and he started with a rush for the door.

"Come around to headquarters in two hours, boys," he called as he went
out, "and I'll have something more for you."

The room cleared, the reporters tumbling downstairs to make for the
nearest telephones to get their "copy" into their respective offices.

On the street, a few doors up from the house where they were free from
the crowd, Carruthers halted Jimmie Dale.

"Jimmie," he said reproachfully, "you certainly made a mark of us both.
There wasn't any need to play the 'cub' so egregiously. However, I'll
forgive you for the sake of the sketch--hand it over, Jimmie; I'm going
to reproduce it in the first edition."

"It wasn't drawn for reproduction, Carruthers--at least not yet," said
Jimmie Dale quietly.

Carruthers stared at him. "Eh?" he asked blankly.

"I've taken a dislike to Clayton," said Jimmie Dale whimsically. "He's
too patently after free advertising, and I'm not going to help along his
boost. You can't have it, old man, so let's think about something
else. What'll they do with that bit of paper that's on the poor devil's
forehead up there, for instance."

"Say," said Carruthers, "does it strike you that you're acting queer?
You haven't been drinking, have you, Jimmie?"

"What'll they do with it?" persisted Jimmie Dale.

"Well," said Carruthers, smiling a little tolerantly, "they'll
photograph it and enlarge the photograph, and label it 'Exhibit A' or
'Exhibit B' or something like that--and file it away in the archives
with the fifty or more just like it that are already in their
collection."

"That's what I thought," observed Jimmie Dale. He took Carruthers by the
lapel of the coat. "I'd like a photograph of that. I'd like it so much
that I've got to have it. Know the chap that does that work for the
police?"

"Yes," admitted Carruthers.

"Very good!" said Jimmie Dale crisply, "Get an extra print of the
enlargement from him then--for a consideration--whatever he asks--I'll
pay for it."

"But what for?" demanded Carruthers. "I don't understand."

"Because," said Jimmie Dale very seriously, "put it down to imagination
or whatever you like, I think I smell something fishy here."

"You WHAT!" exclaimed Carruthers in amazement. "You're not joking, are
you, Jimmie?"

Jimmie Dale laughed shortly. "It's so far from a joke," he said, in
a low tone, "that I want your word you'll get that photograph into my
hands by to-morrow afternoon, no matter what transpires in the meantime.
And look here, Carruthers, don't think I'm playing the silly thickhead,
and trying to mystify you. I'm no detective or anything like that. I've
just got an idea that apparently hasn't occurred to any one else--and,
of course, I may be all wrong. If I am, I'm not going to say a word even
to you, because it wouldn't be playing fair with some one else; if I'm
right the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS gets the biggest scoop of the century. Will
you go in on that basis?"

Carruthers put out his hand impulsively. "If you're in earnest,
Jimmie--you bet!"

"Good!" returned Jimmie Dale. "The photograph by to-morrow afternoon
then. And now--"

"And now," said Caruthers, "I've got to hurry over to the office and get
a write-up man at work. Will you come along, or meet me at headquarters
later? Clayton said in two hours he'd--"

"Neither," said Jimmie Dale. "I'm not interested in headquarters. I'm
going home."

"Well, all right then," Carruthers returned. "You can bank on me for
to-morrow. Good-night, Jimmie."

"Good-night, old man," said Jimmie Dale, and, turning, walked briskly
toward the Bowery.

But Jimmie Dale did not go home. He walked down the Bowery for three
blocks, crossed to the east side, and turned down a cross street. Two
blocks more he walked in this direction, and halfway down the next.
Here he paused an instant--the street was dimly lighted, almost dark,
deserted. Jimmie Dale edged close to the houses until his shadow blended
with the shadows of the walls--and slipped suddenly into a pitch-black
areaway.

He opened a door, stepped into an unlighted hallway where the air was
close and evil smelling, mounted a stairway, and halted before another
door on the first landing. There was the low clicking of a lock, three
times repeated, and he entered a room, closing and fastening the door
behind him.

Jimmie Dale called it his "Sanctuary." In one of the worst
neighbourhoods of New York, where no questions were asked as long as the
rent was paid, it had the further advantage of three separate exits--one
by the areaway where he had entered; one from the street itself; and
another through a back yard with an entry into a saloon that fronted on
the next street. It was not often that Jimmie Dale used his Sanctuary,
but there had been times when it was no more nor less than exactly what
he called it--a sanctuary!

He stepped to the window, assured himself that the shade was down--and
lighted the gas, blinking a little as the yellow flame illuminated the
room.

It was a rough place, dirty, uninviting; a bedroom, furnished in the
most scanty fashion. Neither, apparently, was there anything suspicious
about it to reward one curious enough to break in during the owner's
absence--some rather disreputable clothes hanging on the wall, and flung
untidily across the bed--that was all.

Alone now, Jimmie Dale's face was strained and anxious and,
occasionally, as he undressed himself, his hands clenched until his
knuckles grew white. The gray seal on the murdered man's forehead was
a GENUINE GRAY SEAL--one of Jimmie Dale's own. There was no doubt of
that--he had satisfied himself on that point.

Where had it come from? How had it been obtained? Jimmie Dale carefully
placed the clothes he had taken off under the mattress, pulled a
disreputable collarless flannel shirt over his head, and pulled on a
disreputable pair of boots. There were only two sources of supply. His
own--and the collection that the police had made, which Carruthers had
referred to.

Jimmie Dale lifted a corner of the oilcloth in a corner of the room,
lifted a piece of the flooring, lifted out a little box which he placed
upon the rickety table, and sat down before a cracked mirror. Who was
it that would have access to the gray seals in the possession of the
police, since, obviously, it was one of those that was on the dead man's
forehead? The answer came quick enough--came with the sudden out-thrust
of Jimmie Dale's lower jaw. ONE OF THE POLICE THEMSELVES--no one else.
Clayton's heavy, cunning face, Clayton's shifty eyes, Clayton's sudden
rush when he had touched the dead man's forehead, pictured themselves
in a red flash of fury before Jimmie Dale. There was no mask now, no
facetiousness, no acted part--only a merciless rage, and the muscles of
Jimmie Dale's face quivered and twitched. MURDER, foisted, shifted upon
another, upon the Gray Seal--making of that name a calumny--ruining
forever the work that she and he might do!

And then Jimmie Dale smiled mirthlessly, with thinning lips. The box
before him was open. His fingers worked quickly--a little wax behind the
ears, in the nostrils, under the upper lip, deftly placed-hands, wrists,
neck, throat, and face received their quota of stain, applied with an
artist's touch--and then the spruce, muscular Jimmie Dale, transformed
into a slouching, vicious-featured denizen of the underworld, replaced
the box under the flooring, pulled a slouch hat over his eyes,
extinguished the gas, and went out.

Jimmie Dale's range of acquaintanceship was wide--from the upper strata
of the St. James Club to the elite of New York's gangland. And, adored
by the one, he was trusted implicitly by the other--not understood,
perhaps, by the latter, for he had never allied himself with any of
their nefarious schemes, but trusted implicitly through long years of
personal contact. It had stood Jimmie Dale in good stead before, this
association, where, in a sort of strange, carefully guarded exchange,
the news of the underworld was common property to those without the law.
To New York in its millions, the murder of Metzer, the stool pigeon,
would be unknown until the city rose in the morning to read the
sensational details over the breakfast table; here, it would already be
the topic of whispered conversations, here it had probably been known
long before the police had discovered the crime. Especially would it be
expected to be known to Pete Lazanis, commonly called the Runt, who
was a power below the dead line and, more pertinent still, one in whose
confidence Jimmie Dale had rejoiced for years.

Jimmie Dale, as Larry the Bat--a euphonious "monaker" bestowed possibly
because this particular world knew him only by night--began a search for
the Runt. From one resort to another he hurried, talking in the accepted
style through one corner of his mouth to hard-visaged individuals behind
dirty, reeking bars that were reared on equally dirty and foul-smelling
sawdust-strewn floors; visiting dance halls, secretive back rooms, and
certain Chinese pipe joints.

But the Runt was decidedly elusive. There had been no news of him, no
one had seen him--and this after fully an hour had passed since Jimmie
Dale had left Carruthers in front of Moriarty's. The possibilities
however were still legion--numbered only by the numberless dives and
dens sheltered by that quarter of the city.