PART TWO: THE WOMAN IN THE CASE
CHAPTER I
BELOW THE DEAD LINE
Whisperings! Always whisperings, low, sibilant, floating errantlyfrom all sides, until they seemed a component part of the drug-ladenatmosphere itself. And occasionally another sound: the soft SLAP-SLAPof loose-slippered feet, the faint rustle of equally loose-fittinggarments. And everywhere the sweet, sickish smell of opium. It was ChangFoo's, simply a cellar or two deeper in Chang Foo's than that in whichDago Jim had quarrelled once--and died!
Larry the Bat, vicious-faced, unkempt, disreputable, lay sprawled out onone of the dive's bunks, an opium pipe beside him. But Larry the Bat wasnot smoking; instead, his ear was pressed closely against the boardingthat formed the rather flimsy partition at the side of the bunk. Oneheard many things in Chang Foo's if one cared to listen--if one couldfirst win one's way through the carefully guarded gateway, that to theuninitiated offered nothing more interesting than the entrance to aChinese tea-shop, and an uninviting one at that!
HAD HE BEEN FOLLOWED IN HERE? He had been shadowed for the last hour; ofthat, at least, he was certain. Why? By whom? For an hour he had dodgedin and out through the dens of the underworld, as only one who was athome there and known to all could do--and at last he had taken refuge inChang Foo's like a fox burrowing deep into its hole.
Few could find their way into the most infamous opium den in all NewYork, where not only the poppy ruled as master, but where crime washatched, ay, and carried to its ghastly consummation, sometimes, aswell; and of those few, not one but was of the underworld itself. Andit was that fact which held his muscles strained and rigid now under themiserable rags that covered them, and it was that which kept the keen,quick brain alert and active, every faculty keyed up and tense. If itwere the police, he had little to fear, for they could not forcetheir way in without warning; but if it were the underworld, he was inimminent peril, and had done little better than run himself into a trapfrom which there was no escape.
"DEATH TO THE GRAY SEAL!"--he had heard that whispered more than once inthis very place. Who knew at what moment the role of Larry the Bat wouldbe uncovered, and the underworld, where now he held so high a place,would be at his throat like a pack of snarling wolves! Who had beenshadowing him during the last hour?
Whisperings! Nothing tangible! He could catch no words. Only thenever-ending whisperings of gathered groups here and there--andsometimes the clink of coin where some game was in progress.
The curtain before his bunk was drawn suddenly aside--and Larrythe Bat's fingers, where his hand was carelessly hidden by his bodytightened upon his automatic.
"Smokee some more?"
The fingers relaxed. It was only Sam Wah, one of the attendants.
"Nix!" said Larry the Bat, in a slightly muddled tone. "Got enough."
The curtain fell into place again. Larry the Bat's lips set in a thinsmile. Ultimately it made little difference whether it was the police orthe underworld! The smile grew thinner. It was the flip of a coin, thatwas all! With one there was the death house at Sing Sing for the GraySeal; with the other--well, there were many ways, from a shot or a knifethrust in the open street, to his murder in some hidden dive likethis of Chang Foo's, for instance, where he now was--the Gray Seal wasresponsible for the occupancy of too many penitentiary cells by those ofthe underworld to look for any other fate!
He raised himself up sharply on his elbow. A shrill, high note, likethe scream of a parrakeet, rang out a second time. He tore the curtainaside, and jumped to his feet. All around him, in the twinkling of aneye, Chinamen in fluttering blouses, chattering like magpies, mingledwith snarling, cursing whites, were running madly. A voice, prefacedwith an oath, bawled out behind him, as he sprang forward and joined therush:
"Beat it! De cops! Beat it!"
The police! A raid! Was it for HIM? From rooms, an amazing number ofthem, more forms rushed out, joined, divided, separated, and dashed,some this way, some that, along branching passageways. There had beenraids before, the police had begun to change their minds about ChangFoo's, but Chang Foo's was not an easy place to raid. House after housein that quarter of Chinese laundries, of tea shops, of chop-suey joints,opened one into the other through secret passages in the cellars.Larry the Bat plunged down a staircase, and halted in the darkness ofa cellar, drawing back against the wall while the flying feet of hisfellow fugitives scurried by him.
Was it for HIM, this raid? If not, the police had not a hope of gettinghim if he kept his head; for back in Chang Foo's proper, which would bequite closed off now, Chang Foo would be blandly submitting to arrest,offering himself as a sort of glorified sacrifice while the policeconfiscated opium and fan-tan layouts. If the police had no otherpurpose than that in mind, Chang Foo would simply pay a fine; the nextnight the place would be in full blast again; and Chang Foo, higher thanever in the confidence of the underworld's aristocracy, would reap hisreward--and that would be all there was to it.
But was that all? The raid had followed significantly close upon theheels of his entry into Chang Foo's. Larry the Bat began to move forwardagain. He dared not follow the others, and, later on, when quiet wasrestored, issue out into the street from any one of the various housesin which he might temporarily have taken refuge. There was a chance inthat, a chance that the police might be more zealous than usual, even ifhe particularly was not their game--and he could take no chance. Arrestfor Larry the Bat, even on suspicion, could have but one conclusion--nota pleasant one--the disclosure that Larry the Bat was not Larry the Batat all, but Jimmie Dale, the millionaire club-man, and, to complete afatal triplication, that Larry the Bat and Jimmie Dale was the Gray Sealupon whose head was fixed a price!
All was silence around him now, except that from overhead cameoccasionally the muffled tread of feet. He felt his way along into ablack, narrow passage, emerged into a second cellar, swept the placewith a single, circling gleam from a pocket flashlight, passed astairway that led upward, reached the opposite wall, and, dropping onhands and knees, crawled into what, innocently enough, appeared to bethe opening of a coal bin.
He knew Chang Foo's well--as he knew the ins and outs of every den andplace he frequented, knew them as a man knows such things when his lifeat any moment might hang upon his knowledge.
He was in another passage now, and this, in a few steps, brought him toa door. Here he halted, and stood for a full five minutes, absolutelymotionless, absolutely still, listening. There was nothing--not asound. He tried the door cautiously. It was locked. The slim, sensitive,tapering fingers of Jimmie Dale, unrecognisable now in the grimy digitsof Larry the Bat, felt tentatively over the lock. To fingers that seemedin their tips to possess all the human senses, that time and againin their delicate touch upon the dial of a safe had mocked at humaningenuity and driven the police into impotent frenzy, this was a pitifulthing. From his pocket came a small steel instrument that was quicklyand deftly inserted in the keyhole. There was a click, the door swungopen, and Jimmie Dale, alias Larry the Bat, stepped outside into a backyard half a block away from the entrance to Chang Foo's.
Again he listened. There did not appear to be any unusual excitement inthe neighbourhood. From open windows above him and from adjoining housescame the ordinary, commonplace sounds of voices talking and laughing,even the queer, weird notes of a Chinese chant. He stole noiselesslyacross the yard, out into the lane, and made his way rapidly along tothe cross street.
In a measure, now, he was safe; but one thing, a very vital thing,remained to be done. It was absolutely necessary that he should knowwhether he was the quarry that the police had been after in the raid, ifit was the police who had been shadowing him all evening. If it was thepolice, there was but one meaning to it--Larry the Bat was known to bethe Gray Seal, and a problem perilous enough in any aspect confrontedhim. Dare he risk the Sanctuary--for the clothes of Jimmie Dale? Or wasit safer to burglarise, as he had once done before, his own mansion onRiverside Drive?
His thoughts were running riot, and he
frowned, angry with himself.There was time enough to think of that when he knew that it was thepolice against whom he had to match his wits.
Well in the shadow of the buildings, he moved swiftly along the sidestreet until he came to the corner of the street on which, halfway downthe block, fronted Chang Foo's tea-shop. A glance in that direction, andJimmie Dale drew a breath of relief. A patrol wagon was backed up tothe curb, and a half dozen officers were busy loading it with what wasevidently Chang Foo's far from meagre stock of gambling appurtenances;while Chang Foo himself, together with Sam Wah and another attendant,were in the grip of two other officers, waiting possibly for anotherpatrol wagon. There was a crowd, too, but the crowd was at a respectfuldistance--on the opposite side of the street.
Jimmie Dale still hugged the corner. A man swaggered out from a doorway,quite close to Chang Foo's, and came on along the street. As the otherreached the corner, Jimmie Dale sidled forward.
"'Ello, Chick!" he said, out of the corner of his mouth. "Wot's de lay?"
"'Ello, Larry!" returned the other. "Aw, nuthin'! De nutcracker onChang, dat's all."
"I t'ought mabbe dey was lookin' for some guy dat was in dere," observedJimmie Dale.
"Nuthin' doin'!" the other answered. "I was in dere meself. De whole mobbeat it clean, an' de bulls never batted an eye. Didn't youse pipe memake me get-away outer Shanghai's a minute ago? De bulls never wentnowhere except into Chang's. Dere's a new lootenant in de precinctinaugeratin' himself, dat's all. S'long, Larry--I gotta date."
"S'long, Chick!" responded Jimmie Dale--and started slowly back alongthe cross street.
It was not the police, then, who were interested in his movements! Thenwho? He shook his head with a little, savage, impotent gesture. Onething was clear: it was too early to risk a return to the Sanctuary andattempt the rehabilitation of Jimmie Dale. If any one was on thehunt for Larry the Bat, the Sanctuary would be the last place to beoverlooked.
He turned the next corner, hesitated a moment in front of a garishlylighted dance hall, and finally shuffled in through the door, made hisway across the floor, nodding here and there to the elite of gangland,and, with a somewhat arrogant air of proprietorship, sat down at a tablein the corner. Little better than a tramp in appearance, certainlythe most disreputable-looking object in the place, even the waiter whoapproached him accorded him a certain curious deference--was not Larrythe Bat the most celebrated dope fiend below the dead line?
"Gimme a mug o' suds!" ordered Jimmie Dale, and sprawled royally back inhis chair.
Under the rim of his slouch hat, pulled now far over his eyes, hesearched the faces around him. If he had been asked to pick the actorsfor a revel from the scum of the underworld, he could not have improvedupon the gathering. There were perhaps a hundred men and women inthe room, the majority dancing, and, with the exception of a fewsight-seeing slummers, they were men and women whose acquaintance withthe police was intimate but not cordial--far from cordial.
Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders, and sipped at the glass that hadbeen set before him. It was grimly ironic that he should be, not onlythere, but actually a factor and a part of the underworld's intimatelife! He, Jimmie Dale, a wealthy man, a member of New York'sexclusive clubs, a member of New York's most exclusive society! It wasinconceivable. He smiled sardonically. Was it? Well, then, it was nonethe less true. His life unquestionably was one unique, apart from anyother man's, but it was, for all that, actual and real.
There had been three years of it now--since SHE had come into his life.Jimmie Dale slouched down a little in his chair. The ice was thin,perilously thin, that he was skating on now. Each letter, with itsdemand upon him to match his wits against police or underworld, oragainst both combined, perhaps, made that peril a little greater, alittle more imminent--if that were possible, when already his lifewas almost literally carried, daily, hourly, in his hand. Not that herebelled against it; it was worth the price that some day he expectedhe must pay--the price of honour, wealth, a name disgraced, ruin, death.Was he quixotic? Immoderately so? He smiled gravely. Perhaps. But hewould do it all over again if the choice were his. There were those whoblessed the name of the Gray Seal, as well as those who cursed it. Andthere was the Tocsin!
Who was she? He did not know, but he knew that he had come to love her,come to care for her, and that she had come to mean everything in lifeto him. He had never seen her, to know her face. He had never seen herface, but he knew her voice--ay, he had even held her for a moment, themoment of wildest happiness he had ever known, in his arms. That nightwhen he had entered his library, his own particular den in his ownhouse, and in the darkness had found her there--found her finallythrough no effort of his own, when he had searched so fruitlessly foryears to find her, using every resource at his command to find her! Andshe, because she had come of her own volition, relying upon him, hadheld him in honour to let her go as she had come--without looking uponher face! Exquisite irony! But she had made him a promise then--that thework of the Gray Seal was nearly over--that soon there would be an endto the mystery that surrounded her--that he should know all--that heshould know HER.
He smiled again, but it was a twisted smile on the mechanicallymisshapen lips of Larry the Bat. NEARLY over! Who knew? That "nearly"might be too late! Even tonight he had been shadowed, was skulking evennow in this place as a refuge. Who knew? Another hour, and the newsboysmight be shrieking their "Uxtra! Uxtra! De Gray Seal caught! Demillionaire Jimmie Dale de Jekyll an' Hyde of real life!"
Jimmie Dale straightened up suddenly in his seat. There was a shout,an oath bawled out high above the riot of noise, a chorus of feminineshrieks from across the room. What was the matter with theunderworld to-night? He seemed fated to find nothing but centres ofdisturbance--first a raid at Chang Foo's, and now this. What was thematter here? They were stampeding toward him from the other side ofthe room. There was the roar of a revolver shot--another. Black Ike! Hecaught an instant's glimpse of the gunman's distorted face through thecrowd. That was it probably--a row over some moll.
And then, as Jimmie Dale lunged up from his chair to his feet to escapethe rush, pandemonium itself seemed to break loose. Yells, shots,screams, and oaths filled the air. The crowd surged this way and that.Tables were overturned and sent crashing to the floor. And then camesudden darkness, as some one of the attendants in misguided excitabilityswitched off the lights.
The darkness but served to increase the panic, not allay it. With asavage snap of his jaws, Jimmie Dale swung from his table in the cornerwith the intention of making his way out by a side door behind him--itwas a case of the police again, and the patrolman outside would probablybe pulling a riot call by now. And the police--He stopped suddenly,as though he had been struck. An envelope, thrust there out of thedarkness, was in his hand; and her voice, HERS, the Tocsin's, wassounding in his ears:
"Jimmie! Jimmie! I've been trying all evening to catch you! Quick! Getto the Sanctuary and change your clothes. There's not an instant tolose! It's for my sake to-night!"
And then a surging mob was around him on every side, and, pushing,jostling, half lifting him at times from his feet, carried him forwardwith its rush, and with him in its midst burst through the door and outinto the street.