CHAPTER X
SILVER MAG
There was silence between them. Minute after minute passed. Neitherspoke.
Jimmie Dale dropped back into his chair again, and stared abstractedlybefore him. "We do not hold many trumps, Jimmie--we do not hold manytrumps"--her words were repeating themselves over and over in his mind.They seemed to challenge him mockingly to deny what was so obviously afact, and because he could not deny it to taunt and jeer at him--to jeerat him, when all that was held at stake hung literally upon his nextmove!
He looked up mechanically as the Tocsin walked to a broken mirror at therear of the miserable room; nodded mechanically in approval as she begandeftly to retouch the make-up on her face where the tears had left theirtraces--and resumed his abstracted gaze before him.
Box number four-two-eight--John Johansson--the Crime Club--the identityof the man who was posing as Henry LaSalle! If only he could hit upon aclew to the solution of a single one of those things, or a single phaseof one of them--if only he could glimpse a ray of light that would atleast prompt action, when every moment of inaction was multiplying theodds against them!
There were the men who were watching his house at that moment onRiverside Drive--he, as Larry the Bat, might in turn keep watch on them.He had though of that. In time, perhaps, he might, by so doing, discoverthe whereabouts of the Crime Club. In time! It was just that--he had notime! Forty-eight hours, the Tocsin insisted, was all the time that hecould count upon before they would become suspicious of Jimmie Dale's"illness," before they would discover that they were watching an emptyhouse!
He might--though this was even more hazardous--make an attempt to tracethe wires that tapped those of his telephone through the basement windowthat gave on the garage driveway. And what then? True, they could notlead very far away; but, even if successful, what then? They would notlead him to the Crime Club, but simply to some confederate, to some manor woman playing the part of a servant, perhaps, in the house next door,who, in turn, would have to be shadowed and watched.
Jimmie Dale shook his head. Better, of the two, to start in at once andshadow those who were shadowing his house. But that was not the way! Heknew that intuitively. He hated to eliminate it from consideration,for he had no other move to take its place--but such a move was almostsuicide in itself. Time, and time alone, was the vital factor. They, theTocsin and he, must act quickly--and STRIKE that night if they were towin. His fingers, the grimy fingers, dirty-nailed, of Larry theBat, that none now would recognise as the slim tapering, wonderfullysensitive fingers of Jimmie Dale, the fingers that had made the name ofthe Gray Seal famous, whose tips mocked at bars and safes and locks,and seemed to embody in themselves all the human senses, tightenedspasmodically on the edge of the table. Time! Time! Time! It seemed todin in his ears. And while he sat there powerless, impotent, theCrime Club was moving heaven and earth to find what HE must find--thatpackage--if he was to save this woman here, the woman whom he loved, shewho had been forced, through the machinations of these hell fiends,to adopt the life of a wretched hag, to exist among the dregs of theunderworld, whose squalour and vice and wantonness none knew better thanhe!
Jimmie Dale's face set grimly. Somewhere--somewhere in the past fiveyears of this life of hers in which she had been fighting the CrimeClub, pitting that clever brain of hers against it, MUST lie a clew.She had told him her story only in baldest outline, with scarcely areference to her own personal acts, with barely a single detail. Theremust be something, something that perhaps she had overlooked, something,just the merest hint of something that would supply a starting point,give him a glimmer of light.
She came back from across the room, and sank down in her chair again.She did not speak--the question, that meant life and death to them both,was in her eyes.
Jimmie answered the mute interrogation tersely.
"Not yet!" he said. Then, almost curtly, in a quick, incisive way, asthe keen, alert brain began to delve and probe: "You say this man Clarkenever returned to the house after that night?"
She nodded her head quietly.
"You are sure of that?" he insisted.
"Yes," she said. "I am sure."
"And you say that all these years you have kept a watch on the man whois posing as your uncle, and that he never went anywhere, or associatedwith any one, that would afford you a clew to this Crime Club?"
"Yes," she said again.
It was a moment before Jimmie Dale spoke.
"It's very strange!" he said musingly, at last. "So strange, in fact,that it's impossible. He must have communicated with the others, andcommunicated with them often. The game they were playing was toobig, too full of details, to admit of any other possibility. And thetelephone as an explanation isn't good enough."
"And yet," she said earnestly, "possible or impossible, it isnevertheless true. That he might have succeeded in eluding me onoccasions was perhaps to be expected; but that in all those years Ishould not catch him once in what, if you are correct, must have beenmany and repeated conferences with the same men is too improbable to bethought of seriously."
Jimmie Dale shook his head again.
"If you had been able to watch him night and day, that might be so,"he said crisply. "But, at best, you could only watch him a very smallportion of the time."
She smiled at him a little wanly.
"Do you think, Jimmie, from what you, as the Gray Seal, know of me, thatI would have watched in any haphazard way like that?"
He glanced at her with a sudden start.
"What do you mean?" he asked quickly.
"Look at me!" she said quietly. "Have you ever seen me before? I mean asI am now."
"No," he answered, after an instant. "Not that I know of."
"And yet"--she smiled wanly again--"you have not lived, or made theplace you hold in the underworld, without having heard of Silver Mag."
"You!" exclaimed Jimmie Dale. "You--Silver Mag!" He stared at herwonderingly, as, crouch-shouldered now, the hair, gray-threaded,straggling out from under the hood of a faded, dark-blue, seam-worncloak, she sat before him, a typical creature of the underworld, herrole an art in its conception, perfect in its execution. Silver Mag!Yes, he had heard of Silver Mag--as every one in the Bad Lands had heardof her. Silver Mag and her pocketful of coin! Always a pocketful ofsilver, so they said, that was dispensed prodigally to the wivesand children temporarily deprived of support by husbands and fathersunfortunate enough in their clashes with the law to be doing "spaces"up the river--and therefore the underworld swore by Silver Mag.Always silver, never a bill; Silver Mag had never been seen with abanknote--that was her eccentricity. Much or little, she gave or paidout of her pocketful of jangling silver. She was credited with beinga sworn enemy of the police, and--yes, he remembered, too--with havingdone "time" herself. "I don't quite understand," he said, in a puzzledway. "I haven't run across you personally because you probably tookcare to see that I shouldn't; but--it's no secret--every one says you'veserved a jail sentence yourself."
"That is simply enough explained," she answered gravely. "The story isof my own making. When I decided to adopt this life, both for my ownsafety and as the best means of keeping a watch on that man, I knew thatI must win the confidence of the underworld, that I must have help, andthat in order to obtain that help I must have some excuse for my enmityagainst the man known as Henry LaSalle. To be widely known in theunderworld was of inestimable value--nothing, I knew, could accomplishthat as quickly as eccentricity. You see now how and why I becameknown as Silver Mag. I gained the confidence of every crook in NewYork through their wives and children. I told them the story of my jailsentence--while I swore vengeance on Henry LaSalle. I told them that hehad had me arrested for something I never stole while I was working forhim as a charwoman, and that he had had me railroaded to jail. Therewasn't one but gave me credit for the theft, perhaps; but equally,there wasn't one but understood, and my eccentricity helped this out,my wanting to 'get' Henry LaSalle. Well--do you see now, Jimmie? I hadmoney, I
had the confidence of the underworld, I had an excuse for myhatred of Henry LaSalle, and so I had all the help I wanted. Day andnight that man has been watched. He receives no visitors--what sociallife he has is, as you know, at the club. There is not a house that hehas ever entered that, sooner or later, I have not entered after himin the hope of finding the headquarters of the clique. Even the menand women, as far as human possibility could accomplish it, that hehas talked to on the streets have been shadowed, and their identitysatisfactorily established--and the net result has been failure; utter,absolute, complete failure!"
Jimmie Dale's eyes, that had held steadily on her face, shifted,troubled and perplexed, to the table top.
"You are wonderful!" he said, under his breath. "Wonderful! And--andthat makes it all the more amazing, all the more incomprehensible. It isstill impossible that he has not been in close and constant touch withhis accomplices. He MUST have been! We would be blind fools to argueagainst it! It could not, on the face of it, have been otherwise!"
"Then how, when, where has he done it?" she asked wearily.
"God knows!" he said bitterly. "And if they have been clever enough toescape you all these years, I'm almost inclined to say what you said alittle while ago--that we're beaten."
She watched him miserably, as he pushed back his chair impulsively and,standing up, stared down at her.
"We're against it--HARD!" he said, with a mirthless laugh. Then, hislips tightening: "But we'll try another tack--the chauffeur--Travers.Though even here the Crime Club has a day's start of us, even if lastnight they knew no more about the whereabouts of that package than weknow now. I'm afraid of it! The chances are more than even that they'vealready got it. If they were able to catch Travers as the chauffeur,they would have had something tangible to work back from"--Jimmie Dalewas talking more to himself than to the Tocsin now, as though he weremuttering his thoughts aloud. "How did they get track of him? When?Where? What has it led to? And what in Heaven's name," he burst outsuddenly, "is this box number four-two-eight!"
"A safety-deposit vault, perhaps, that he has taken somewhere," shehazarded.
Jimmie Dale laughed mirthlessly again.
"That is the one definite thing I do know--that it isn't!" he saidpositively. "It is nothing of that kind. It was half-past ten o'clockat night when I met him, and he said that he had intended going back forthe package if it had been safe to do so. Deposit vaults are not openat that hour. The package is, or was, if they have not already got it,readily accessible--and at any hour. Now go over everything again, everydetail that passed between you and Travers. He let you know that he wasback in New York by means of a 'personal,' you said. What else was inthat 'personal' besides the telephone number and the hour you were tocall him? Anything?"
"Nothing that will help us any," she replied colourlessly. "There weresimply the words 'northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place,'and the signature that we had agreed upon, the two first and two lastletters of the alphabet transposed--BAZY."
"I see," said Jimmie Dale quickly. "And over the 'phone he completed hismessage. Clever enough!"
"Yes," she said. "In that way, if any one were listening, or overheadthe plan, there could be little harm come of it, for the essentialfeature of all, the place of rendezvous, was not mentioned. It has notbeen Travers' fault that this happened--and in spite of every precautionit has cost him his life. He wanted nothing to give them a clew to mywhereabouts; he was trying to guard against the slightest evidence thatwould associate us one with the other. He even warned me over the'phone not to tell him how, where, or the mode of life I was living. Andnaturally, he dared give me no particulars about himself. I was simplyto select a third party whom I could trust, and to follow out hisinstructions, which were those that I sent to you in my letter."
Jimmie Dale began to pace nervously up and down the room.
"Nothing else?" he queried, a little blankly.
"Nothing else," she said monotonously.
"But since last night, since you knew that things had gone wrong," hepersisted, "surely you traced that telephone number--the one you calledup?"
"Yes," she said, and shrugged her shoulders in a tired way. "NaturallyI did that--but, like everything else, it amounted to nothing. Hetelephoned from Makoff's pawnshop on that alley off Thompson Street,and--"
"WHERE!" Jimmie Dale, suddenly stock-still, almost shouted the word. "Hetelephoned from--where! Say that again!"
She looked at him in amazement, half rising from her chair.
"Jimmie, what is it?" she cried. "You don't mean that--"
He was beside her now, his hands pressed upon her shoulders, his faceflushed.
"Box number four-two-eight!" He laughed out hysterically in hisexcitement. "John Johansson--box number four-two-eight! And like a foolI never thought of it! Don't you see? Don't you know now yourself? THEUNDERGROUND POST OFFICE!"
She stood up, clinging to him; a wild relief, that was based on herconfidence in him, in her eyes and face, even while she shook her head.
"No," she said frantically. "No--I do not know. Tell me, Jimmie! Tell mequickly! You mean at Makoff's?"
"No! Not Makoff's--at Spider Jack's, on Thompson Street!"--he wasclipping off his words, still holding her tightly by the shoulders,still staring into her eyes. "You know Spider Jack! Jack's littlenovelty store! Ah, you have not learned all of the underworld yet!Spider Jack is the craftiest 'fence' in the Bad Lands--and Makoff ishis partner. Spider buys the crooks' stuff, and Makoff disposes of itthrough the pawnshop--it's only a step through the connecting back yardfrom one to the other, and--"
"Yes--but," she interrupted feverishly, "the package--you said--"
"Wait!" Jimmie Dale cried. "I'm coming to that! If Travers stood in withMakoff, he stood in with Spider Jack. For years Spider has been a sortof clearing house for the underworld--for years he has conducted, andprofitably, too, his underground post office. Crooks from all overthe country, let alone those in New York, communicate with each otherthrough Spider Jack. These, for a fee, are registered at Spider's, andgiven a number--a box number he calls it, though, of course, thereare no actual boxes. Letters come by mail addressed to him--the sealedenvelope within containing the actually intended recipient's name. TheseSpider either forwards, or delivers in person when they are calledfor. Dozens of crooks, too, unwilling, perhaps, to dispose of smallill-gotten articles at ruinous 'fence' prices, and finding it unhealthyfor the moment to keep them in their possession, use this means ofdepositing them temporarily for safe-keeping. You see now, don't you?It's certain that's where Travers left the package. He used the nameof John Johansson, not to hoodwink Spider Jack, I should say, but asan added safeguard against the Crime Club. Travers must have known bothMakoff and Spider Jack in the old days, and probably had reason, andgood reason, to trust them both--possibly, a crook then himself, ashe confessed, he may have acted in a legal capacity for them in theirfrequent tangles with the police."
"Then," she said--and there was a glad, new note in her voice, "then,Jimmie--Jimmie, we are safe! You can get it, Jimmie! It is only a littlething for the Gray Seal to do--to get it now that we know where it is."
"Yes," he said tersely. "Yes--if it is still there."
"Still there!"--she repeated the words quickly, nervously. "Still there!What do you mean?"
"I mean if they, too, have not discovered that he was at Makoff's--ifthey have not got there first!" he said grimly. "There seems to be nolimit to their cleverness, or their power. They penetrated his disguiseas a chauffeur, and who knows what more they have learned since lastnight? We are fighting them in the dark, and--WHAT'S THAT!" he whisperedtensely, suddenly--and leaning forward like a flash, as he whipped hisautomatic from his pocket, he blew out the lamp.
The room was in darkness. They stood there rigid, silent, listening. Herhand found and caught his arm.
And then it came again--a low sound, the sound of a stealthy footstepjust outside the window that faced on the storage yard.