第14章

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 THEPOLICE 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.

Jimmie Dale turned into Chatham Square, heading for the Pagoda Dance Hall.A man loitering at the curb shot a swift, searching glance at him as he slouched by.Jimmie Dale paused in the doorway of the Pagoda and looked up and down the street.The man he had passed had drawn a little closer; another man in an apparently aimless fashion lounged a few yards away.

"Something up," muttered Jimmie Dale to himself."Lansing, of headquarters, and the other looks like Milrae."Jimmie Dale pushed in through the door of the Pagoda.A bedlam of noise surged out at him--a tin-pan piano and a mandolin were going furiously from a little raised platform at the rear; in the centre of the room a dozen couples were in the throes of the tango and the bunny-hug; around the sides, at little tables, men and women laughed and applauded and thumped time on the tabletops with their beer mugs; while waiters, with beer-stained aprons and unshaven faces, juggled marvelous handfuls of glasses and mugs from the bar beside the platform to the patrons at the tables.

Jimmie Dale's eyes swept the room in a swift, comprehensive glance, fixed on a little fellow, loudly dressed, who shared a table halfway down the room with a woman in a picture hat, and a smile of relief touched his lips.The Runt at last!

He walked down the room, caught the Runt's eyes significantly as he passed the table, kept on to a door between the platform and the bar, opened it, and went out into a lighted hallway, at one end of which a door opened onto the street, and at the other a stairway led above.

The Runt joined him."Wot's de row, Larry?" inquired the Runt.