第88章

THE ALIBI

DEATH TO THE GRAY SEAL!"--through the underworld, in dens and dives that sheltered from the law the vultures that preyed upon society, prompted by self-fear, by secret dread, by reason of their very inability to carry out their purpose, the whispered sentence grew daily more venomous, more insistent.THE GRAY SEAL, DEAD OR ALIVE--BUT THE GRAY SEAL!" It was the "standing orders" of the police.

Railed at by a populace who angrily demanded at its hands this criminal of criminals, mocked at and threatened by a virulent press, stung to madness by the knowledge of its own impotence, flaunted impudently to its face by this mysterious Gray Seal to whose door the law laid a hundred crimes, for whom the bars of a death cell in Sing Sing was the certain goal could he but be caught, the police, to a man, was like an uncaged beast that, flicked to the raw by some unseen assailant and murderous in its fury, was crouched to strike.

Grim paradox--a common bond that linked the hands of the law with those that outraged it!

Death to the Gray Seal! Was it, at last, the beginning of the end?

Jimmie Dale, as Larry the Bat, unkempt, disreputable in appearance, supposed dope fiend, a figure familiar to every denizen below the dead line, skulked along the narrow, ill-lighted street of the East Side that, on the corner ahead, boasted the notorious resort to which Bristol Bob had paid the doubtful, if appropriate, compliment of giving his name.From under the rim of his battered hat, Jimmie Dale's eyes, veiled by half-closed, well-simulated drug-laden lids, missed no detail either of his surroundings or pertaining to the passers-by.Though already late in the evening, half-naked children played in the gutters; hawkers of multitudinous commodities cried their wares under gasoline banjo torches affixed to their pushcarts;shawled women of half a dozen races, and men equally cosmopolitan, loitered at the curb, or blocked the pavement, or brushed by him.

Now a man passed him, flinging a greeting from the corner of his mouth; now another, always without movement of the lips--and Jimmie Dale answered them--from the corner of his mouth.

But while his eyes were alert, his mind was only subconsciously attune to his surroundings.Was it indeed the beginning of the end?

Some day, he had told himself often enough, the end must come.Was it coming now, surely, with a sort of grim implacability--when it was too late to escape! Slowly, but inexorably, even his personal freedom of action was narrowing, being limited, and, ironically enough, through the very conditions he had himself created as an avenue of escape.

It was not only the police now; it was, far more to be feared, the underworld as well.In the old days, the role of Larry the Bat had been assumed at intervals, at his own discretion, when, in a corner, he had no other way of escape; now it was forced upon him almost daily.The character of Larry the Bat could no longer be discarded at will.He had flung down the gauntlet to the underworld when, as the Gray Seal, he had closed the prison doors behind Stangeist, The Mope, Australian Ike, and Clarie Deane, and the underworld had picked the gauntlet up.Betrayed, as they believed, by the one who, though unknown to them; they had counted the greatest among themselves, and each one fearful that his own betrayal might come next, every crook, every thug in the Bad Lands now eyed his oldest pal with suspicion and distrust, and each was a self-constituted sleuth, with the prod of self-preservation behind him, sworn to the accomplishment of that unhallowed slogan--death to the Gray Seal.

Almost daily now he must show himself as Larry the Bat in some gathering of the underworld--a prolonged absence from his haunts was not merely to invite certain suspicion, where all were suspicious of each other, it was to invite certain disaster.He had now either to carry the role like a little old man of the sea upon his back, or renounce it forever.And the latter course he dared not even consider--the Sanctuary was still the Sanctuary, and the role of Larry the Bat was still a refuge, the trump card in the lone hand he played.

He reached the corner, pushed open the door of Bristol Bob's, and shuffled in.The place was a glare of light, a hideous riot of noise.On a polished section of the floor in the centre, a turkey trot was in full swing; laughter and shouting vied raucously with an impossible orchestra.

Jimmie Dale slowly made the circuit of the room past the tables, that, ranged around the sides, were packed with occupants who thumped their glasses in tempo with the music and clamoured at the rushing waiters for replenishment.A dozen, two dozen, men and women greeted him.Jimmie Dale indifferently returned their salutes.What a galaxy of crooks--the cream of the underworld! His eyes, under half-closed lids, swept the faces--lags, dips, gatmen, yeggs, mob stormers, murderers, petty sneak thieves, stalls, hangers-on--they were all there.He knew them all; he was known to all.

He shuffled on to the far end of the room, his leer a little arrogant, a certain arrogance, too, in the tilt of his battered hat.

He also was quite a celebrity in that gathering--Larry the Bat was of the aristocracy and the elite of gangland.Well, the show was over; he had stalked across the stage, performed for his audience--and in another hour now, free until he must repeat the same performance the next day in some other equally notorious dive, he would be sitting in for a rubber of bridge at that most exclusive of all clubs, the St.James, where none might enter save only those whose names were vouched for in the highest and most select circles, and where for partners he would possibly have a justice of the supreme court, or mayhap an eminent divine! He looked suddenly around him, as though startled.It always startled him, that comparison.There was something too stupendous to be simply ironical in the incongruity of it.If--if he were ever run to earth!