第22章

Quick now in every action, he swung aside the portiere that curtained off the squat, barrel-shaped safe in the little alcove, opened the safe, took out that curious leather girdle with its kit of burglar's tools, added to it a flashlight and an automatic revolver, closed the safe--and passed into his dressing room.Here, he proceeded to divest himself rapidly of his evening clothes, selecting in their stead a suit of dark tweed.He heard Jason come up the stairs, pass along the hall, and mount the second flight to his own quarters; and presently came the sound of an automobile without.The dressing room fronted on the Drive--Jimmie Dale looked out.Benson was just getting out of the touring car.Slipping the leather girdle, then, around his waist, Jimmie Dale put on his vest, then his coat--and walked briskly downstairs.

Jason had laid out a gray ulster on the hall stand.Jimmie Dale put it on, selected a leather cap with motor-goggle attachment that pulled down almost to the tip of his nose, tucked a slouch hat into the pocket of the ulster, and, leaving the house, climbed into his car.

He glanced at his watch as he started--it was a quarter of eleven.

Jimmie Dale's lips pursed a little.

"I guess it'll make a night of it, and a tight squeeze, at that, to get back under cover before daylight," he muttered."I'll have to do some tall speeding."But at first, across the city and through Brooklyn, for all his impatience, it was necessarily slow--after that, Jimmie Dale took chances, and, once on the country roads of Long Island, the big, powerful car tore through the night like a greyhound whose leash is slipped.

A half hour passed--Jimmie Dale's eyes shifting occasionally from the gray thread of road ahead of him under the glare of the dancing lamps, to the road map spread out at his feet, upon which, from time to time, he focused his pocket flashlight.And then, finally, he slowed the car to a snail's pace--he should be very near his destination--that very ultra-exclusive subdivision of Charleton Park Manor.

On either side of the road now was quite a thickly set stretch of wooded land, rising slightly on the right--and this Jimmie Dale scrutinised sharply.In fact, he stopped for an instant as he came opposite to a wagon track--it seemed to be little more than that--that led in through the trees.

"If it's not too far from the seat of war," commented Jimmie Dale to himself, as he went on again, "it will do admirably."And then, a hundred yards farther on, Jimmie Dale nodded his head in satisfaction--he was passing the rather ornate stone pillars that marked the entrance to Charleton Park Manor, and on which the initial promoters of the subdivision, the real-estate people, had evidently deemed it good advertising policy to expend a small fortune.

Another hundred yards farther on, Jimmie Dale turned his car around and returned past the gates to the wagon track again.The road was deserted--not a car nor a vehicle of any description was in sight.

Jimmie Dale made sure of that--and in another instant Jimmie Dale's own car, every light extinguished, had vanished--he had backed it up the wagon track, just far enough in for the trees to screen it thoroughly from the main road.

Nor did Jimmie Dale himself appear again on the main road--until just as he emerged close to the gates of Charleton Park Manor from a short cut through the woods.Also, he was without his ulster now, and the slouch hat had replaced the motor cap.

Jimmie Dale, in the moonlight, took stock of his surroundings, as he passed in at a businesslike walk through the gates.It was a large park, if that name could properly be applied to it at all, and the houses--he caught sight of one set back from the driveway on the right--were quite far apart, each in its own rather spacious grounds among the trees.

"The second house on the right," her letter had said.Jimmie Dale had already passed the first one--the next would be Markel's then--and it loomed ahead of him now, black and shadowy and unlighted.

Jimmie Dale shot a glance around him--there was stillness, quiet everywhere--no sign of life--no sound.

Jimmie Dale's face became tense, his lips tight--and he stepped suddenly from the sidewalk in among the trees.They were not thick here, of course, the trees, and the turf beneath his feet was well kept--and, therefore, soundless.He moved quickly now, but cautiously, from tree to tree, for the moonlight, flooding the lawn and house, threw all objects into bold relief.

A minute, two, three went by--and a shadow flitted here and there across the light-green sward, like the moving of the trees swaying in the breeze--and then Jimmie Dale was standing close up against one side of the house, hidden by the protecting black shadows of the walls.

But here, for a moment, Jimmie Dale seemed little occupied with the house itself--he was staring down past its length to where the woods made a heavy, dark background at the rear.Then he turned his head, to face directly to the main road, then back again slowly, as though measuring an angle.Jimmie Dale had no intention of making his escape by the roundabout way in which he had been forced to come in order to make certain of locating the right house, the second one from the gates--and he was getting the bearings of his car and the wagon track now.

"I guess that'll be about right," Jimmie Dale muttered finally.

"And now for--"

He slipped along the side of the house and halted where, almost on a level with the ground, the French windows of the dining room opened on the lawn.Jimmie Dale tried them gently.They were locked.