第81章

Jimmie Dale raised his hand to the gas fixture, circled the room with a glance that missed no single detail--then the light went out, the door closed behind him, locked, a dark shadow crept silently down the stairs, out through the side door into the alleyway, along the alleyway close to the wall of the tenement where it was blackest, and, satisfied that for the moment there were no passers-by, emerged on the street, walking leisurely toward the Bowery.

Once well away from the Sanctuary, however, Jimmie Dale quickened his steps; and twenty minutes later, having stopped but once to telephone to his home on Riverside Drive for his touring car, he was briskly mounting the steps of the St.James Club on Fifth Avenue.

Another twenty minutes after that, and he had dismissed Benson, his chauffeur, and, at the wheel of his big, powerful machine, was speeding uptown for the Palais-Metropole Hotel.

It was twelve minutes after nine when he drew up at the curb in front of the side entrance of the hotel--his watch, set by guesswork, had been a little slow, and he had corrected it at the club.He was replacing the watch in his pocket as he sauntered around the corner, and passed in through the main entrance to the big lobby.

Jimmie Dale avoided the elevators--it was only one flight up, and elevator boys on occasions had been known to be observant.At the top of the first landing, a long, wide, heavily carpeted corridor was before him."Number one hundred and forty-eight, the corner room on the right," the Tocsin had said.Jimmie Dale walked nonchalantly along--past No.148.At the lower end of the hall a group of people were gathered around the elevator doors; halfway down the corridor a bell boy came out of a room and went ahead of Jimmie Dale.

And then Jimmie Dale stopped suddenly, and began to retrace his steps.The group had entered the elevator, the bell boy had disappeared around the farther end of the hall into the wing of the hotel--the corridor was empty.In a moment he was standing before the door of No.148; in another, under the persuasion of a little steel instrument, deftly manipulated by Jimmie Dale's slim, tapering fingers, the lock clicked back, the door opened, and he stepped inside, closing and locking the door again behind him.

It was already a quarter past nine, but no one was as yet in the connecting room--the fanlight next door had been dark as he passed.

His flashlight swept about him, located the connecting door--and went out.He moved to the door, tried it, and found it locked.

Again the little steel instrument came into play, released the lock, and Jimmie Dale opened the door.Again the flashlight winked.The door opened into a bathroom that, obviously, at will, was either common to the two rooms or could, by the simple expedient of locking one door or the other, be used by one of the rooms alone.In the present instance, the occupant of the adjoining apartment had taken "a room with a bath."Jimmie Dale passed through the bathroom to the opposite door.This was already three-quarters open, and swung outward into the bedroom, near the lower end of the room by the window.Through the crack of the door by the hinges, Jimmie Dale flashed his light, testing the radius of vision, pushed the door a few inches wider open, tested it again with the flashlight--and retreated back into No.148, closing the door on his side until it was just ajar.

He stood there then silently waiting.It was Hamvert's room next door, and Hamvert and the Weasel were already late.A step sounded outside in the corridor.Jimmie Dale straightened intently.The step passed on down the hallway and died away.A false alarm!

Jimmie Dale smiled whimsically.It was a strange adventure this that confronted him, quite the strangest in a way that the Tocsin had ever planned--and the night lay before him full of peril in its extraordinary complications.To win the hand he must block Hamvert and the Weasel without allowing them an inkling that his interference was anything more than, say, the luck of a hotel sneak thief at most.The Weasel was a dangerous man, one of the slickest second-story workers in the country, with safe cracking as one of his favourite pursuits, a man most earnestly desired by the police, provided the latter could catch him "with the goods." As for Hamvert, he did not know Hamvert, who was a stranger in New York, except that Hamvert had fleeced a man named Michael Breen out of his share in a claim they had had together when Breen had first gone to Alaska to try his luck, and now, having discovered that Breen, when prospecting alone somewhere in the interior a month or so ago, had found a rich vein and had made a map or diagram of its location, he, Hamvert, had followed the other to New York for the purpose of getting it by hook or crook.Breen's "find" had been too late;taken sick, he had never worked his claim, had barely got back home before he died, and only in time to hand his wife the strange legacy of a roughly scrawled little piece of paper, and--Jimmie Dale straightened up alertly once more.Steps again--and this time coming from the direction of the elevator; then voices; then the opening of the door of the next room; then a voice, distinctly audible:

"Pull up a chair, and we'll get down to business.You're late, as it is.We haven't any time to waste, if we're going to wash pay-dirt to-night."

"Aw, dat's all right!" responded another voice--quite evidently the Weasel's."Don't youse worry--de game's cinched to a fadeaway."There was the sound of chairs being moved across the floor.Jimmie Dale slipped the black silk mask over his face, opened the door on his side of the bathroom cautiously, and, without a sound, stepped into the bathroom that was lighted now, of course, by the light streaming in through the partially opened door of Hamvert's room.