The Adventures of Jimmie Dale | Page 8

had been pitted against the underworld, against the methods of a
thousand different crooks from Maine to California, the report of whose
every operation had reached him in the natural course of business, and
every one of which he had studied in minutest detail. It had begun
through that--but at the bottom of it was his own restless, adventurous
spirit.
He had meant to set the police by the ears, using his gray-seal device
both as an added barb and that no innocent bystander of the underworld,
innocent for once, might be involved--he had meant to laugh at them
and puzzle them to the verge of madness, for in the last analysis they
would find only an abortive attempt at crime--and he had succeeded.
And then he had gone too far--and he had been caught--by HER. That
string of pearls, which, to study whose effect facetiously, he had so

idiotically wrapped around his wrist, and which, so ironically, he had
been unable to loosen in time and had been forced to carry with him in
his sudden, desperate dash to escape from Marx's the big jeweler's, in
Maiden Lane, whose strong room he had toyed with one night, had
been the lever which, AT FIRST, she had held over him.
The bus was on Fifth Avenue now, and speeding rapidly down the
deserted thoroughfare. Jimmie Dale looked up at the lighted windows
of the St. James Club as they went by, smiled whimsically, and shifted
in his seat, seeking a more comfortable position.
She had caught him--how he did not know--he had never seen her--did
not know who she was, though time and again he had devoted all his
energies for months at a stretch to a solution of the mystery. The
morning following the Maiden Lane affair, indeed, before he had
breakfasted, Jason had brought him the first letter from her. It had
started by detailing his every move of the night before--and it had
ended with an ultimatum: "The cleverness, the originality of the Gray
Seal as a crook lacked but one thing," she had naively written, "and that
one thing was that his crookedness required a leading string to guide it
into channels that were worthy of his genius." In a word, SHE would
plan the coups, and he would act at her dictation and execute them--or
else how did twenty years in Sing Sing for that little Maiden Lane
affair appeal to him? He was to answer by the next morning, a simple
"yes" or "no" in the personal column of the morning NEWS-ARGUS.
A threat to a man like Jimmie Dale was like flaunting a red rag at a bull,
and a rage ungovernable had surged upon him. Then cold reason had
come. He was caught--there was no question about that--she had taken
pains to show him that he need make no mistake there. Innocent
enough in his own conscience, as far as actual theft went, for the pearls
would in due course be restored in some way to the possession of their
owner, he would have been unable to make even his own father, who
was alive then, believe in his innocence, let alone a jury of his peers.
Dishonour, shame, ignominy, a long prison sentence, stared him in the
face, and there was but one alternative--to link hands with this unseen,
mysterious accomplice. Well, he could at least temporise, he could

always "queer" a game in some specious manner, if he were pushed too
far. And so, in the next morning's NEWS-ARGUS, Jimmie Dale had
answered "yes." And then had followed those years in which there had
been NO temporising, in which every plan was carried out to the last
detail, those years of curious, unaccountable, bewildering affairs that
Carruthers had spoken of, one on top of another, that had shaken the
old headquarters on Mulberry Street to its foundations, until the Gray
Seal had become a name to conjure with. And, yes, it was quite true, he
had entered into it all, gone the limit, with an eagerness that was
insatiable.
The bus had reached the lower end of Fifth Avenue, passed through
Washington Square, and stopped at the end of its run. Jimmie Dale
clambered down from the top, threw a pleasant "good-night" to the
conductor, and headed briskly down the street before him. A little later
he crossed into West Broadway, and his pace slowed to a leisurely
stroll.
Here, at the upper end of the street, was a conglomerate business
section of rather inferior class, catering doubtless to the poor, foreign
element that congregated west of Broadway proper, and to the south of
Washington Square. The street was, at first glance, deserted; it was
dark and dreary, with stores and lofts on either side. An elevated train
roared by overhead, with