The Adventures of Jimmie Dale | Page 9

a thunderous, deafening clamour. Jimmie
Dale, on the right-hand side of the street, glanced interestedly at the
dark store windows as he went by. And then, a block ahead, on the
other side, his eyes rested on an approaching form. As the other
reached the corner and paused, and the light from the street lamp
glinted on brass buttons, Jimmie Dale's eyes narrowed a little under his
slouch hat. The policeman, although nonchalantly swinging a nightstick,
appeared to be watching him.
Jimmie Dale went on half a block farther, stooped to the sidewalk to tie
his shoe, glanced back over his shoulder--the policeman was not in
sight--and slipped like a shadow into the alleyway beside which he had
stopped.
It was another Jimmie Dale now--the professional Jimmie Dale. Quick

as a cat, active, lithe, he was over a six foot fence in the rear of a
building in a flash, and crouched a black shape, against the back door
of an unpretentious, unkempt, dirty, secondhand shop that fronted on
West Broadway--the last place certainly in all New York that the
managing editor of the NEWS-ARGUS, or any one else, for that matter,
would have picked out as the setting for the second debut of the Gray
Seal.
From the belt around his waist, Jimmie Dale took the black silk mask,
and slipped it on; and from the belt, too, came a little instrument that
his deft fingers manipulated in the lock. A curious snipping sound
followed. Jimmie Dale put his weight gradually against the door. The
door held fast.
"Bolted," said Jimmie Dale to himself.
The sensitive fingers travelled slowly up and down the side of the door,
seeming to press and feel for the position of the bolt through an inch of
plank--then from the belt came a tiny saw, thin and pointed at the end,
that fitted into the little handle drawn from another receptacle in the
leather girdle beneath the unbuttoned vest.
Hardly a sound it made as it bit into the door. Half a minute
passed--there was the faint fall of a small piece of wood--into the
aperture crept the delicate, tapering fingers--came a slight rasping of
metal--then the door swung back, the dark shadow that had been
Jimmie Dale vanished and the door closed again.
A round, white beam of light glowed for an instant--and disappeared. A
miscellaneous, lumbering collection of junk and odds and ends blocked
the entry, leaving no more space than was sufficient for bare
passageway. Jimmie Dale moved cautiously--and once more the
flashlight in his hand showed the way for an instant--then darkness
again.
The cluttered accumulation of secondhand stuff in the rear gave place
to a little more orderly arrangement as he advanced toward the front of
the store. Like a huge firefly, the flashlight twinkled, went out,

twinkled again, and went out. He passed a sort of crude, partitioned-off
apartment that did duty for the establishment's office, a sort of little
boxed-in place it was, about in the middle of the floor. Jimmie Dale's
light played on it for a moment. but he kept on toward the front door
without any pause.
Every movement was quick, sure, accurate, with not a wasted second. It
had been barely a minute since he had vaulted the back fence. It was
hardly a quarter of a minute more before the cumbersome lock of the
front door was unfastened, and the door itself pulled imperceptibly ajar.
He went swiftly back to the office now--and found it even more of a
shaky, cheap affair than it had at first appeared; more like a box stall
with windows around the top than anything else, the windows
doubtless to permit the occupant to overlook the store from the vantage
point of the high stool that stood before a long, battered, wobbly desk.
There was a door to the place, too, but the door was open and the key
was in the lock. The ray of Jimmie Dale's flashlight swept once around
the interior--and rested on an antique, ponderous safe.
Under the mask Jimmie Dale's lips parted in a smile that seemed almost
apologetic, as he viewed the helpless iron monstrosity that was little
more than an insult to a trained cracksman. Then from the belt came the
thin metal case and a pair of tweezers. He opened the case, and with the
tweezers lifted out one of the gray-coloured, diamond-shaped seals.
Holding the seal with the tweezers, he moistened the gummed side with
his lips, then laid it on a handkerchief which he took from his pocket,
and clapped the handkerchief against the front of the safe, sticking the
seal conspicuously into place. Jimmie Dale's insignia bore no finger
prints. The microscopes and magnifying glasses at headquarters had
many a time regretfully assured the police of that fact.