reached
him, muffled, and at intervals. Another quarter of an hour passed--an
eternity of torment. It seemed to Jimmie Dale, for all his will power,
that he could not hold himself in check, that he must move, scream out
even in the torture that was passing all endurance. It was silent now,
utterly silent--and then out of the silence, just outside his door, a
footstep creaked--and a man walked to the stairs and went down.

"Five," said Jimmie Dale to himself. "The sharpest man in the United
States secret service."

And then for the first time Jimmie Dale moved--to wipe away the beads of
sweat that had sprung out upon his forehead.

CHAPTER V

THE AFFAIR OF THE PUSHCART MAN

Larry the Bat shambled out of the side door of the tenement into the
back alleyway; shambled along the black alleyway to the street--and
smiled a little grimly as a shadow across the roadway suddenly shifted
its position. The game was growing acute, critical, desperate even--and
it was his move.

Larry the Bat, disreputable denizen of the underworld, alias Jimmie
Dale, millionaires' clubman, alias the Gray Seal, whom Carruthers of the
MORNING NEWS-ARGUS called the master criminal of the age, shuffled along
in the direction of the Bowery, his hands plunged deep in the pockets
of his frayed and tattered trousers, where his fingers, in a curious,
wistful way, fondled the keys of his own magnificent residence on
Riverside Drive. It was his move--and it was an impasse, ironical,
sardonic, and it was worse--it was full of peril.

True, he had outwitted Kline of the secret service two nights before,
when Kline had raided the counterfeiters' den; true, he had no reason to
believe that Kline suspected HIM specifically, but the man Kline wanted
HAD entered the tenement that night, and since then the house had been
shadowed day and night. The result was both simple and disastrous--to
Jimmie Dale. Larry the Bat, a known inmate of the house, might come
and go as he pleased--but to emerge from the Sanctuary in the person of
Jimmie Dale would be fatal. Kline had been outwitted, but Kline had not
acknowledged final defeat. The tenement had been searched from top to
bottom--unostentatiously. His own room on the first landing had been
searched the previous afternoon, when he was out, but they had failed to
find the cunningly contrived opening in the floor under the oilcloth in
the corner, an impromptu wardrobe, that would proclaim Larry the Bat and
Jimmi