ion.

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 sto