plunging for the bag, he flung
himself in a low dive through and into the open cellar beyond. He was
on his feet, over the boxes, and dashing up the stairs in a second. The
door above opened as he reached the top--Jimmie Dale's right hand shot
out with clubbed revolver--and with a grunt Chang Foo went down before
the blow and the headlong rush. The next instant Jimmie Dale had sprung
through the tea shop and was out on the street.

A minute, two minutes more, and Chinatown would be in an uproar--Chang
Foo would see to that--and the Wowzer would prod him on. The danger was
far from over yet. And then, as he ran, Jimmie Dale gave a little gasp
of relief. Just ahead, drawn up at the curb, stood a taxicab--waiting,
probably, for a private slumming party. Jimmie Dale put on a spurt,
reached it, and wrenched the door open.

"Quick!" he flung at the startled chauffeur. "The nearest subway
station--there's a ten-spot in it for you! Quick man--QUICK! Here they
come!"

A crowd of Chinese, pouring like angry hornets from Chang Foo's shop,
came yelling down the street--and the taxi took the corner on two
wheels--and Jimmie Dale, panting, choking for his breath like a man
spent, sank back against the cushions.

But five minutes later it was quite another Jimmie Dale, composed,
nonchalant, imperturbable, who entered an up-town subway train, and,
choosing a seat alone near the centre of the car, which at that hour
of night in the downtown district was almost deserted, took the crushed
letter from his pocket. For a moment he made no attempt to read it,
his dark eyes, now that he was free from observation, full of troubled
retrospect, fixed on the window at his side. It was not a pleasant
thought that it had cost a man his life, nor yet that that life was also
the price of his own freedom. True, if there were two men in the city of
New York whose crimes merited neither sympathy nor mercy, those two men
were the Wowzer and Dago Jim--but yet, after all, it was a human life,
and, even if his own had been in the balance, thank God it had been
through no act of his that Dago Jim had gone out! The Wowzer, cute and
cunning, had been quick enough to say so to clear himself, but--Jimmie
Dale smiled a little now--neither the Wowzer, nor Chang Foo, nor
Chinatown would ever be in a position to recognise their uninvited
guest!

Jimmie Dale's eyes shifted to the letter speculatively, gravely. It
seemed as though the night had already held a yea