treet.

Here Jimmie Dale peered out cautiously. There was no one in sight. He
touched Burton's shoulder, and pointed down the street.

"That's your way, Burton--mine's the other. Hurry while you've got the
chance. Good-night."

Burton's hand reached out, caught Jimmie Dale's, and wrung it.

"God bless you!" he said huskily. "I--"

And Jimmie Dale pushed him out on to the street.

Burton's steps receded down the sidewalk. Jimmie Dale still crouched
against the wall. The steps grew fainter in the distance and died
finally away. Jimmie Dale straightened up, slipped the mask from his
face to his pocket, stepped out on the street--and five minutes later
was passing through the noisy bedlam of the Hungarian restaurant on his
way to the front door and his car.

"SONNEZ LE TOCSIN," Jimmie Dale was saying softly to himself. "I wonder
what she'll do when she finds I've got the ring?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAN HIGHER UP

The Tocsin! By neither act, sign, nor word had she evidenced the
slightest interest in that ring--and yet she must know, she certainly
must know that it was now in his possession. Jimmie Dale was
disappointed. Somehow, he had counted more than he had cared to admit on
developments from that ring.

He pulled a little viciously at his cigarette, as he stared out of the
St. James Club window. That was how long ago? Ten days? Yes; this would
be the eleventh. Eleven days now and no word from her--eleven days since
that night at old Isaac's, since she had last called him, the Gray Seal,
to arms. It was a long while--so long a while even that what had come
to be his prerogative in the newspapers, the front page with three-inch
type recounting some new exploit of that mysterious criminal the Gray
Seal, was being usurped. The papers were howling now about what they,
for the lack of a better term, were pleased to call a wave of crime that
had inundated New York, and of which, for once, the Gray Seal was not
the storm centre, but rather, for the moment, forgotten.

He drew back from the window, and, settling himself again in the big
leather lounging chair, resumed the perusal of the evening paper. His
eye fell on what was common to every edition now, a crime editorial--and
the paper crackled suddenly under the long, slim, tapering fingers,
so carefully nurtured, whose sensitive tips a hundred times had made
mockery of the human ingenuity squandered on the intricate mechanism
of safes and vaults. No; he was