wrong--the Gray Seal had not been
forgotten.

"We should not be surprised," wrote the editor virulently, "to discover
at the bottom of these abominable atrocities that the guiding spirit,
in fact, was the Gray Seal--they are quite worthy even of his diabolical
disregard for the laws of God and man."

Jimmie Dale's lips straightened ominously, and an angry glint crept into
his dark, steady eyes. There was nothing then, nothing too vile that,
in the public's eyes, could not logically be associated with the Gray
Seal--even this! A series of the most cold-blooded, callous murders
and robberies, the work, on the face of it, of a well-organized band
of thugs, brutal, insensate, little better than fiends, though clever
enough so far to have evaded capture, clever enough, indeed, to have
kept the police still staggering and gasping after a clew for one
murder--while another was in the very act of being committed! The Gray
Seal! What exquisite irony! And yet, after all, the papers were not
wholly to blame for what they said; he had invited much of it. Seeming
crimes of the Gray Seal had apparently been genuine beyond any question
of doubt, as he had intended them to appear, as in the very essence of
their purpose they had to be.

Yes; he had invited much--he and she together--the Tocsin and himself.
He, Jimmie Dale, millionaire, clubman, whose name for generations in
New York had been the family pride, was "wanted" as the Gray Seal for so
many "crimes" that he had lost track of them himself--but from any one
of which, let the identity of the Gray Seal be once solved, there was
and could be no escape! What exquisite irony--yet full, too, of the most
deadly consequences!

Once more Jimmie Dale's eyes sought the paper, and this time scanned the
headlines of the first page:

BRUTAL MURDER OF MILL PAYMASTER.

THE CRIME WAVE STILL AT ITS HEIGHT.

HERMAN ROESSLE FOUND DEAD NEAR HIS CAR.

ASSASSINS ESCAPE WITH $20,000.

Jimmie Dale read on--and as he read there came again that angry set to
his lips. The details were not pleasant. Herman Roessle, the paymaster
of the Martindale-Kensington Mills, whose plant was on the Hudson, had
gone that morning in his runabout to the nearest town, three miles away,
for the monthly pay roll; had secured the money from the bank, a sum of
twenty-odd thousand dollars; and had started back with it for the
mill. At first, it being broad daylight and a well-frequented road, his
nonappearance