only--Jimmie Dale, the final touches given to his features,
stood up, and his hands clenched suddenly, fiercely--it was not just the
man higher up alone, there were the other three as well, the whole
four of them, all of them, crimes without number at their door, brutal,
fiendish acts, damnable outrages, murder to answer for, with which the
public now was beginning to connect the name of the Gray Seal! The Gray
Seal!

Jimmie Dale's hands, whose delicate fingers were artfully grimed and
blackened now beneath the nails, clenched still tighter--and then, with
a quick shrug of his shoulders, a thinning of the firmly compressed
lips, he picked up the coat from where it lay upon the floor, put it on,
put the money that was on the table in his pocket, and replaced the box
under the flooring.

In quick succession, from the same hiding place, an automatic, a black
silk mask, an electric flashlight, that thin metal box like a cigarette
case, and a half dozen vicious-looking little blued-steel burglar's
tools were stowed away in his pockets, the flooring carefully replaced,
the oilcloth spread back again; and then, pulling a slouch hat well down
over his eyes, he reached up to turn off the gas.

For an instant his hand held there, while his eyes, sweeping around the
apartment, took in every single detail about him in that same alert,
comprehensive way as when he had entered--then the room was in darkness,
and the Gray Seal, as Larry the Bat, a shuffling, unkempt creature
of the underworld, alias Jimmie Dale, the lionised of clubs, the
matrimonial target of exclusive drawing-rooms, closed the door of the
Sanctuary behind him, shuffled down the stairs, shuffled out into the
lane, and shuffled along the street toward the Bowery.

A policeman on the corner accosted him familiarly.

"Hello, Larry!" grinned the officer.

"'Ello!" returned Jimmie Dale affably through the side of his mouth.
"Fine night, ain't it?"--and shuffled on along the street.

And now Jimmie Dale began to hurry--still with that shuffling tread, but
covering the ground nevertheless with amazing celerity. He had lost
no time since receiving the Tocsin's letter, it was true, but, for all
that, it was now after ten o'clock. Stangeist's house was "dark" that
evening, she had said, meaning that the occupants, Stangeist as well
as whatever servants there might be, for Stangeist had no family, were
out--the servants in town for a theatre or picture show probably--an