him, the same fate equally assured, were Australian Ike, The Mope, and
Clarie Deane! Aristocrats of the Bad Lands, peers of that inglorious
realm were those four--and the blow had fallen with stunning force,
a blow that in itself would have been enough to have stirred the
underworld to its depths. But that was not all--from the cells in the
Tombs, from the four came the word, and passed from mouth to mouth in
that strange underground exchange until all had heard it, that the Gray
Seal had "SQUEALED." The Gray Seal who, though unknown, they had counted
the most eminent among themselves, had squealed! Who was the Gray Seal?
It he had held the secrets of Stangeist and his band, what else might
he not know? Who else might not fall next? The Gray Seal had become
a snitch, a menace, a source of danger that stalked among them like a
ghastly spectre. Who was the Gray Seal? None knew.

"Death to the Gray Seal! Run him to earth!" went the whisper from lip
to lip; and with the whisper men stared uncertainly into each other's
faces, fearful that the one to whom they spoke might even be--the Gray
Seal!

Jimmie Dale's lips twisted queerly as he looked around him at the
squalid appointments of the Sanctuary. The police were bad enough, the
papers were worse; but this was a still graver peril. With every denizen
of the underworld below the dead line suspicious of each other, their
lives, the penitentiary, or a prison sentence the stakes against which
each one played, the role of Larry the Bat, clever as was the make-up
and disguise, was fraught now more than ever before with danger and
peril. It seemed as though slowly the net was beginning at last to
tighten around him.

The murky, yellow flame of the gas jet flickered suddenly, as though
in acquiescence with the quick, impulsive shrug of Jimmie Dale's
shoulders--and Jimmie Dale, bending to peer into the cracked mirror that
was propped up on the broken-legged table, knotted his dress tie almost
fastidiously. The hair, if just a trifle too long, covered the scar on
his head now, the wound no longer required a bandage, and Larry the Bat,
for the time being at least, had disappeared. Across the foot of the
bed, neatly folded, lay his dress coat and overcoat, but little creased
for all that they had lain in that hiding-place under the flooring since
the night when, hurrying from the club, he had placed them there to
assume instead the tatters of Larry the Bat. It was Jimmie Dale in his