eyes, he
searched the faces around him. If he had been asked to pick the actors
for a revel from the scum of the underworld, he could not have improved
upon the gathering. There were perhaps a hundred men and women in
the room, the majority dancing, and, with the exception of a few
sight-seeing slummers, they were men and women whose acquaintance with
the police was intimate but not cordial--far from cordial.

Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders, and sipped at the glass that had
been set before him. It was grimly ironic that he should be, not only
there, but actually a factor and a part of the underworld's intimate
life! He, Jimmie Dale, a wealthy man, a member of New York's
exclusive clubs, a member of New York's most exclusive society! It was
inconceivable. He smiled sardonically. Was it? Well, then, it was none
the less true. His life unquestionably was one unique, apart from any
other man's, but it was, for all that, actual and real.

There had been three years of it now--since SHE had come into his life.
Jimmie Dale slouched down a little in his chair. The ice was thin,
perilously thin, that he was skating on now. Each letter, with its
demand upon him to match his wits against police or underworld, or
against both combined, perhaps, made that peril a little greater, a
little more imminent--if that were possible, when already his life
was almost literally carried, daily, hourly, in his hand. Not that he
rebelled against it; it was worth the price that some day he expected
he must pay--the price of honour, wealth, a name disgraced, ruin, death.
Was he quixotic? Immoderately so? He smiled gravely. Perhaps. But he
would do it all over again if the choice were his. There were those who
blessed the name of the Gray Seal, as well as those who cursed it. And
there was the Tocsin!

Who was she? He did not know, but he knew that he had come to love her,
come to care for her, and that she had come to mean everything in life
to him. He had never seen her, to know her face. He had never seen her
face, but he knew her voice--ay, he had even held her for a moment, the
moment of wildest happiness he had ever known, in his arms. That night
when he had entered his library, his own particular den in his own
house, and in the darkness had found her there--found her finally
through no effort of his own, when he had searched so fruitlessly for
years to find her, using every resource at his command to find her! And
she, because she ha