The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale

by Frank L. Packard

There was silence for a minute. Sonnino, cringing, the suavity, the oiliness of manner gone, a man afraid, kept his eyes on the table, and kept passing his hands one over the other. Laroque was the gambler—a twisted smile was forced to his lips.

“You win,” he said hoarsely. “You can take it from me, I’ll go up the river for fourteen years for no one—I’ll take blasted good care of that! But you”—a rage, ungovernable and elemental, found voice in a sudden torrent of blasphemous invective—“you—we’ll get you yet! Some day we’ll get you, you cursed snitch, you—”

“Good-night!” said Jimmie Dale grimly, and, stepping swiftly back over the threshold, shut and locked the door.

He gained the street, gained his car in front of The Sphinx—and, twenty minutes later, after a break-neck run in which Benson for the second time that night defied all speed laws, Jimmie Dale alighted from his car at a street corner well uptown, dismissed Benson for the night, retraced his way half the distance back along the block, disappeared into a lane, and presently, taking a high fence with the agility of a cat in spite of, his encumbering package, dropped noiselessly down into a backyard.

It was well known ground to Jimmie Dale—as a boy he had played here in the Archman’s backyard, played here with Clarie Archman. His face masked again, he moved swiftly toward the rear of the house. There was still Clarie Archman. What would the boy do? Jimmie Dale’s hand, a picklock in it again, clenched fiercely. It was a hell’s choice they had given the boy—to rob his father, or go down himself, and drag his father with him, in ruin and disgrace! What would the boy do? Jimmie Dale was working silently at the back door now. It opened, and he stepped inside. He was here well ahead of the other, there was no possibility, granting even the start the boy had had, that Clarie Archman could have made the trip uptown in the same time. It was more likely that the boy might even linger a long while in misery and indecision before he came home. That was why he, Jimmie Dale, had dismissed Benson and the car for the night, and—

With a mental jerk, Jimmie Dale focused his mind on his immediate surroundings. It was dark; there were no lights in any part of the house, but he needed none, not even his flashlight—he knew the house as well and as intimately as his own. He was in the rear hall now, and now he opened a door, paused cautiously as the dull yellow glow from a dying grate fire illuminated the room faintly, then stepped inside. It was the Archman library, the room where David Archman did a great deal of his work at night A desk stood at the lower end of the room; and in the corner near the portièred windows was the lawyer’s safe.

Jimmie Dale closed the door, moved toward the window, drew the portieres aside, released the window catch, silently raised the window itself—it was only a drop a few feet to the yard! And then Jimmie Dale sat down at the desk.

A clock somewhere in the house struck a single note—that would be halfpast one. Time passed slowly, interminably. The clock struck again—two o’clock. And then suddenly Jimmie Dale rose from his chair, and slipped into the window recess behind the portières. The front door closed, a step came along the hall, the library opened, closed again—and Clarie Archman, his face as the flickering firelight played upon it, like a face of death, came forward into the room.

For a moment the boy held motionless beside the desk, his eyes fixed in a sort of horrible fascination upon the safe—and then, slowly, he moved toward it, and dropped on his knees before it, and his fingers began to twirl the knob of the dial. His fingers shook, and he was a long time at his task—and then the handle turned, and the safe was unlocked, but Clarie Archman did not open the door. Instead, he drew back suddenly, and rose swaying to his feet, and covered his face with his hands.

“I can’t! Oh, my God, I—I can’t!” he moaned. He lowered his hands after a moment, and gazed around him unseeingly, a queer, ghastly look came into his face. “I—I guess—I guess there’s only one—one way to—to beat them,” he whispered. “One way to beat them, and—”