For an instant the man’s eyes met Jimmie Dale’s, then shifted, as though drawn in spite of himself, to the muzzle of Jimmie Dale’s automatic; and then his hand reached into his pocket for his pen.
From the pool room in front came an outburst of hand-clapping and applause—there was evidently a match of some kind going on. Jimmie Dale, his eyes on English Dick, as the latter began to write with a sort of feverish haste as though fear and a miserable desire to have done with it spurred him on, picked up the articles from the table, and placed them in the satchel. He waited silently then—and then English Dick pushed the paper toward him.
Jimmie Dale picked it up, and read it. It was all there, all of it—and the signature this time was not forged! He placed the paper in the satchel, and closed the satchel.
English Dick passed his hand across a forehead that beaded with perspiration.
“What are you going to do?” he asked under his breath.
“I’m going to see that this—and you—reaches the hands of the police,” said Jimmie Dale tersely. “We’ll leave here in a moment—by the window. There’s a patrolman who passes the end of the lane once in a while, and I expect, with the aid of a piece of cord and a pocket handkerchief as a gag, that he’ll find you there. My method may be a little crude, but I have reasons of my own for not walking into a police station with you. but before we go, there’s still that matter of—the men higher up. They needed a clever penman for this job and one who wouldn’t be recognised—and they got the best! Who brought you over from England?”
“A friend over there, one of the ‘swell ones,’ put it up to me,” English Dick answered heavily.
“Yes—and here?” prodded Jimmie Dale. “Who got you into the bank here?”
“I don’t know.” English Dick shook his head. “I reported to a man called Chester. He doped out the story I was to tell, and told me to go to the bank and apply for the job, and that it was already fixed.”
“I’d like to meet ‘Chester,’” said Jimmie Dale grimly. “Where does he live?”