The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale

by Frank L. Packard

CHAPTER XIX. THE BEGINNING OF THE END

How far away last night, with Forrester’s murder and the sordid denouement in Reddy Mull’s room, seemed! How far away even half an hour ago this very night seemed! Just half an hour ago! Then, with no thought but one of dogged perseverance to keep up his quest, with neither hint nor sign that his quest was any nearer the end than it had ever been, he had entered Bristol Bob’s, here, in the role of Smarlinghue; and now, as a rift that had opened in the clouds, there had come sudden and amazing joy. It held him now in thrall. It threatened even to make him forget that he was for the moment Smarlinghue—forget what, as Smarlinghue, Smarlinghue dare not forget—the role he played.

He leaned forward suddenly and caught up his whisky glass—whose contents had previously and surreptitiously been spilled into the cuspidor on the floor beside his chair. He lifted the glass to his mouth, his head thrown back as though to drain a final, lingering drop, then he thumped the glass down on the table, licked his lips—thin and distorted by “Smarlinghue’s” makeup—and wiped them with the sleeve of his threadbare coat.

A man at the next table, well known as the Pippin, young, flashily dressed, his almost effeminate features giving an added touch of viciousness, through incongruity, to his general appearance, twisted his head around and grinned with malicious derision.

Jimmie Dale’s fingers searched hungrily now through first one and then another of his ragged pockets, and finally extricated a dime and a nickel. With these he tapped insistently on the table, until an attendant answered the summons and supplied him with another drink.

He sat back then for a time; now eyeing the liquor, as though greedy for its taste, yet greedy, too, to prolong the anticipation, since from his actions there was apparently no means of further replenishing the supply; now glancing around the smoke-laden room where, on the polished section of the floor in the centre, a score of laughing, shrieking couples whirled and pranced in the unrestrained throes of the underworld’s latest dance; now permitting his eyes to rest with a sudden scowl on the man at the next table. He had no concern with the Pippin—nor had the Pippin any concern with him. The man, as he imbibed a number of drinks, simply seemed to find a certain: malevolent amusement in a contemptuous appraisal of his, Jimmie Dale’s, person; but the other, in spite of the new, glad exhilaration Jimmie Dale was experiencing, annoyed Jimmie Dale—the blatant expanse of pink shirt cuff, for instance, in order to display the Pippin’s diamond-snake links, famous from One end of the underworld to the other, was eminently typical of the man. The cuff links were undoubtedly an object of envy to the society in which the Pippin moved; they were even beautiful cuff links, it was true, oriental in design, never to be mistaken by any one who had ever seen them, and the stones with which they were set were credited generally in the underworld as being genuine, but—Jimmie Dale was hesitantly lifting his glass again in a queer, miserly sort of way. The Pippin had jerked a cigarette box from his pocket, stuck what was evidently the single cigarette it had contained between his lips; and now, tossing away the box, he pushed back his chair and stood up—but on the floor beneath the table, where it had fluttered unobserved when the cigarette box had been jerked from the pocket, lay a small folded piece of paper.

“If you hang around long enough, Smarly,” gibed the Pippin, as he passed by on his way toward the door, “maybe some of the rubber-necks off the gape-wagon will take pity on you and buy you another—the slumming parties are just crazy about broken-down artists!”

“You go chase yourself!” said Smarlinghue politely, through one corner of his twisted mouth.

Jimmie Dale’s eyes followed the other. The Pippin, threading his way amongst the tables, gained the door, and passed out into the street. And then Jimmie Dale’s eyes reverted to the piece of paper under the adjacent table. It was not at all likely that it was of the slightest importance or significance, and yet—Jimmie Dale stretched out his foot, drew the paper toward him, and, stooping over, picked it up. He unfolded it, and found it to contain several typewritten lines. He frowned in a puzzled way as he read them; then read them over again, and his frown deepened.