The staircase creaked under the rush of feet; yells began to well up from below. Jimmie Dale darted into the outer room, and crouched down beside the doorway.
“Death to the Gray Seal!” The whole building, in a pandemonium of hellish glee, seemed to echo and reecho the shout.
Jimmie Dale was deadly calm now, as his fingers closed around his automatic—and, deadly cool, the keen, alert, active brain was at work. It was black about him, pitch black, there were no lights in the hallway—yes, a dull glimmer now—a door farther along had opened—but dark enough in here where he waited. There was a chance—with the odds heavily against him—but it was the only way.
They were on the landing outside now; and now, old Jake shouting excitedly amongst them, a dozen forms swept through the doorway, and scuffing, stamping, yelling, made for the inner room—and Jimmie Dale slipped out into the hall. His lips pressed tightly together. That had been as he had expected, but the danger still lay before him—in the three flights of stairs. Some one was coming up now, more than one, the stragglers—but there would be stragglers until the last occupant of the tenement was aroused. He dared not wait. In a minute more, in less than a minute, they would have lighted the gas again in there and found him gone.
He jumped for the head of the stairs—a dark form loomed up before him. Jimmie Dale launched himself full at the other. There was a cry of surprise, an oath, the man pitched sideways, and Jimmie Dale sprang by. A yell went up from the man behind him; it was echoed by a wild chorus from above, as of wolves robbed of their prey; it was re-echoed by shouts from the stairways and halls below—and with his left hand on the banisters to guide him, taking the stairs four and five at a time, Jimmie Dale went down—and now, aiming at the ground, his revolver spat and barked a vicious warning, cutting lurid flashes through the murk ahead of him.
Doors that were open along the hallways shut with a hurried bang; dark forms, like rats running for their holes, scuttled to safety; women screamed and shrieked; children whimpered. On Jimmie Dale ran. For the second time he crashed into a form, and won by. They were firing at him from above now—but by guesswork—firing down the stair well. The pound of feet racing down the stairs came from behind him—two flights behind him—he calculated he had that much start. He gained the entrance hallway where all was dark, leaped for the front door, opened it, pulled it shut with a violent slam—and, whirling instantly, running swiftly and silently back along the hall, he reached the rear door that he had left unfastened, darted out, and a moment later, swinging himself over a high, backyard fence, dropped down into the lane beyond. Whipping off his mask, he ran on like a hare until he approached the lane’s intersection with a cross street. And here, well back from the street, he paused to regain his breath and rearrange his dishevelled attire; then, edging forward, he peered cautiously up and down—and smiled grimly—and stepped out on the street. He was a good block away from the tenement.
From the direction of the Nest came sounds of disorder and riot. A patrolman’s whistle rang out shrilly. It had been as close a call perhaps as the Gray Seal had ever known—but, at that, the night’s work was not ended! There was still the actual thief. Thorold had said he was to meet the man in his, Thorold’s, office in half an hour to split their ill-gotten gains. Jimmie Dale’s jaw squared. The thief! His hand at his side clenched suddenly. Would it be only the thief, or would he have to reckon with Thorold again as well? Could Thorold keep the appointment? It was a question of how badly Thorold was hurt, and that he did not know.
Jimmie Dale walked on another block, still another, then turned so as to bring him into, but well up, the street on which the tenement was situated. From here, far down the ill-lighted street, he could see a mob gathered outside the Nest. And then, as he stood hesitant, there came the strident clang of a bell, the beat of hoofs, and he caught the name of the hospital on the side of an ambulance as it tore by—and, at that, he swung suddenly about, and, making his way across to Broadway, boarded an uptown car.
Twenty minutes later, he closed the door of a telephone booth in a saloon on lower Sixth Avenue behind him, and consulting the directory for the number, called the hospital.
“This is police headquarters speaking,” said Jimmie Dale coolly. “What’s the condition of that tenement case with the broken head?”