Outside on Sixth Avenue an elevated train roared and thundered by—it seemed strangely extraneous and incongruous.
“And now, sir”—the old gentleman’s voice seemed tired, a little weary—“though you give me back the pendant, I do not see how I can return it to my wife. It was part of the agreement that I should notify the police—it made it impossible for me to inform against Thorold, for—for I was the thief.”
Jimmie Dale nodded. “I was thinking of that,” he said.
He opened the metal case; and, while the old gentleman watched in amazement and growing consternation, he lifted out a gray paper seal with his tweezers, moistened the adhesive side with the tip of his tongue, and pressed the seal firmly with his coat sleeve over the central cluster of the pendant.
The old gentleman tried twice to speak before a word would come.
“You! You—the Gray Seal!” he stammered at last. “But only to-night I was reading in the papers, and they said you were a murderer, an ogre of hell, and—”
“And now, possibly,” interrupted Jimmie Dale whimsically, “though circumstances will force you to keep your opinion to yourself, you may have an idea that, as between you and the papers, you are the better informed. Well, at least, the Gray Seal’s shoulders are broad! You need not worry about Thorold or old Jake; I took pains to make them aware that the Gray Seal—quite inadvertently, of course—had taken a passing fancy to the pendant. You have only to wrap it up, and send it by mail to yourself; and when it arrives”—he laughed softly, as he stood up—“notify the police again. Let them do the theorising—it is one of their cherished amusements! And, oh, by the way, colonel, have you any idea how much Thorold and his precious friend Kisnieff have blackmailed you out of in the last two years?”
“I did not have very much left when I came to New York,” said the colonel, in a stunned way, still staring at the gray paper seal. “Between four and five thousand dollars.”
“That’s too bad,” murmured Jimmie Dale. He took the banknotes from his pocket, and laid them on the desk. “I am afraid it is not quite all here—but I can assure you it is all they had.”
He held out his hand.