The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale

by Frank L. Packard

And now, at the end of a short, dark passage, he stopped before the door of what was, from its location, the lighted room he had seen from the street; and, slipping his mask over his face, he placed his ear against the door panel to listen. He was rewarded only by absolute silence. His lips, under the mask, twisted queerly, as, softly, cautiously, he tried the door. It gave under the steady pressure that he exerted upon it—gave without sound for the measure of a fraction of an inch—it was unlocked. And now Jimmie Dale could see into the room—and suddenly he stepped noiselessly forward, his automatic holding a bead on the crouched figure of the Rat, asleep apparently in his chair, whose head, flung forward, was buried in his crossed arms upon the table in the centre of the room.

“Good evening!” said Jimmie Dale, in a velvet voice.

There was no answer—the man neither turned his head, nor looked up.

And for a moment Jimmie Dale did not stir—only into the dark eyes shining through the mask there came a startled gleam, and through the heavy, palpitating silence the quick, sudden intake of his breath sounded clamourously loud. He saw now—the gray of the cheek just showing above the arm that pillowed it, the stiff, hunched, unnatural position of the body, the crimson pool on the floor by the chair leg. The man was dead!

Tight-lipped, the strong jaw outthrust a little, his face hard and set, Jimmie Dale moved to the Rat’s side, and bent over the man. Yes, it was—murder! The Rat had been stabbed in the back just below the left armpit. He glanced sharply around the room. There was no sign of struggle, except—yes—there were bruises on the man’s neck, as though a hand had grasped it fiercely, and—he bent over—yes, faintly, but nevertheless distinctly enough, two blood-stained finger prints were discernible on the Rat’s collar. He lifted the Rat’s hands and examined them critically—it might perhaps have been the man himself clutching his own throat, as he choked and struggled for breath—no, the Rat’s fingers showed not the slightest trace of blood.

And then, instinctively, Jimmie Dale reached out toward the other’s pocket; but, with a hard smile, dropped his hand to his side, instead. The sealed envelope, the fifteen thousand dollars, was not there—it was where the Tocsin had said it was! The Tocsin, not he, had been right! And yet, too, in a way, he had not been entirely wrong. It was the Rat who had stolen the sealed envelope from the safe—or else the Rat would not now be dead!

His mind, alert and keen now, was dovetailing together the pieces of the puzzle. Those who had originally planned the crime had in some way discovered that the Rat, in the actual theft, had forestalled them. Possibly, for instance, bent on the same errand, they had seen the Rat leaving the building; then, finding the safe already looted, they had put two and two together, and had trapped the Rat here—and the Rat had paid the price! It might have been that way, but that in itself was a detail, immaterial—they had discovered that it was the Rat. The Rat’s murder proved it. It was not enough that they should recover the envelope—there would have been no way to avoid exposure or cover their own crime except by murdering the Rat.

He looked down at the silent form sprawled over the table, and his face relaxed, softened a little. The Rat was only the Rat, it was true, and the man was a thief, an outcast, a pariah, a prey upon society; but life to the Rat, too, had been sweet, and his murder was a hideous thing—and even such as the Rat might ask justice. Justice! It had been dirty work—miserable, dirty work, he had called it when he had thought the Rat alone involved—but now, thanks to the Tocsin, he knew it for what it really was, knew it for its damnable, hellish ingenuity, and its abominable, brutal callousness! Justice! Yes—but how?

He began to move about the room, his mind for the moment diverted in an endeavour to reconstruct the scene as it must have been enacted here around him. The Rat had broken into the safe before eleven o’clock—that was obvious now. In fact, it was quite likely to have been much nearer ten! He had returned here and had been sitting there at the table, counting over his ill-gotten gains, perhaps, his back to the door, just as he sat now, and they had stolen in upon him. But where was the old woman? True, perhaps little, if any, noise had been made, and yet—Jimmie Dale, pausing on the threshold of the door, listened intently. One of the two rooms, whose doors he saw between this end room and the door opening into the store, must be hers, and if she were there, asleep, for instance, his ear was surely acute enough to catch, in the stillness that lay upon the house, the sound of breathing. But there was nothing. Under the mask, his brows drew together in a perplexed frown. And then suddenly he stood rigid, tense. Yes, there was a sound at last—and an ominous one! The front door leading into the store was being opened, came the scuffling of footsteps—and then a woman’s voice, shrill, wailing:

“W’en I come in not twenty minutes ago dere he was—dead. My Gawd—knifed he was! An’ den I runs fer youse at de station. I gotta right ter cry, ain’t I! He’s my son, he is—ain’t he! I gotta right—”