THE ONLY WAY
It was a horrible thing--and it grew upon him. In a blind, mechanical
way, his brain receptive to nothing else, Jimmie Dale walked on along
the street. To kill a man! Death he had faced himself a hundred times,
witnessed it a hundred times in its most violent forms, had seen murder
done before his eyes, had been in straits where, to save his own life,
it had seemed the one last desperate chance--and yet his hands were
still clean! To kill a man in fair fight, in struggle, when the blood
was hot, was terrible enough, a possibility that was always before him,
the one thing from which he shrank, the one thing that, as the Gray
Seal, he had always feared; but to kill a man deliberately, to creep
upon his victim with hideous, cold-blooded premeditation--he shivered a
little, and his hand shook as he drew it nervously across his eyes.
But there was no other way! Again and again, insidiously grappling with
his revulsion, with the horror that the impulse to murder inspired,
came that other thought--there was no other way. If the man who posed
as Henry LaSalle were DEAD! If he were dead! If he were dead! See, now,
what would happen if that man were dead! How clear his brain was on that
point! The whole plot would tumble like a house of cards about the heads
of the Crime Club. The courts would require an auditing of the estate
by a trustee of the courts' own appointing, who would continue to
administer it until the Tocsin's twenty-fifth birthday, or until there
was tangible evidence of her death--but the Tocsin, automatically with
her pseudo uncle's death, could publicly appear again. Her death could
no longer benefit the Crime Club, since it, the Crime Club, with the
supposed uncle dead, could not profit through the false Henry LaSalle
inheriting as next of kin! It was the weak link, the vulnerable point in
the stupendous scheme of murder and crime with which these hell fiends
had played for and won, so far, the stake of eleven millions. Not that
they had overlooked or been blind to this, they were too clever, too
cunning for that--it was only that they had planned to accomplish the
Tocsin's death, as they had her father's and uncle's, and ESTABLISH
the false Henry LaSalle in undisputed possession and ownership of the
estate--and had failed in that--up to the present. But the material
results remained the same, so long as the Tocsin, to save her life,
was forced to remain in hiding, so long as proof that would convict the
Crime Club was not forthcoming--SO LONG AS THAT MAN LIVED!
Time passed to which Jimmie Dale was oblivious. At times he walked
slowly, scarcely moving; at times his pace was a nervous, hurried
stride, that was almost a run. And as he was oblivious to time, so was
he oblivious to his surroundings, to the direction which he took.
At times his forehead was damp with moisture that was not there from
physical exertion; at times his face, deathly white, was full as of
the vision of some shuddering, abhorrent sight; at times his lips were
thinned into a straight line, and there was a glitter in the dark eyes
that was not good to see, while his hands at his sides clenched until
the skin, tight over the knuckles, was an ivory white. To kill a man!
What other way was there? The proof that it had taken Hilton Travers
years to obtain, the proof on which the Tocsin's life depended, was
destroyed utterly, irreparably. It could never be duplicated--Hilton
Travers was dead--MURDERED. Murder! That thought again! It was their
own weapon! Murder! Would one kill a venomous reptile in whose fangs
was death? What right had this man to life, whose life was forfeit even
under the law--for murder? Was she to drag on an intolerable existence
among the dregs and the scum of the underworld, she, in her refinement
and her purity, to exist among the vile and dissolute, in daily, hourly
peril of her life, because the weapons that these inhuman vultures
had used to rob her, to destroy those she loved, to make of her life a
hideous, joyless thing, should not be used against them?
But to kill a man! To steal upon a man with cold intent in the blackness
of the night--and take his life! To be a murderer! To know the horror
of blood forever upon one's hands, to rise, cold-sweated, in the night,
fearful of the very shadows around one, to live with every detail of
that fearsome act sweeping like some dread spectre at unexpected moments
upon the consciousness! He put up his hands before his face, as though
to blot out the thought from him. Mind and soul recoiled before it--to
kill a man!
He walked on and on, until at last, conscious of a sense of fatigue, he
stopped. He must have come a long way, been walking a long time. Where
was he? He looked about him for a moment in a dazed way--and suddenly,
with a low cry, shrank back. As though he had been drawn to it by
some ghastly magnet, he found himself standing in front of the LaSalle
mansion, on Fifth Avenue. No, no; it was not for that he had come--to
kill a man! It was only--only to get that money. Yes--he remembered
now--that money from the safe, before the Magpie got it. The Magpie was
to be there at three o'clock--and the Tocsin was to be there, too. The
Tocsin! That package! He had failed! It had been her one hope, and--and
it was gone. What could he say to her? How could he tell her the
miserable truth? But--but he had not come there in the dead of night to
kill a man, these other things were what had--
“Jimmie!” It was a quick-breathed whisper. A hand was on his arm.
He turned, startled. It was the Tocsin--Silver Mag.
“Jimmie!” in alarm. “Why are you standing here like this? You may be
SEEN!”
Seen! Suppose he WERE seen? He shuddered a little.
“Yes; that's so!” he said hoarsely. He glanced numbly up and down the
wide, deserted, but well-lighted, avenue. It was no place, that most
aristocratic section of the city, for such as Silver Mag and Larry
the Bat to be seen at that hour of night, or, rather, morning. And if
anything HAPPENED inside that house! “I--I didn't think of that,” he
said mechanically.
“Come across the street--under the stoop of that house there.” She had
his arm, and was half dragging him as she spoke, the alarm in her voice
intensified. And then, a moment later, safe from observation: “Jimmie,
Jimmie, what is the matter? What has happened? What makes you act so
strangely?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I--”
“TELL me!” she insisted wildly.
And then, with a violent effort, Jimmie Dale forced his mind back to the
immediate present. He was only inspiring her with terror--and there was
the Magpie--and that money in the safe!
“Where is the Magpie?” he asked, with quick apprehension. “Am I late? Is
he in there already?”
“No,” she said. “He hasn't come yet.”
“What time is it?” he demanded anxiously.
“About half-past two,” she replied. “But, Jimmie--”
“Wait!” he broke in. “Where is he now? You were both together! And
you were both to be here at three. What are you doing here alone at
half-past two?”
A strange little exclamation, one almost of dismay, it seemed, escaped
her.
“The Magpie left my place an hour ago--to get his kit, I think. And I
came here at once because that was what you and I understood I was to
do, wasn't it? Jimmie, you frighten me! You are not yourself. Don't
you remember the last words you said, as you nodded to me behind the
Magpie's back--that you would be here BEFORE us? There was no mistaking
your meaning--if I could get away from him, I was to come here and meet
you.”
Jimmie Dale passed his hand nervously across his eyes. Of course, he
remembered now! What a frightful turmoil his brain had been in!
“Yes; of course!” He tried to speak nonchalantly. “I had forgotten for
the moment.”
She caught his arm in a quick, tight hold, shaking him in a terrified
way.
“YOU--forget a thing like that! Jimmie--something terrible has happened.
Can't you see that I am nearly mad with anxiety! What is it? What is it?
That package, Jimmie--is it the package?”
He did not answer. What could he say? It meant life, hope, joy,
everything that the world held for her--and it was gone.
“Yes--it IS the package!” she whispered frantically. “Quick, Jimmie!
Tell me! It--it was not there? You--you could not find it?”
“It was there,” he said, as though the words were literally forced from
him.
“Then? Then--WHAT, Jimmie?” The clutch on his arm was like a vise.
“They got it,” he said. It was like a death sentence that he pronounced.
“It is destroyed.”
She did not speak or move--save that her hands, as though nerveless and
without strength, fell away from his arms, and dropped to her sides. It
was dark there under the stoop, though not so dark but that he could see
her face. It was gray--gray as death. And there was misery and fear
and a pitiful helplessness in it--and then she swayed a little, and he
caught her in his arms.
“Gone!” she murmured in a dead, colourless way--and suddenly laughed out
sharply, hysterically.
“Don't! For God's sake, don't do that!” he pleaded wildly.
She looked at him then for a moment in strange quiet--and lifted her
hand and stroked his face in a numbed way.
“It--it would have been better, Jimmie, wouldn't it,” she said in the
same monotonous voice, “it would have been better if--if I had never
found out anything, and they--they had done the same to me that they did
to--to father.”
“Marie! Marie!” It was the first time he had ever spoken her name, and
it was on his lips now in an agony of tenderness and appeal. “Don't! You
mustn't speak like that!”
“I'm tired,” she said. “I--I can't fight any more.”
She did not cry. She lay there in his arms quite still--like a weary
child.
The minutes passed. When Jimmie Dale spoke again it was
irrelevantly--and his face was very white:
“Marie, describe the upper floor of that house over there for me.”
She roused herself with a start.
“The upper floor?” she repeated slowly. “Why--why do you ask that?”
“Have YOU forgotten in turn?” he said, with a steady smile. “That money
in the safe--it's yours--we can at least save that out of the wreck. You
only drew the basement plan and the first floor for the Magpie--the
more I know about the house the better, of course, in case anything goes
wrong. Now, see, try and be brave--and tell me quickly, for I must get
through before the Magpie comes, and I have barely half an hour.”
“No, Jimmie--no!” She slipped out of his arms. “Let it alone! I am
afraid. Something--I--I have a feeling that something will happen.”
“It is the only way.” He said it involuntarily, more to himself than to
her.
“Jimmie, let it alone!” she said again.
“No,” he said. “I am going--so tell me quickly. Every minute that we
wait is one that counts against us.”
She hesitated an instant--and then, speaking rapidly, made a verbal
sketch of the upper portion of the house for him.
“It's a very large house, isn't it?” he commented innocently--to pave
the way for the question, above all others, that he had to ask. “Which
is your uncle's, I mean that man's room?”
“The first on the right, at the head of the landing,” she answered.
“Only, Jimmie, don't--don't go!”
He drew her close to him again.
“Now, listen,” he said quietly. “When the Magpie comes and finds I am
not here, lead him to think that the money he gave me was too much for
me; that I am probably in some den, doped with drug--and hold him as
long as you can on the pretext that there is always the possibility I
may, after all, show up before he goes in there. You understand? And
now about yourself--you must do exactly as I say. On no account allow
yourself to be seen by ANY ONE except the Magpie. I would tell you to
go now, only, unless it is vitally necessary, we cannot afford to
arouse the Magpie's suspicions--he'd have every crook in the underworld
snarling at our heels. But you are not to wait, even for him, if you
detect the slightest disturbance in that house before he comes. And,
equally, after he has gone in, whether I have come out or not, at the
first indication of anything unusual you are to get away at once. You
understand--Marie?”
“Yes,” she said. “But--but, Jimmie, you--”
“Just one thing more.” He smiled at her reassuringly. “Did the Magpie
say anything about how he intended to get in?”
“Yes--by the side away from the corner of the street,” she said
tremulously. “You see, there's quite a space between the house and the
one next door; and, besides, the house next door is closed up, there's
nobody there, the family has gone away for the summer. The library
window there is low enough to reach from the ground.”
For a moment longer he held her close to him, as though he could not let
her go--then bent and kissed her passionately. And in that moment all
the emotions he had known as he had walked blindly from Spider Jack's
that night surged again upon him; and that voice was whispering,
whispering, whispering: “It is the only way--it is the only way.”
And then, not daring to trust his voice, he released her suddenly,
and stepped back out from under the stoop--and the next instant he was
across the deserted avenue. Another, and he had slipped through the
iron gates that opened on the street driveway--and in yet another he was
crouched close up against the front door of the LaSalle mansion.
It was a large house, a very large house, one of the few that, even
amid the wealth and luxury of that quarter, boasted its own grounds, and
those so restricted as scarcely to deserve the name; but it was set far
enough back from the street to escape the radius of the street lamps,
and so guarantee in its shadows security from observation. It was not
the Magpie's way, the front door--the obvious to the Magpie and his ilk
was a thing always to be shunned. Jimmie Dale's lips were set in a
grim smile, as his fingers worked with lightning speed, now taking this
instrument and now that from the leather pockets in the girdle beneath
his shirt--the penitentiaries were full of Magpies who shunned the
obvious!
Very slowly, very cautiously the door opened. He listened breathlessly,
tensely. The door closed again--behind him. He was inside now.
Stillness! Blackness! Not a sound! A minute went by--another. And then,
as he stood there, strained, listening, the silence itself began, it
seemed, to palpitate, and pound, pound, pound, and be full of strange
noises. It was a horrible thing--to kill a man!