Chapter 14
touch nothing till the police saw it.”
“And to think of it happening in OUR house!” observed the cook heavily, her hands on her hips, her arms akimbo. “It'll all be in the papers, and mabbe they'll put our pictures in, too.”
“I won't get over it as long as I live!” declared the maid. “The yell Mr. Mittel gave when he came downstairs and put his head in here, and then him shouting and using the most terrible language into the telephone, and then finding the wires cut. And me following him downstairs half dead with fright. And he shouts at me. 'Bella,' he shouts, 'shut those windows, but don't you touch a thing in that room. I'm going for the police.' And then he rushes out of the house.”
“I was going to bed,” said the cook, picking up her cue for what was probably the twentieth rehearsal of the scene, “when I heard Mr. Mittel yell, and--Lord, Bella, there he is now!”
Jimmie Dale's hands clenched. He, too, had caught the scuffle of footsteps, those of three or four men at least, on the front porch. There was one way, only one, of escape--through the French windows! It was a matter of seconds only before Mittel, with the police at his heels, would be in the room--and Jimmie Dale sprang to his feet. There was a wild scream of terror from the maid, echoed by another from the cook--and, still screaming, both women fled for the door.
“Mr. Mittel! Mr. Mittel!” shrieked the maid--she had flung herself out into the hall. “He's--he's back again!”
Jimmie Dale was at the French windows, tearing at the bolts. They stuck. Shouts came from the front entryway. He wrenched viciously at the fastenings. They gave now. The windows flew open. He glanced over his shoulder. A man, Mittel presumably, since he was the only one not in uniform, was springing into the room. There was a blur of forms and brass buttons behind Mittel--and Jimmie Dale leaped to the lawn, speeding across it like a deer.
But quick as he ran, Jimmie Dale's brain was quicker, pointing the single chance that seemed open to him. The motor boat! It seemed like a God-given piece of luck that he had noticed it was like his own; there would be no blind, and that meant fatal, blunders in the dark over its mechanism, and he could start it up in a moment--just the time to cast her off, that was all he needed.
The shouts swelled behind him. Jimmie Dale was running for his life. He flung a glance backward. One form--Mittel, he was certain--was perhaps a hundred yards in the rear. The others were just emerging from the French windows--grotesque, leaping things they looked, in the light that streamed out behind them from the room.
Jimmie Dale's feet pounded the planking of the wharf. He stooped and snatched at the mooring line. Mittel was almost at the wharf. It seemed an age, a year to Jimmie Dale before the line was clear. Shouts rang still louder across the lawn--the police, racing in a pack, were more than halfway from the house. He flung the line into the boat, sprang in after it--and Mittel, looming over him, grasped at the boat's gunwhale.
Both men were panting from their exertions.
“Let go!” snarled Jimmie Dale between clenched teeth.
Mittel's answer was a hoarse, gasping shout to the police to hurry--and then Mittel reeled back, measuring his length upon the wharf from a blow with a boat hook full across the face, driven with a sudden, untamed savagery that seemed for the moment to have mastered Jimmie Dale.
There was no time--not a second--not the fraction of a second. Desperately, frantically he shoved the boat clear of the wharf. Once--twice--three times he turned the engine over without success--and then the boat leaped forward. Jimmie Dale snatched the mask from his face, and jumped for the steering wheel. The police were rushing out along the wharf. He could just faintly discern Mittel now--the man was staggering about, his hands clapped to his face. A peremptory order to halt, coupled with a threat to fire, rang out sharply--and Jimmie Dale flung himself flat in the bottom of the boat. The wharf edge seemed to open in little, crackling jets of flame, came the roar of reports like a miniature battery in action, then the FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, as the lead tore up the water around him, the duller thud as a bullet buried its nose in the boat's side, and the curious rip and squeak as a splinter flew. Then Mittel's voice, high-pitched, as though in pain:
“Can't any of you run a motor boat? He's got me bad, I'm afraid. That other one there is twice as fast.”
“Sure!” another voice responded promptly. “And if that's right, he's run his head into a trap. Cast loose, there, MacVeay, and pile in, all of you! You go back to the house, Mr. Mittel, and fix yourself up. We'll get him!”
Jimmie Dale's lips thinned. It was true! If the other boat had any speed at all, it was only a question of time before he would be overtaken. The only point at issue was how much time. It was dark--that was in his favour--but it was not so dark but that a boat could be distinguished on the water for quite a distance, for a longer distance than he could hope to put between them. There was no chance of eluding the police that way! The keen, facile brain that had saved the Gray Seal a hundred times before was weaving, planning, discarding, eliminating, scheming a way out--with death, ruin, disaster the price of failure. His eyes swept the dim, irregular outline of the shore. To his right, in the opposite direction from where he had left his car, and perhaps a mile ahead, as well as he could judge, the land seemed to run out into a point. Jimmie Dale headed for it instantly. If he could reach it with a little lead to the good, there was a chance! It would take, say, six minutes, granting the boat a speed of ten miles an hour--and she could do that. The others could hardly overtake him in that time--they hadn't got started yet. He could hear them still shouting and talking at the wharf. And Mittel's “twice as fast” was undoubtedly an exaggeration, anyhow.
A minute more passed, another--and then, astern, Jimmie Dale caught the racket from the exhaust of a high-powered engine, and a white streak seemed to shoot out upon the surface of the water from where, obscured now, he placed the wharf. A quarter-mile lead, roughly four hundred yards; yes, he had as much as that--but that, too, was very little.
He bent over his engine, coaxing it, nursing it to its highest efficiency; his eyes strained now upon the point ahead, now upon his pursuers behind. He was running with the wind, thank Heaven! or the small boat would have had a further handicap--it was rolling up quite a sea.
The steering gear, he found, was corded along the side of the boat, permitting its manipulation from almost any position, and, abruptly now, Jimmie Dale left the engine to rummage through the little locker in the stern of the boat. But as he rummaged, his eyes held speculatively on the boat astern. She was gaining unquestionably, steadily, but not as fast as he had feared. He would still have a hundred yards' lead, at least, abreast the point--and, he was smiling grimly now, a hundred yards there meant life to the Gray Seal! The locker was full of a heterogeneous collection of odds and ends--a suit of oilskins, tools, tins, and cans of various sizes and descriptions. Jimmie Dale emptied the contents, some sort of powder, of a small, round tin box overboard, and from his pocket took out the banknotes, crammed them into the box, crammed his watch in on top of them, and screwed the cover on tightly. His fingers were flying now. A long strip torn from the trousers' leg of the oilskins was wrapped again and again around the box--and the box was stuffed into his pocket.
The flash of a revolver shot cut the blackness behind him, then another, and another. They were firing in a continuous stream again. It was fairly long range, but there was always the chance of a stray bullet finding its mark. Jimmie Dale, crouching low, made his way to the bow of the boat again.
The point was looming almost abreast now. He edged in nearer, to hug it as closely as he dared risk the depth of the water. Behind, remorselessly, the other boat was steadily closing the gap; and the shots were not all wild--one struck, with a curious singing sound, on some piece of metal a foot from his elbow. Closer to the shore, running now parallel with the head of the point, Jimmie Dale again edged in the boat, his jaws, clamped, working in little twitches.
And then suddenly, with a swift, appraising glance behind him, he swerved the boat from her course and headed for the shore--not directly, but diagonally across the little bay that, on the farther side of the point, had now opened out before him. He was close in with the edge of the point, ten yards from it, sweeping past it--the point itself came between the two boats, hiding them from each other--and Jimmie Dale, with a long spring, dove from the boat's side to the water.
The momentum from the boat as he sank robbed him for an instant of all control over himself, and he twisted, doubled up, and rolled over and over beneath the water--but the next moment his head was above the surface again, and he was striking out swiftly for the shore. It was only a few yards--but in a few SECONDS the pursuing boat, too, would have rounded the point. His feet touched bottom. It was haste now, nothing else, that counted. The drum of the racing engines, the crackling roar of the exhaust from the oncoming boat was in his ears. He flung himself upon the shore and down behind a rock. Around the point, past him, tore the police boat, dark forms standing clustered in the bow--and then a sudden shout:
“There she is! See her? She's heading into the bay for the shore!”
Jimmie Dale's lips relaxed. There was no doubt that they had sighted their quarry again--a perfect fusillade of revolver shots directed at the now empty boat was quite sufficient proof of that! With something that was almost a chuckle, Jimmie Dale straightened up from behind the rock and began to run back along the shore. The little motor boat would have grounded long before they overtook her, and, thinking naturally enough, that he had leaped ashore from her, they would go thrashing through the woods and fields searching for him!
It was a longer way back by the shore, a good deal longer; now over rough, rocky stretches where he stumbled in the darkness, now through marshy, sodden ground where he sank as in a quagmire time and again over his ankles. It was even longer than he had counted on, and time, with the Weasel on one hand and the return of the police on the other, was a factor to be reckoned with again, as, a half hour later, Jimmie Dale stole across the lawn of Mittel's house for the second time that night, and for the second time crouched beneath the open French windows.
Masked again, the water still dripping from what were once immaculate evening clothes but which now sagged limply about him, his collar a pasty string around his neck, the mud and dirt splashed to his knees, Jimmie Dale was a disreputable and incongruous-looking object as he crouched there, shivering uncomfortably from his immersion in spite of his exertions. Inside the room, Mittel passed the windows, pacing the floor, one side of his face badly cut and bruised from the blow with the boat hook--and as he passed, his back turned for an instant, Jimmie Dale stepped into the room.
Mittel whirled at the sound, and, with a suppressed cry, instinctively drew back--Jimmie Dale's automatic was dangling carelessly in his right hand.
“I am afraid I am a trifle melodramatic,” observed Jimmie Dale apologetically, surveying his own bedraggled person; “but I assure you it is neither intentional nor for effect. As it is, I was afraid I would be late. Pardon me if I take the liberty of helping myself; one gets a chill in wet clothes so easily”--he passed to the liqueur stand, poured out a generous portion from one of the decanters, and tossed it off.
Mittel neither spoke nor moved. Stupefaction, surprise, and a very obvious regard for Jimmie Dale's revolver mingled themselves in a helpless expression on his face.
Jimmie Dale set down his glass and pointed to a chair in front of the desk.
“Sit down, Mr. Mittel,” he invited pleasantly. “It will be quite apparent to you that I have not time to prolong our interview unnecessarily, in view of the possible return of the police at any moment, but you might as well be comfortable. You will pardon me again if I take another liberty”--he crossed the room, turned the key in the lock of the door leading into the hall, and returned to the desk. “Sit down, Mr. Mittel!” he repeated, a sudden rasp in his voice.
Mittel, none too graciously, now seated himself.
“Look here, my fine fellow,” he burst out, “you're carrying things with a pretty high hand, aren't you? You seem to have eluded the police for the moment, somehow, but let me tell you I--”
“No,” interrupted Jimmie Dale softly, “let ME tell you--all there is to be told.” He leaned over the desk and stared rudely at the bruise on Mittel's face. “Rather a nasty crack, that,” he remarked.
Mittel's fists clenched, and an angry flush swept his cheeks.
“I'd have made it a good deal harder,” said Jimmie Dale, with sudden insolence, “if I hadn't been afraid of putting you out of business and so precluding the possibility of this little meeting. Now then”--the revolver swung upward and held steadily on a line with Mittel's eyes-- “I'll trouble you for the diagram of that Alaskan claim that belongs to Mrs. Michael Breen!”
Mittel, staring fascinated into the little, round, black muzzle of the automatic, edged back in his chair.
“So--so that's what you're after, is it?” he jerked out. “Well”--he laughed unnaturally and waved his hand at the disarray of the room--“it's been stolen already.”
“I know that,” said Jimmie Dale grimly. “By--YOU!”
“Me!” Mittel started up in his chair, a whiteness creeping into his face. “Me! I--I--”
“Sit down!” Jimmie Dale's voice rang out ominously cold. “I haven't any time to spare. You can appreciate that. But even if the police return before that map is in my possession, they will still be TOO LATE as far as you are concerned. Do you understand? Furthermore, if I am caught--you are ruined. Let me make it quite plain that I know the details of your little game. You are a curb broker, Mr. Mittel--ostensibly. In reality, you run what is nothing better than an exceedingly profitable bucket shop. The Weasel has been a customer and also a stool for you for years. How Hamvert met the Weasel is unimportant--he came East with the intention of getting in touch with a slick crook to help him--the Weasel is the coincidence, that is all. I quite understand that you have never met Hamvert, nor Hamvert you, nor that Hamvert was aware that you and the Weasel had anything to do with one another and were playing in together--but that equally is unimportant. When Hamvert engaged the Weasel for ten thousand dollars to get the map from you for him, the Weasel chose the line of least resistance. He KNEW you, and approached you with an offer to split the money in return for the map. It was not a question of your accepting his offer--it was simply a matter of how you could do it and still protect yourself. The Weasel was well qualified to point the way--a fake robbery of your house would answer the purpose admirably--you could not be held either legally or morally responsible for a document that was placed, unsolicited by you, in your possession, if it were stolen from you.”
Mittel's face was ashen, colourless. His hands were opening and shutting with nervous twitches on the top of the desk.
Jimmie Dale's lips curled.
“But”--Jimmie Dale was clipping off his words now viciously--“neither you nor the Weasel were willing to trust the other implicitly--perhaps you know each other too well. You were unwilling to turn over the map until you had received your share of the money, and you were equally unwilling to turn it over until you were SAFE; that is, until you had engineered your fake robbery even to the point of notifying the police that it had been committed; the Weasel, on the other hand, had some scruples about parting with any of the money without getting the map in one hand before he let go of the banknotes with the other. It was very simply arranged, however, and to your mutual satisfaction. While you robbed your own house this evening, he was to get half the money in advance from Hamvert, giving Hamvert to understand that HE had planned to commit the robbery himself to-night. He was to come out here then, receive the map from you in exchange for your share of the money, return to Hamvert with the map, and receive in turn his own share. I might say that Hamvert actually paid down the advance--and it was perhaps unfortunate for you that you paid such scrupulous attention to details as to cut your own telephone wires! I had not, of course, an exact knowledge of the hour or minute in which you proposed to stage your little play here. The object of my first visit a little while ago was to forestall your turning the diagram over to the Weasel. Circumstances favoured you for the moment. I am back again, however, for the same purpose--the map!”
Mittel, in a cowed way, was huddled back in his chair. He smiled miserably at Jimmie Dale.
“QUICK!” Jimmie Dale flung out the word in a sharp, peremptory bark. “Do you need to be told that the CARTRIDGES are dry?”
Mittel's hand, trembling, went into his pocket and produced an envelope.
“Open it!” commanded Jimmie Dale. “And lay it on the desk, so that I can read it--I am too wet to touch it.”
Mittel obeyed--like a dog that has been whipped.
A glance at the paper, and Jimmie Dale's eyes lifted again--to sweep the floor of the room. He pointed to a pile of books and documents in one corner that had been thrown out of the safe.
“Go over there and pick up that check book!” he ordered tersely.
“What for?” Mittel made feeble protest.
“Never mind what for!” snapped Jimmie Dale. “Go and get it--and HURRY!”
Once more Mittel obeyed--and dropped the book hesitantly on the desk.
Jimmie Dale stared silently, insolently, contemptuously at the other.
Mittel stirred uneasily, sat down, shifted his feet, and his fingers fumbled aimlessly over the top of the desk.
“Compared with you,” said Jimmie Dale, in a low voice, “the Weasel, ay, and Hamvert, too, crooks though they are, are gentlemen! Michael Breen, as he died, told his wife to take that paper to some one she could trust, who would help her and tell her what to do; and, knowing no one to go to, but because she scrubbed your floors and therefore thought you were a fine gentleman, she came timidly to you, and trusted you--you cur!”
Jimmie Dale laughed suddenly--not pleasantly. Mittel shivered.
“Hamvert and Breen were partners out there in Alaska when Breen first went out,” said Jimmie Dale slowly, pulling the tin can wrapped in oilskin from his pocket. “Hamvert swindled Breen out of the one strike he made, and Mrs. Breen and her little girl back here were reduced to poverty. The amount of that swindle was, I understand, fifteen thousand dollars. I have ten of it here, contributed by the Weasel and Hamvert; and you will, I think, recognise therein a certain element of poetic justice--but I am still short five thousand dollars.”
Jimmie Dale removed the cover from the tin can. Mittel gazed at the contents numbly.
“You perhaps did not hear me?” prompted Jimmie Dale coldly. “I am still short five thousand dollars.”
Mittel circled his lips with the tip of his tongue.
“What do you want?” he whispered hoarsely.
“The balance of the amount.” There was an ominous quiet in Jimmie Dale's voice. “A check payable to Mrs. Michael Breen for five thousand dollars.”
“I--I haven't got that much in the bank,” Mittel fenced, stammering.
“No? Then I should advise you to see that you have by ten o'clock to-morrow morning!” returned Jimmie Dale curtly. “Make out that check!”
Mittel hesitated. The revolver edged insistently a little farther across the desk--and Mittel, picking up a pen, wrote feverishly. He tore the check from its stub, and, with a snarl, pushed it toward Jimmie Dale.
“Fold it!” instructed Jimmie Dale, in the same curt tones. “And fold that diagram with it. Put them both in this box. Thank you!” He wrapped the oilskin around the box again, and returned the box to his pocket. And again with that insolent, contemptuous stare, he surveyed the man at the desk--then he backed to the French windows. “It might be as well to remind you, Mittel,” he cautioned sternly, “that if for any reason this check is not honoured, whether through lack of funds or an attempt by you to stop payment, you'll be in a cell in the Tombs to-morrow for this night's work--that is quite understood, isn't it?”
Mittel was on his feet--sweat glistened on his forehead.
“My God!” he cried out shrilly. “Who are you?”
And Jimmie Dale smiled and stepped out on the lawn.
“Ask the Weasel,” said Jimmie Dale--and the next instant, lost in the shadows of the house, was running for his car.