The Adventures of Jimmie Dale | Page 9

that the managing editor of the NEWS-ARGUS, or any one else, for that matter, would have picked out as the setting for the second debut of the Gray Seal.
From the belt around his waist, Jimmie Dale took the black silk mask, and slipped it on; and from the belt, too, came a little instrument that his deft fingers manipulated in the lock. A curious snipping sound followed. Jimmie Dale put his weight gradually against the door. The door held fast.
"Bolted," said Jimmie Dale to himself.
The sensitive fingers travelled slowly up and down the side of the door, seeming to press and feel for the position of the bolt through an inch of plank--then from the belt came a tiny saw, thin and pointed at the end, that fitted into the little handle drawn from another receptacle in the leather girdle beneath the unbuttoned vest.
Hardly a sound it made as it bit into the door. Half a minute passed--there was the faint fall of a small piece of wood--into the aperture crept the delicate, tapering fingers--came a slight rasping of metal--then the door swung back, the dark shadow that had been Jimmie Dale vanished and the door closed again.
A round, white beam of light glowed for an instant--and disappeared. A miscellaneous, lumbering collection of junk and odds and ends blocked the entry, leaving no more space than was sufficient for bare passageway. Jimmie Dale moved cautiously--and once more the flashlight in his hand showed the way for an instant--then darkness again.
The cluttered accumulation of secondhand stuff in the rear gave place to a little more orderly arrangement as he advanced toward the front of the store. Like a huge firefly, the flashlight twinkled, went out, twinkled again, and went out. He passed a sort of crude, partitioned-off apartment that did duty for the establishment's office, a sort of little boxed-in place it was, about in the middle of the floor. Jimmie Dale's light played on it for a moment. but he kept on toward the front door without any pause.
Every movement was quick, sure, accurate, with not a wasted second. It had been barely a minute since he had vaulted the back fence. It was hardly a quarter of a minute more before the cumbersome lock of the front door was unfastened, and the door itself pulled imperceptibly ajar.
He went swiftly back to the office now--and found it even more of a shaky, cheap affair than it had at first appeared; more like a box stall with windows around the top than anything else, the windows doubtless to permit the occupant to overlook the store from the vantage point of the high stool that stood before a long, battered, wobbly desk. There was a door to the place, too, but the door was open and the key was in the lock. The ray of Jimmie Dale's flashlight swept once around the interior--and rested on an antique, ponderous safe.
Under the mask Jimmie Dale's lips parted in a smile that seemed almost apologetic, as he viewed the helpless iron monstrosity that was little more than an insult to a trained cracksman. Then from the belt came the thin metal case and a pair of tweezers. He opened the case, and with the tweezers lifted out one of the gray-coloured, diamond-shaped seals. Holding the seal with the tweezers, he moistened the gummed side with his lips, then laid it on a handkerchief which he took from his pocket, and clapped the handkerchief against the front of the safe, sticking the seal conspicuously into place. Jimmie Dale's insignia bore no finger prints. The microscopes and magnifying glasses at headquarters had many a time regretfully assured the police of that fact.
And now his hands and fingers seemed to work like lightning. Into the soft iron bit a drill--bit in and through--bit in and through again. It was dark, pitch black--and silent. Not a sound, save the quick, dull rasp of the ratchet--like the distant gnawing of a mouse! Jimmie Dale worked fast--another hole went through the face of the old-fashioned safe--and then suddenly he straightened up to listen, every faculty tense, alert, and strained, his body thrown a little forward. WHAT WAS THAT!
From the alleyway leading from the street without, through which he himself had come, sounded the stealthy crunch of feet. Motionless in the utter darkness, Jimmie Dale listened--there was a scraping noise in the rear--someone was climbing the fence that he had climbed!
In an instant the tools in Jimmie Dale's hands disappeared into their respective pockets beneath his vest--and the sensitive fingers shot to the dial on the safe.
"Too bad," muttered Jimmie Dale plaintively to himself. I could have made such an artistic job of it--I swear I could have cut Carruthers' profile in the hole in less than no time--to open it like