The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale | Page 6

few words in the note, and those few carefully
chosen, guarded, like the notes of old, lest they should fall into a
stranger's hand; but he had read only too clearly between the lines. She
had had only far too much more reason for fear than she had admitted
to him; and those fears had crystallised into realities. One sentence in
the note stood out above all others, a sentence that had lived with him
since that morning months ago, the words seeming to visualise her,
high in her courage, brave in the unselfishness of her love: "Jimmie, I
must not, I cannot, I will not bring you into the shadows again; I must
fight this out alone."

He recalled the feverish haste in which he had acted that morning--the
one thought that had possessed him being to reach her if possible
before she could put her designs into execution. Benson, his chauffeur,
reckless of speed laws, had rushed him to the hotel where, pending the
remodelling of the Fifth Avenue mansion, she had taken rooms. Here,
he learned that she had given up her apartments on the previous
afternoon, and that it was understood she had left for an extended travel
tour, and that her baggage had been taken to the Pennsylvania Station.
From the hotel he had gone to the trust company in whose hands she
had placed the management of her estate. With a few additional details,
disquieting rather than otherwise, it was the story of the hotel over
again. They did not know where she was, except that she had told them
she was going away for a long trip, had given them the fullest powers
to handle her affairs, and, on the previous afternoon, had drawn a very
large sum of money before leaving the institution.
He had returned then, like a man dazed, to his home on Riverside Drive,
and had locked himself in his den to think it out. She had covered her
tracks well--and had done it in a masterly way because she had done it
simply. It was possible that she had actually gone away for a trip; but it
was more probable that she had not. He had had, of course, no means of
knowing; but the sort of peril that threatened her, his intuition told him,
was not such as to be diverted by the mere expedient of absenting
herself from New York temporarily; and, besides, she had said that she
would fight it out. She could hardly do that in the person of Marie
LaSalle, or away from New York. She was clever, resourceful, resolute
and fearless--and those very traits opened a vista of possibilities that
left his mind staggering blindly as in a maze. She was gone--and alone
in the face of deadly menace. He remembered then the curious,
unnatural calmness underlying the mad whirling of his brain at the
thought that that was not literally true, that she was not, nor would she
ever be alone--while he lived. It was only a question of how he could
help her. It had seemed almost certain that the danger threatening her
came from one of two sources--either from those who were left of the
Crime Club, relentless, savage for vengeance on account of the ruin and
disaster that had overtaken them; or else from the Magpie, and behind
the Magpie, massed like some Satanic phalanx, every denizen of the

underworld, for Silver Mag had disappeared coincidently with Larry
the Bat, coincidently with the Magpie's attempted robbery of the
supposed Henry LaSalle's safe, to which plot she was held by the
underworld to be a party, coincidently with the dispersion of the Crime
Club, and coincidently with the reappearance of the heiress Marie
LaSalle--and, further, Silver Mag stood condemned to death in the Bad
Lands as the accomplice of the Gray Seal. But Silver Mag had
disappeared. Had the underworld, prompted by the Magpie, solved the
riddle--did it know, or guess, or suspect that Silver Mag was Marie
LaSalle?
Which was it? The Crime Club, or the Magpie? Here again he could
not know, though he inclined to the belief that it was the latter; but here,
in either case, the means of knowing, of helping her, the way, the road,
was clearly defined--and the road was the road to the underworld. But
Larry the Bat was dead and the road was barred. And then a half
finished painting standing on an easel at the rear of his den had brought
him inspiration. It was one of his hobbies--and it swung wide again for
him the door of the underworld. None, in a broken-down, disappointed,
drug-shattered artist, would recognise Larry the Bat! The only
similarity between the two--the one thing that must of necessity be the
same in order to explain