RETRIBUTION
His brain seemed to whirl, staggered as by some gigantic, ghastly mockery.The Crime Club! HERE! He had thought to creep upon that man--and he had run blindly into the very heart and centre of these hell fiends' nest!
Silently he stood there, holding his breath as he listened now, motionless as a statue, forcing his mind to THINK.He remembered that last night his impression of the place had been that it was more like some great private mansion than anything else.Well, he had been right, it seemed! He could have laughed aloud--sardonically, hysterically.It was not so strange now that there were no rooms on the right-hand side of the corridor! And what could have suited their purpose better, what, by its very location, its unimpeachable character, could be a more ideal lair for them than this house! And how grimly simple it was now, the explanation!
In the five years that the false Henry LaSalle had been in possession, they had cunningly remodelled the upper floor--that was all! It was quite clear now why the man never entertained--why he had never been caught or found or known to be in communication with his fellow conspirators! It was no longer curious that one might watch the door of the house for months at a stretch and go unrewarded for one's pains, as the Tocsin had done, when access to the house by those who frequented it was so easy through the garage on the side street--and from the garage, if their work there was in keeping with their clever contrivances within the house, by an underground connection into, say, the cellar or basement!
Again Jimmie Dale checked that nervous, unnatural inclination to laugh aloud.Was there anything, any single incident, any single detail of all that had transpired, that was not explained, borne out, as it could be explained and borne out in no other way save that the Crime Club should be no other than this very house itself?
It was the exposition of that favourite theory of his--it was so obvious that therein lay its security.He had mocked at the Magpie not many moments before on that score--and now it was the beam in his own eye! It was so obvious now, so glaringly obvious, that the Crime Club could have been nowhere else; so obvious, with every word of the Tocsin's story pointing it out like a signpost--and he had not seen it!
And then suddenly every muscle grew strained and rigid.WAS THERESOME ONE IN THE CORRIDOR? Was it some one moving--or was it only fancy? He listened--while he strained his eyes through the darkness.There was no sound; only that abnormal, heavy silence that--yes, he remembered that, too, now--that had clung about him last night like a pall.He could see nothing, hear nothing--but intuitively, bringing a cold dismay, the greater because it was something unknown, intangible, he FELT as though eyes were upon him, that even in the darkness he was being watched!
And as he stood there, then, slowly there crept upon Jimmie Dale the sense of peril and disaster.It was not intuition now--it was certainty.He was trapped! It was the part of a fool to imagine that with their devil's cunning, their cleverness, their ingenuity, he, or any one else, could enter that house unknown to its occupants! Had he made electric contact when he had opened the front door, and rung a signal here, perhaps, upstairs--had he set some system of alarm at work when he had touched that window? What did it matter--the details that had heralded his entrance? He was certain now that his presence in the house was known.Only, why had they left him so long without attack? He shook his head with a quick, impatient movement.That, too, was obvious! He was under observation.Who was he? Why had he come? Was he simply a paltry safe-tapper--or was he one whom they had a real need to fear? And then, too, there might well be another reason.It was far from likely, in fact unreasonable, to imagine that all the men he had seen here the night before were in the house now.Not many of them, if any, would LIVE here, for CONSTANT, daily coming and going, even through the garage, could not escape notice; and, of the servants, probably a lesser breed of criminal, some of them, at least, no doubt, were engaged at that moment in watching his own house on Riverside Drive! There was even the possibility that the man posing as Henry LaSalle was, for the time being, here alone.
He shook his head again.He could hardly hope for that--he had no right to hope for anything more now than a struggle, with an inevitably fatal ending to himself, but one in which at least he could sell his life as dearly as possible, one in which, perhaps, he might pay the Tocsin's score with the man he had come to find! If he could do that--well, after all, the price was not too great!
There were no tremours of the muscles now.It was Jimmie Dale, the Gray Seal, every faculty alert, tense, keyed up to its highest efficiency; the brain cool, keen, and active--fighting for his life.
The front door through which he had entered was an impossibility;but there was the window in the library that he had opened--if they would let him get that far! That was as good a chance as any.If he made an effort to find, say, a way to the flat above and chanced some means of escape there, it would in no wise obviate an attack upon him, and he would only be under the added disadvantage of unfamiliar surroundings.
Feeling out with his left hand, his automatic thrown a little forward in his right, he began to retrace his way along the blank wall of the corridor, pausing between each step to listen, moving silently, his tread on the heavy carpet as noiseless as though it were some shadow creeping there.
Stillness--utter, absolute! Always that stillness.Always that sense of danger around him--the tense, bated expectancy of momentary attack--a revolver flash through the darkness--a sudden rush upon him.But still there was nothing--only the darkness, only the silence.