The Adventures of Jimmie Dale [135]
he was only listening in an abstracted way. If he could only see that face, so close to his! He had yearned for that with all his soul for years now! And she was here, standing beside him, and his hand was upon her arm; and here, in his own den, in his own house, he was listening to another call to arms for the Gray Seal from her own lips! Honour! Was he but a poor, quixotic fool! He had only to step to the desk and switch on the light! Why should--he steadied himself with a jerk, and drew away his hand. She was in HIS house. "Go on," he said tersely. "Do you know, or did you ever hear of old Luther Doyle?" she asked. "No," said Jimmie Dale. "Do you know a man, then, named Connie Myers?" Connie Myers! Who in the Bad Lands did not know Connie Myers, who boasted of the half dozen prison sentences already to his credit? Yes; he knew Connie Myers! But, strangely enough, it was not in the Bad Lands or as Larry the Bat that he knew the man, or that the other knew him--it was as Jimmie Dale. Connie Myers had introduced himself one night several years ago with a blackjack that had just missed its mark as the man had jumped out from a dark alleyway on the East Side, and he, Jimmie Dale, had thrashed the other to within an inch of his life. He had reason to know Connie Myers--and Connie Myers had reason to remember him! "Yes," he said, with a grim smile; "I know Connie Myers." "And the tenement across the street from where you live as Larry the Bat--that, of course, you know." He leaned toward her wonderingly now. "Of course!" he ejaculated. "Naturally!" "Listen, then, Jimmie!" She was speaking quickly now. "It is a strange story. This Luther Doyle was already over fifty, when, some eight or nine years ago, his parents died within a few months of each other, and he inherited somewhere in the neighbourhood of a hundred thousand dollars; but the man, though harmless enough, was mildly insane, half-witted, queer, and the old couple, on account of their son's mental defects, took care to leave the money securely invested, and so that he could only touch the interest. During these eight or nine years he has lived by himself in the same old family house where he had lived with his parents, in a lonely spot near Pelham. And he has lived in a most frugal, even miserly, manner. His income could not have been less than six thousand dollars a year, and his expenditures could not have been more than six hundred. His dementia, ironically enough from the day that he came into his fortune, took the form of a most pitiable and abject fear that he would die in poverty, misery, and want; and so, year after year, cashing his checks as fast as he got them, never trusting the bank with a penny, he kept hiding away somewhere in his house every cent he could scrape and save from his income--which to- day must amount, at a minimum calculation, to fifty thousand dollars." "And," observed Jimmie Dale quietly. "Connie Myers robbed him of it, and--" "No!" Her voice was quivering with passion, as she caught up his words. "Twice in the last month Connie Myers TRIED to rob him, but the money was too securely hidden. Twice he broke into Doyle's house when the old man was out, but on both occasions was unsuccessful in his search, and was interrupted and forced to make his escape on account of Doyle's return. To-night, an hour ago, in an empty room on the second floor of that tenement, in the room facing the landing, old Luther Doyle was MURDERED!" There was silence for an instant. Her hand had closed in a tight pressure on his arm. The darkness seemed to add a sort of ghastly significance to her words. "In God's name, how do you know all this?" he demanded wildly. "How do you know all these things? "Does that matter now?" she answered tensely. "You will know that when you know the rest. Oh, don't you understand, Jimmie, there is not a moment to lose now? It was easy to lure a half-witted creature like that anywhere; it was Connie Myers who lured him to the tenement and murdered him there--but from that point, Jimmie, I am not sure