The Adventures of Jimmie Dale [73]
face, upturned to his, was smiling at him as she slept. Jimmie Dale turned away his head--his eyelashes wet under his mask. "BENEATH THE MATTRESS OF THE CHILD'S BED," the letter had said. His face like stone, his lips a thin line now, Jimmie Dale's hand reached deftly in without disturbing the child and took out a package--and then another. He straightened up, a bundle of crisp new hundred-dollar notes in each hand--and on the top of one, slipped under the elastic band that held the bills together, an unsealed envelope. He drew out the latter, and opened it--it was a second-class steamship passage to Vera Cruz, made out in a fictitious name, of course, to John Davies, the booking for next day's sailing. From the ticket, from the stolen money, Jimmie Dale's eyes lifted to rest again on the little golden head, the smiling lips--and then, dropping the packages into his pockets, his own lips moving queerly, he turned abruptly to the door. "My God, the shame of it!" he whispered to himself. He crept down the corridor, past the open door of the room where the young woman still sat fast asleep, and, his mask in his pocket again, stepped softly into the vestibule, and from there to the street. Jimmie Dale hurried now, spurred on it seemed by a hot, insensate fury that raged within him--there was still one other call to make that night--still those remaining and minute details in the latter part of her letter, grim and ugly in their portent! It was close upon one o'clock in the morning when Jimmie Dale stopped again--this time before a fashionable dwelling just off Central Park. And here, for perhaps the space of a minute, he surveyed the house from the sidewalk--watching, with a sort of speculative satisfaction, a man's shadow that passed constantly to and fro across the drawn blinds of one of the lower windows. The rest of the house was in darkness. "Yes," said Jimmie Dale, nodding his head, "I rather thought so. The servants will have retired hours ago. It's safe enough." He ran quickly up the steps and rang the bell. A door opened almost instantly, sending a faint glow into the hall from the lighted room; a hurried step crossed the hall--and the outer door was thrown back. "Well, what is it?" demanded a voice brusquely. It was quite dark, too dark for either to distinguish the other's features--and Jimmie Dale's hat was drawn far down over his eyes. "I want to see Mr. Thomas H. Carling, cashier of the Hudson- Mercantile National Bank--it's very important," said Jimmie Dale earnestly. "I am Mr. Carling," replied the other. "What is it?" Jimmie Dale leaned forward. "From headquarters--with a report," he said, in a low tone. "Ah!" exclaimed the bank official sharply. "Well, it's about time! I've been waiting up for it--though I expected you would telephone rather than this. Come in!" "Thank you," said Jimmie Dale courteously--and stepped into the hall. The other closed the front door. "The servants are in bed, of course," he explained, as he led the way toward the lighted room. "This way, please." Behind the other, across the hall, Jimmie Dale followed and close at Carling's heels entered the room, which was fitted up, quite evidently regardless of cost, as a combination library and study. Carling, in a somewhat pompous fashion, walked straight ahead toward the carved-mahogany flat-topped desk, and, as he reached it, waved his hand. "Take a chair," he said, over his shoulder--and then, turning in the act of dropping into his own chair, grasped suddenly at the edge of the desk instead, and, with a low, startled cry, stared across the room. Jimmie Dale was leaning back against the door that was closed now behind him--and on Jimmie Dale's face was a black silk mask. For an instant neither man spoke nor moved; then Carling, spare- built, dapper in evening clothes, edged back from the desk and laughed a little uncertainly. "Quite neat! I compliment you! From headquarters with a report, I think you said?" "Which I neglected to add," said Jimmie Dale, "was to be made in private." Carling, as though to put as much distance