Here, at the upper end of the street, was a conglomerate business section of rather inferior class, catering doubtless to the poor, foreign element that congregated west of Broadway proper, and to the south of Washington Square.  The street was, at first glance, deserted; it was dark and dreary, with stores and lofts on either side.  An elevated train roared by overhead, with a thunderous, deafening clamour.  Jimmie Dale, on the right-hand side of the street, glanced interestedly at the dark store windows as he went by.  And then, a block ahead, on the other side, his eyes rested on an approaching form.  As the other reached the corner and paused, and the light from the street lamp glinted on brass buttons, Jimmie Dale’s eyes narrowed a little under his slouch hat.  The policeman, although nonchalantly swinging a nightstick, appeared to be watching him.

Jimmie Dale went on half a block farther, stooped to the sidewalk to tie his shoe, glanced back over his shoulder—­the policeman was not in sight—­and slipped like a shadow into the alleyway beside which he had stopped.

It was another Jimmie Dale now—­the professional Jimmie Dale.  Quick as a cat, active, lithe, he was over a six foot fence in the rear of a building in a flash, and crouched a black shape, against the back door of an unpretentious, unkempt, dirty, secondhand shop that fronted on West Broadway—­the last place certainly in all New York 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.