The Adventures of Jimmie Dale eBook

Frank L. Packard
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 616 pages of information about The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.

The Adventures of Jimmie Dale eBook

Frank L. Packard
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 616 pages of information about The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.

Jimmie Dale slipped his feet out of his low evening pumps, snatched up the old coat and hat from the pile, put them on, and, without a sound, reached the gas jet and turned it off.  A second had gone by—­no more—­the knocking still sounded insistently on the door.  It was dark now, perfectly black.  He started across the room, his tread absolutely silent as the trained muscles, relaxing, threw the body weight gradually upon one foot before the next step was taken.  It was like a shadow, a little blacker in outline than the surrounding blackness, stealing across the floor.

Halfway to the door he paused.  The knocking had ceased.  He listened intently.  It was not repeated.  Instead, his ear caught a guarded step retreating outside in the hall.  Jimmie Dale drew a breath of relief.  He went on again to the door, still listening.  Was it a trap—­that step outside?

At the door now, tense, alert, he lowered his ear to the keyhole.  There came the faintest creak from the stairs.  Jimmie Dale’s brows gathered.  It was strange!  The knocking had not lasted long.  Whoever it was was going away—­but it required the utmost caution to descend those stairs, rickety and tumble-down as they were, with no more sound than that!  Why such caution?  Why not a more determined and prolonged effort at his door—­the visitor had been easily satisfied that Larry the Bat was not within.  Too easily satisfied!  Jimmie Dale turned the key noiselessly in the lock.  He opened the door cautiously—­half inch—­an inch, there was no sound of footsteps now.  Occasionally a lodger moved about on the floor above; occasionally from somewhere in the tenement came the murmur of voices as from behind closed door—­that was all.  All else was silence and darkness now.

The door, on its well-oiled hinges, swung wide open.  Jimmie Dale thrust out his head into the hall—­and something fell upon the threshold with a little thud—­but for a moment Jimmie Dale did not move.  Listening, trying to pierce the darkness, he was as still as the silence around him; then he stooped and groped along the threshold.  His hand closed upon what seemed like a small box wrapped in paper.  He picked it up, closed and locked the door again, and retreated back across the room.  It was strange—­unpleasantly strange—­a box propped stealthily against the door so that it would fall to the threshold when the door was opened!  And why the stealth?  What did it mean?  Had the underworld with its thousand eyes and ears already succeeded in a few days where the police had failed signally for years—­had they sent him this, whatever it was, as some grim token that they had run Larry the Bat to earth?  He shook his head.  No; gangland struck more swiftly, with less finesse than that—­the “cat-and-mouse” act was never one it favoured, for the mouse had been known to get away.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Adventures of Jimmie Dale from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.