“Do you think so, Weasel?” inquired Jimmie Dale politely.  He carried his handkerchief to his mouth to cloak a cough—­and his tongue touched the adhesive side of the little diamond-shaped gray seal.  Hand and handkerchief came back to the table, and Jimmie Dale leaned his weight carelessly upon it, while the automatic in his right hand still covered the two men.  “Do you think so, Weasel?” he repeated softly.  “Well, perhaps you are right; and yet; somehow, I am inclined to disagree with you.  Let me see, Weasel—­it was Tuesday night, two nights ago; wasn’t it, that a trifling break in Maiden Lane at Thorold and Sons disturbed the police?  It was a three-year job for even a first offender, ten for one already on nodding terms with the police and fifteen to twenty for—­well, say, for a man like you, Weasel—­if he were caught!  Am I making myself quite plain?”

The colour in the Weasel’s cheeks faded a little—­his eyes were holding in sudden fascination upon Jimmie Dale.

“I see that I am,” observed Jimmie Dale pleasantly.  “I said, ’if he were caught,’ you will remember.  I am going to leave this room in a moment, Weasel, and leave it entirely to your discretion as to whether you will think it wise or not to stir from that chair for ten minutes after I shut the door.  And now”—­Jimmie Dale nonchalantly replaced his handkerchief in his pocket, nonchalantly followed it with the banknotes which he picked up from the table—­and smiled.

With a gasp, both men had strained forward, and were staring, wild-eyed, at the gray seal stuck between them on the tabletop.

“The Gray Seal!” whispered the Weasel, and his tongue circled his lips.

Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders.

“That was a bit theatrical, Weasel,” he said apologetically; “and yet not wholly unnecessary.  You will recall Stangeist, The Mope, Australian Ike, and Clarie Deane, and can draw your own inference as to what might happen in the Thorold affair if you should be so ill-advised as to force my hand.  Permit me”—­the slim, deft fingers, like a streak of lightning, were inside Hamvert’s coat pocket and out again with the remainder of the banknotes—­and Jimmie Dale was backing for the door—­not the door of the bathroom by which he had entered, but the door of the room itself that opened on the corridor.  There he stopped, and his hand swept around behind his back and turned the key in the locked door.  He nodded at the two men, whose faces were working with incongruously mingled expressions of impotent rage, bewilderment, fear, and fury—­and opened the door a little.  “Ten minutes, Weasel,” he said gently.  “I trust you will not have to use heroic measures to restrain your friend for that length of time, though if it is necessary I should advise you for your own sake to resort almost—­to murder.  I wish you good evening, gentlemen.”