“I believe you,” said Whitey Mack curtly.  “That’s why I picked you out for the medal they’ll pin on you for this.  And here’s getting down to tacks!  I’ll lead you to the Gray Seal to-night and help you nab him and stay with you to the finish, but there’s to be nobody but you and me on the job.  When it’s done I fade away, and nobody’s to know I snitched, and no questions asked as to how I found out about the Gray Seal.  I ain’t looking for any of the glory—­you can fix that up to suit yourself.  The cash is different—­you come across with half the reward the day they pay it.”

“You’ll get it!” There was savage elation in Lannigan’s voice, the emphatic smash of a fist on the table.  “You’re on, Whitey.  And if we get the Gray Seal to-night, I’ll do better by you than that.”

“We’ll get him!” said Whitey Mack, with a vicious oath.  “And—­”

Jimmie Dale crouched suddenly low down, close against the wall.  The crunch of a footstep sounded from the end of the lane.  Some one had turned in from the cross street, some fifty yards away, and was heading evidently for the back entrance to Bristol Bob’s.  Jimmie Dale edged noiselessly, cautiously back past the doorway, kept on, pressed close against the wall, and finally paused.  He had not been seen.  The back door of Bristol Bob’s opened and closed.  The man had gone in.

For a moment Jimmie Dale stood hesitant.  There was a wild surging in his brain, something like a myriad batteries of trip hammers seemed to be pounding at his temples.  Then, almost blindly, he kept on down the lane in the same direction in which he had started to retreat—­as well one cross street as another.

He turned into the cross street, went along it—­and presently emerged into the full tide of the Bowery.  It was garishly lighted; people swarmed about him.  Subconsciously, there were crowded sidewalks; subconsciously, he was on the Bowery—­that was all.

Ruin, disaster, peril faced him—­faced him, and staggered him with the suddenness of the shock.  Was it true?  No; it could not be true!  It was a bluff—­Whitey Mack was bluffing.  Jimmie Dale’s lips grew thin in a mirthless smile as he shook his head.  Neither Whitey Mack nor any other man would dare to bluff like that.  It was too straight, too open-handed, Whitey Mack had laid his cards too plainly on the table.  Whitey Mack’s words rang in his ears:  “I’ll lead you to the Gray Seal to-night and help you nab him and stay with you to the finish.”  The man meant what he said, meant what he said, too, about the “finish” of the Gray Seal; not a man in the Bad Lands but meant—­death to the Gray Seal!  But how, by what means, when, where had Whitey Mack got his information?  “I’m the only one that’s wise,” Whitey Mack had said.  It seemed impossible.  It was impossible!  Whitey Mack was sincere enough probably in what he had said, but the man simply could not know.  Whitey Mack could only have spotted some one that, for some reason or other, he imagined was the Gray Seal.  That was it—­must be it!  Whitey Mack had made a mistake.  What clew could he have obtained to—­