Half an hour!  On roared the car—­towns, black roads, villages, wooded lands were kaleidoscopic in their passing.  Half an hour!  Had he done it?  Had he come anywhere near doing it?  He did not know.  He was in the city at last—­and now he had to moderate his speed; but, by keeping to the less frequented streets, he could still drive at a fast pace.  One piece of good fortune had been his—­the long motor coat he had found in the car with which to cover the rags of Larry the Bat, and without which he would have been obliged to leave the car somewhere on the outskirts of the city, and to trust, like Mike Hagan, to other and slower means of transportation.

Blocks away from Hagan’s tenement, he ran the car into a lane, slipped off the motor coat, and from his pocket whipped out the little metal insignia case—­and in another moment a diamond-shaped gray seal was neatly affixed to the black ebony rim of the steering wheel.  He smiled ironically.  It was necessary, quite necessary that the police should have no doubt as to who had been in Doyle’s house with Connie Myers that night, or to whom they had so considerately loaned their automobile!

He was running now—­through lanes, dodging down side streets, taking every short cut he knew.  Had he beaten the police to Mike Hagan’s room?  It would be easy then.  If they were ahead of him, then, by some means or other, he must still get that paper first.

He was at the tenement now—­shuffling leisurely up the steps.  The front door was open.  He entered, and went up the first flight of stairs, then along the hall, and up the next flight.  He had half expected the place to be bustling with excitement over the crime; but the police evidently had kept the affair quiet, for he had seen no one since he had entered.  But now, as he began to mount the third flight, he went more slowly—­some one was ahead of him.  It was very dark—­he could not see.  The steps above died away.  He reached the landing, started along for Hagan’s room—­and a light blazed suddenly in his face, and a hard, quick grip on his shoulder forced him back against the wall.  Then the flashlight wavered, glistened on brass buttons went out, and a voice laughed roughly: 

“It’s only Larry the Bat!”

“Larry the Bat, eh?” It was another voice, harsh and curt.  “What are you doing here?”

He was not first, after all!  The telephone message from Pelham—­it was almost certainly that—­had beaten him!  They were ahead of him, just ahead of him, they had only been a few steps ahead of him going up the stairs, just a second ahead of him on their way to Hagan’s room!  Jimmie Dale was thinking fast now.  He must go, too—­to Hagan’s room with them—­somehow—­there was no other way—­there was Hagan’s life at stake.

“Aw, I ain’t done nothin’!” he whined.  “I was just goin’ ter borrow the price of a feed from Mike Hagan—­lemme go!”

“Hagan, eh!” snapped the questioner.  “Are you a friend of his?”