Jimmie Dale’s eyes returned to the curtain.  What was it doing there?  What was it for?  Instinctively he stepped over to examine it.  A single glance, however, as he lifted it aside, sufficed.  It was nothing but a make-shift clothes closet.  He turned from it, switched off the flashlight, and stood staring meditatively into the darkness.  In a strange house, with the knowledge to begin with that what he sought was carefully hidden, it was no sinecure to find that package.  He had never for a moment imagined that it would be.  But of one thing, however, there was no uncertainty in his mind—­he would get the package!—­by search if possible, by other means if search failed.  It was now close to one o’clock.  If by two o’clock his efforts had been fruitless, Spider Jack would hand over the package—­at the revolver point!  It was quite simple!  Meanwhile—­Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders, and, going over to the safe, knelt down in front of it—­meanwhile, as well begin here as anywhere else.

The trained fingers closed on the handle—­and on the instant, as though in startled amazement, shifted to the dial.  They came back to the handle—­a wrench—­then a low, amused chuckle—­and the door swung open.  The great, unwieldy thing was only a monumental bluff!  It not only had not been locked, but it could not be locked—­the mechanism was out of order, the bolts could not be moved by so much as a hair’s breadth!

Still chuckling, Jimmie Dale shot the flashlight’s ray into the interior of the safe—­and the chuckle died on his lips, and into his face came a look of strained bewilderment.  Inside, everything was in chaos, books, papers, a miscellany of articles, as though they had first been ruthlessly pulled out on the floor, then gathered up in an armful and crammed back inside again.  For an instant he did not move, and then a queer, hard, mirthless smile drew down the corners of his mouth.  With a sort of bitter, expectant nod of his head, he turned the light upon the door of the safe.  Yes, there were the scratches that the tools had left; and, as though in sardonic jest, the holes, where the steel bit had bored, were plugged with putty and rubbed over with some black substance that was still wet and came off, smearing his finger, as he touched it.  It could not have been done long ago, then!  How long?  A half hour—­an hour?  Not more than that!

Mechanically he closed the door of the safe, rose to his feet and, almost heedless of noise now, the flashlight ray dancing before him, he jumped across to the old-fashioned cabinet and pulled the door open.  Here, as within the safe, all inside, plain evidence of thorough, if hasty, search, was scattered and tossed about in hopeless confusion.

He shut the cabinet door; the flashlight went out; and he stood like a man stunned, the sense of some abysmal disaster upon him.  He was too late!  The game was up!  If it had ever been here, the package was gone now—­gone!  The Crime Club had been here before him!