Jimmie Dale returned to the Sanctuary, removed from his person all evidences of Larry the Bat—­and from the Sanctuary went home to Riverside Drive.

In his den there, in the morning after breakfast, Jason, the butler, brought him the papers.  Three-inch headlines in red ink screamed, exulted, and shrieked out the news that the Gray Seal, in the person of Stace Morse, fence, yeggman and murderer, had been captured.  The public, if it had held any private admiration for the one-time mysterious crook could now once and forever disillusion itself.  The Gray Seal was Stace Morse—­and Stace Morse was of the dregs of the city’s scum, a pariah, an outcast, with no single redeeming trait to lift him from the ruck of mire and slime that had strewn his life from infancy.  The face of Inspector Clayton, blandly self-complacent, leaped out from the paper to meet Jimmie Dale’s eyes—­and with it a column and a half of perfervid eulogy.

Something at first like dismay, the dismay of impotency, filled Jimmie Dale—­and then, cold, leaving him unnaturally calm, the old merciless rage took its place.  There was nothing to do now but wait—­wait until Carruthers should send that photograph.  Then if, after all, he were wrong—­then he must find some other way.  But was he wrong!  The notebook that Carruthers had given him, open at the sketch he had made of Clayton, lay upon the desk.  Jimmie Dale picked it up—­he had already spent quite a little time over it before breakfast—­and examined it again minutely, even resorting to his magnifying glass.  He put it down as a knock sounded at the door, and Jason entered with a silver card tray.  From Carruthers already!  Jimmie Dale stepped quickly forward—­and then Jimmie Dale met the old man’s eyes.  It wasn’t from Carruthers—­it was from her!

“The same shuffer brought it, Master Jim,” said Jason.

Jimmie Dale snatched the envelope from the tray, and waved the other from the room.  As the door closed, he tore open the letter.  There was just a single line: 

Jimmie—­Jimmie, you haven’t failed, have you?

Jimmie Dale stared at it.  Failed!  Failed—­her!  The haggard look was in his face again.  It was the bond between them that was at stake—­the Gray Seal—­the bond that had come, he knew for all time in that instant, to mean his life.

“God knows!” he muttered hoarsely, and flung himself into a lounging chair, still staring at the note.

The hours dragged by.  Luncheon time arrived and passed—­and then by special messenger the little package from Carruthers came.

Jimmie Dale started to undo the string, then laid the package down, and held out his hands before him for inspection.  They were trembling visibly.  It was a strange condition for Jimmie Dale either to witness or experience, unlike him, foreign to him.

“This won’t do, Jimmie,” he said grimly, shaking his head.

He picked up the package again, opened it, and from between two pieces of cardboard took out a large photographic print.  A moment, two, Jimmie Dale examined it, used the magnifying glass again; and then a strange gleam came into the dark eyes, and his lips moved.