Jimmie Dale straightened up and began to retreat along the corridor.  A merciless rage was upon him now, every fiber of his being seemed to tingle and quiver with it—­the damnable, hellish ingenuity of it all seemed to choke and suffocate him.

“Luck!” muttered Jimmie Dale between his clenched teeth.  “Oh, the blessed luck to get that door locked!  I’ve got time now to set the stage for my own get-away before the showdown!”

He stole on along the corridor.  Excerpts from her letter were running through his brain:  “It would do no good to warn him, Jimmie—­the Skeeter and his gang would never let up on him until they got the stones. . . .  It would do no good for you to steal them first, for they would only take that as a ruse of old Luddy’s, and murder the man first and hunt afterward. . . .  In some way you must let the Skeeter see you steal them, make them think, make them certain that it is a bona-fide theft, so that they will no longer have any interest or any desire to do old Luddy harm. . . .  And for it to appear real to them, it must appear real to old Luddy himself—­do not take any chances there.”

Jimmie Dale’s eyes narrowed.  Yes, it was simple enough now with that pack of hell’s wolves guarded for the moment by a locked door, forced to give him warning by breaking the door before they could get out.  It was simple enough now to enter old Luddy’s room, steal the stones at the revolver point, then make enough disturbance—­when he was ready—­to set the gang in motion, and, as they rushed in open him, to make his escape with the stones to the roof through Luddy’s room.  That was simple enough—­there was an opening to the roof in Luddy’s room, she had said, and there was a ladder kept there in place.  On hot nights, it seemed, the old man used to go up there and sleep on the roof—­not now, of course.  It was too late in the year for that—­but the opening in the roof was there, and the ladder remained there, too.

Yes, it was simple enough now.  And the next morning the papers would rave with execrations against the Gray Seal—­for the robbery of the life savings of a poor, defenseless old man, for committing as vile and pitiful a crime as had ever stirred New York!  Even Carruthers, of the morning news-Argus, would be moved to bitter attack.  Good old Carruthers—­who little thought that the Gray Seal was his old college pal, his present most intimate friend, Jimmie Dale!  And afterward—­after the next morning?  Well, that, at least, had never been in doubt.  Old Luddy could be made to leave New York, and, once away, with the Skeeter and his gang robbed of incentive to pay any further attention to him, the stones could be secretly returned to the old man.  And it would to the public, to the police, be just another of the Gray Seal’s crimes—­that was all!