Jimmie Dale had reached old Luddy’s door.  The Gray Seal?  Oh, yes, they would know it was the Gray Seal—­the insignia was familiar enough; familiar to the crooks of the underworld, who held it in awe; familiar to the police, to whom it was an added barb of ridicule.  He was placing it now, that insignia, a diamond-shaped, gray paper seal, on the panel of the door; and now, a black silk mask adjusted over his face, Jimmie Dale bent to insert the little steel instrument in the lock—­a pitiful, paltry thing, a cheap lock, to fingers that could play so intimately with twirling knobs and dials, masters of the intricate mechanism of vaults and safes!

And then, about to open the door, a sort of sudden dismay fell upon him.  He had not thought of that—­somehow, it had not occurred to him!  What was it they were waiting for?  Why had they not struck at once, as, when he had first entered the house, he had supposed they would do?  What was it?  Why was it?  Was old Luddy out?  Were they waiting for his return—­or what?

The door, without sound, moved gradually under his hand.  A faint odor assailed his nostrils!  It was dark, very dark.  Across the room, in a direct line, was the doorway of the inner room—­she had explained that in her letter.  It was slow progress to cross that room without sound, in silence—­it was a snail’s movement—­for fear that even a muscle might crack.

And now he stood in the inner doorway.  It was dark here, to—­and yet, how bizarre, a star seemed to twinkle through the very roof of the room itself!  The odour was pungent now.  There was a long-drawn sigh—­then a low, indescribable sound of movement.  Somebody, apart from old Luddy, was in the room!

It swept, the full consciousness of it, upon Jimmie Dale in an instantaneous flash.  Chloroform; the open scuttle in the roof; the waiting of those others—­all fused into a compact logical whole.  They had loosened the scuttle during the day, probably when old Luddy was away—­one of them had crept down there now to chloroform the old man into insensibility—­the others would complete the ghastly work presently by stringing their victim up to the ceiling—­and it would be suicide, for, long before morning came, long before the old man would be discovered, the fumes of the chloroform would be gone.

It seemed like a cold hand, deathlike, clutching at his heart.  Was he too late, after all!  Chloroform alone could—­kill!  To the right, just a little to the right—­he must make no mistake—­his ear placed the sound!  He whipped his hands from the side pockets of his coat—­the ray of his flashlight cut across the room and fell upon an aged face upon a bed, upon a hand clutching a wad of cloth, the cloth pressed horribly against the nose and mouth of the upturned face—­and then, roaring in the stillness, spitting a vicious lane of fire that paralleled the flashlight’s ray, came the tongue flame of his automatic.