There was a yell, a scream, that echoed out, reverberated, and went racketing through the house, and Jimmie Dale leaped forward—­over a table, sending it crashing to the floor.  The man had reeled back against the wall, clutching at a shattered wrist, staring into the flashlight’s eye, white-faced, jaw dropped, lips working in mingled pain and fear.

“Harve Thoms—­you, eh?” gritted Jimmie Dale.

A cunning look swept the distorted face.  Here, apparently, was only one man—­there were pals, three of them, only a few yards away.

“You ain’t got nothing on me!” he snarled, sparring for time.  “You police are too damned fresh with your guns!”

“I’ll take yours!” snapped Jimmie Dale, and snatched it deftly from the other’s pocket.  “This ain’t any police job, my bucko, and you make a move and I’ll drop you for keeps, if what you’ve got already ain’t enough to teach you to keep your hands off jobs that belong to your betters!”

He was working with mad haste as he spoke.  One minute at the outside was, perhaps, all he could count upon.  Already he had caught the rattle of the locked door down the hall.  He lit a match and turned on the gas over the bed—­it was the most dangerous thing he could do—­he knew that well enough, none knew it better—­it was offering himself as a fair mark when the others rushed in, as they would in a moment now—­but the Skeeter and his gang and this man here must have no misconception of his purpose, his reason for being there, the same as their own, the theft of the stones—­and no misconception as to his success.

“Y’ain’t the police!”—­it came in a choked gasp from the other, as he blinked in the sudden light “Say then—­”

“Shut up!” ordered Jimmie Dale curtly.  “And mind what I told you about moving!” He leaned over the bed.  Old Luddy, though under the influence of the chloroform, was moving restlessly.  Thoms had evidently only begun to apply the chloroform—­old Luddy was safe!  Jimmie Dale ran his hand in under the pillow.  “If you ain’t swiped them already they ought to be here!” he growled; “and if you have I’ll—­ah!” A little chamois bag was in his hand.  He laughed sneeringly at Thoms, opened the bag, allowed a few stones to trickle into his hand—­and then, without stopping to replace them, dashed stones and bag into his pocket.  The door along the corridor crashed open.

“What’s that?” he gasped out, in well-simulated fright—­and sprang for the ladder that led up to the roof.

It had all taken, perhaps, the minute that he had counted on—­no more.  Noises came from the floors below now, a confusion of them—­the shot, the scream had been heard by others, save those who had been in the locked room.  And the latter were outside now in the corridor, running to their accomplice’s aid.

There was a pause at the outer door—­then an oath—­and coupled with the oath an exclamation: 

“The Gray Seal!”