Larry the Bat, staring into the mouthpiece of the instrument, subconsciously passed his hand across his forehead, and subconsciously noted that his fingers, as he drew them away, were damp.
“Where is the letter now, Jason?” inquired Jimmie Dale coolly.
“Here on your desk, Master Jim. Shall I bring it to you?”
Bring it to him! How? When? Where? Bring it to him! The ghastly irony of it! Jimmie Dale tried to think--prodding, spurring desperately that keen, lightning brain of his that had never failed him yet. How bridge the gulf between Larry the Bat and Jimmie Dale in Jason's eyes--not just for the replenishing of funds now, but with a life at stake!
“No--I think not, Jason,” said Jimmie Dale calmly. “Just leave it where it is. And if she telephones again, say that you have told me--that will be sufficient to satisfy any further inquiries. And Jason--”
“If she telephones again, try and find out where the call comes from.”
“I haven't forgotten what you said once, Master Jim, sir,” said the old man eagerly. “And I've been trying that sir, all day. They've all come from different pay stations, sir.”
A mirthless little smile tinged Jimmie Dale's lips. Of course! He might have known! It was always that way, always the same. He was as near to the solution of her identity at that moment as he had been years ago, when she, in some mysterious way, alone of all the world, had identified him as the Gray Seal!
“Very good, Jason,” he said quietly. “Don't bother about it any more. It will be all right. You can expect me when you see me. Good-night.” He hung the receiver on the hook, walked out of the booth, and mechanically reached the street.
All right! It was far from “all right”--very far from it. It was no trivial thing, that letter; they never had been trivial things, those letters of hers, that involved so often a matter of life and death--as this one now, perhaps, as her actions would seem to indicate, involved life and death more urgently than any that had gone before. It was far from all right--at a moment when his own position, his own safety, was at best but a desperate chance; when his every energy, brain, wit, and cunning were taxed to the utmost to save himself! And yet, somehow, some way, at any cost, he must get that letter--and at any cost he must act upon it! To fail her was to fail utterly in everything that failure in its most miserable, its widest sense, implied--failure in that which rose paramount to every other consideration in life!
