again. Since then he had continued to cultivate these men. They were only pawns, they moved only at the will of that unseen yet ever present spirit of evil, the Phantom; but to be one of them opened the Avenue of a Thousand Chances that might lead to the Phantom himself. He had had no other clue to follow.
But so far nothing had come of it. They did not distrust him—who in the underworld would distrust Smarlinghue, who had the entrée everywhere!—but they had made no advances toward offering him full membership in that unhallowed fraternity to which he knew they belonged. At times he had believed they had been on the verge of doing so, and that applied especially to Bunty Myers, who was the Phantom's apparent chief of staff; but there had been nothing definite, nothing concrete, nothing tangible.
And yet, even in a negative sense, the nights he had spent here of late had not been futile. He was in possession of the fact that there had been inactivity. And that meant that the Phantom, whatever might be germinating in that master mind of crime, had for the time being been quiescent; and, as a corollary to that, the almost certain deduction that no further blow had been struck at the Tocsin—that she was still safe. And this had been borne out by Mother Margot, who, so far, had always been the Phantom's mouthpiece. As the Gray Seal, and through the hold that, as the Gray Seal, he had upon her, he had continued to call her daily from her pushcart to the telephone and question her. But she had still protested vehemently each time that she had had no further word of any move, and he was satisfied that she was telling the truth for the simple reason that he did not believe she would dare do anything else. But, even so, unknown to her, he had still maintained, in so far as he could, a personal surveillance over her movements, and there had been nothing to disprove her statements. She still tended her pushcart in Thompson Street; she still lived in those rooms from which the Phantom, in the dual guise of Shiftel, the fence, and Gentleman Laroque, who once had openly led this very gang here, had so mysteriously disappeared.
Smarlinghue's face was vapid, but into the dark eyes behind the creeping eyelids there came a troubled gleam. Those rooms where the Voice, as Mother Margot called the Phantom, had installed the old hag! What was the secret that they held? He was certain that Mother Margot did not know. And twice again, of late, in Mother Margot's absence, and despite the Tocsin's warning that they were a trap for himself, he had explored them, searched them—and found nothing.
And now the men around the table, the room itself, his immediate surroundings, existed only in a subconscious way in Jimmie Dale's mind. That was the negative side of the week just past. There was equally the positive side.
Shiftel had returned to the underworld.
Not openly. Not to his old quarters. At first the rumour had flown from mouth to mouth through the underground exchanges of the Bad Lands that Shiftel was back; that he had been seen a dozen times in the hidden places, the lairs, the hang-outs, the breeding dens of vice: that crooks of his old, exclusive clientele had talked with him, done business with him. And at first, he, Jimmie Dale, had not believed it; and then he had seen the man himself. He was sure of it. Shiftel! Isaac Shiftel, alias Gentleman Laroque, alias Limpy Mack, alias the Gentleman with the Gold Spectacles—the Phantom! The man that the Tocsin had so truly said possessed a score of domiciles and, yes—entities—there was no better word, for in each of his disguises the man seemed to have established himself as a known and breathing entity in the life and surroundings of the particular character which for the moment he might have assumed. As witness Shiftel, the fence, known far and wide in the underworld: as witness Gentleman Laroque, long the leader of this band here, long the most notorious gangster in the Bad Lands.
He had seen Shiftel three nights ago in the Green Dragon, a dance hall of unsavoury repute. And Shiftel, the man who was the cause of his, Jimmie Dale's, return to the life of Smarlinghue and the squalor of the Sanctuary, the man who sought the Tocsin's life, the one man that he, Jimmie Dale, would gladly have sacrificed his all to bring to a final reckoning and account, had escaped him that night in the Green Dragon.
He shook his head, mumbling to himself, almost mechanically continuing to play his part in the presence of these underlings around the table even while his mind was far away. It was not his fault that Shiftel, once seen, had got away. He could not in any fairness hold himself to blame. He had caught but a glimpse of the man far across the hall, as in the swirl of the bunny-hug the dancers on the polished centre of the floor had opened for a moment and closed again. When he had reached the other end of the room Shiftel had disappeared. That was all.
It was strange! What was the game? What was the meaning of this reappearance? The man was running a tremendous risk, and the motive must certainly be commensurate with the danger. What was that motive? Shiftel was wanted, and wanted badly, by the police for his connection with the diamonds stolen from Jathan Lane, the murdered banker. There was no such person, of course, as Shiftel—it was the Phantom. Shiftel was only one of the Phantom's disguises to be put on or off at will. But it was the known character of Shiftel that the police sought. Why had the man shown himself in that character, lived it again? He need only have discarded it utterly, never returned to it, and as far as “Shiftel” was concerned he could have laughed at the police until the day he died.
What was it? What was at the back of that crafty brain whose evil genius had prompted this move? No little thing! Had the Tocsin's note that he, Jimmie Dale, had found amongst the mail Jason had handed him when he had appeared at home for his lunch yesterday, any bearing on the Phantom's motive? He did not think so; rather, out of the ruck of explanations that had suggested themselves, and which were for the most part hopelessly untenable, there had finally come one that he was almost ready to accept.
Smarlinghue's lips twisted in a grin—apparently one inspired by Spud MacGuire as the man scooped a pot on a bare-faced bluff. Well, why not? Even if it was a back-handed compliment to himself! The Phantom was shy of funds. Time after time of late he, Jimmie Dale, as the Gray Seal, had forestalled the other, and snatched away the fruits of the man's criminal schemes. Where, in the past few weeks, the Phantom had counted upon thousands, many of them, and had even spent lavishly to pave the way to the expected profits, he had received instead not a single penny. The Phantom, therefore, unless he possessed the reserve wealth of a Crœsus, was certainly shy of funds. Yes, that was it. It must be it. And as almost irrefutable evidence of this was the fact that the Phantom, as Shiftel, was said to be in communication again with some of those who composed that carefully selected circle of crooks who had been tried and successful business associates in the past; and that was why, too, it was as Shiftel, and not as Limpy Mack, not as Gentleman Laroque, or any one of his other aliases, that the Phantom had ventured, cautiously it was true, but nevertheless had ventured out into the underworld again.
The Tocsin's note! It came uppermost into his mind now. It was the first sign of existence she had given since that night at old Miser Scroff's.
His lips were still twisted in a smile, but there was something cold, forbidding, far removed from smiles, that seemed suddenly now to weigh upon his spirits. She had written; but it had only been to accentuate, as it were, her decision, what she had said that night when he had been so sure of taking his place again beside her. Alone! That was it—alone! It was her love, of course, her great unselfish love, that prompted her to try to keep him out of the “shadows,” out of her dangers. The note reiterated it; he knew it word for word:
“Dear Philanthropic Crook:—I see that you are incorrigible. If I thought that it would do any good I would implore you again—oh, Jimmie, I do implore you to leave all this to me, and to go back at once to your own life. I am half mad with fear for you. There is something, some trap being laid, and I cannot find out what it is. I only know that the Phantom has become suspicious that behind the Gray Seal's repeated blows there is more than a mere desire to reap where the Phantom has sown. I only know that the Phantom is convinced that he himself is the Gray Seal's one and only object; and, in turn, the Phantom means to move heaven and earth now to get the Gray Seal—first. Oh, I know you won't do as I ask you! I know you too well. I know that,
