Crime! Thanks to
her, there were those who blessed the name of the Gray Seal, those
into whose lives had come joy, relief from misery, escape from death
even--and their blessings were worth a thousandfold the risk and peril
of disaster that threatened him at every minute of the day.
"Thank God for her!" murmured Jimmie Dale softly. "But--but if I could
only find her, see her, know who she is, talk to her, and hear her
voice!" Then he smiled a little wanly. "It's been a pretty tough
month--and nothing to show for it!"
It had! It had been one of the hardest months through which Jimmie Dale
had ever lived. The St. James, that most exclusive club, his favourite
haunt, had seen nothing of him; the easel in his den, that was his
hobby, had been untouched; there had been days even when he had not
crossed the threshold of his home. Every resource at his command he
had called into play in an effort to solve the mystery. For nearly the
entire month, following first this lead and then that, he had lived in
the one disguise that he felt confident she knew nothing of--that was,
or, rather, had become, almost a dual personality with him. From the
Sanctuary, that miserable and disreputable room in a tenement on the
East Side, a tenement that had three separate means of entrance and
exit, he had emerged day after day as Larry the Bat, a character as well
known and as well liked in the exclusive circles of the underworld as
was Jimmie Dale in the most exclusive strata of New York's society
and fashion.
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