It was his move--and it was an impasse, ironical,
sardonic, and it was worse--it was full of peril.
True, he had outwitted Kline of the secret service two nights before,
when Kline had raided the counterfeiters' den; true, he had no reason to
believe that Kline suspected HIM specifically, but the man Kline wanted
HAD entered the tenement that night, and since then the house had been
shadowed day and night. The result was both simple and disastrous--to
Jimmie Dale. Larry the Bat, a known inmate of the house, might come
and go as he pleased--but to emerge from the Sanctuary in the person of
Jimmie Dale would be fatal. Kline had been outwitted, but Kline had not
acknowledged final defeat. The tenement had been searched from top to
bottom--unostentatiously. His own room on the first landing had been
searched the previous afternoon, when he was out, but they had failed to
find the cunningly contrived opening in the floor under the oilcloth in
the corner, an impromptu wardrobe, that would proclaim Larry the Bat and
Jimmie Dale to be one and the same person--that would inevitably lead
further to the establishment of his identity as the Gray Seal. In time,
of course, the surveillance would cease--but he could not wait. That was
the monumental irony of it--the factor that, all unknown to Kline, was
forcing the issue hard now. It was his move.
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