Let this
lair of hell's wolves, so intent now on their own affairs, be once
roused, as they certainly must be roused before he could hope to finish
the Wowzer, and his chances of escape were--
He straightened suddenly, alert, tense, strained. Voices, raised in a
furious quarrel, came from a door just beyond him on the other side
of the passage, where a film of light streamed out through a cracked
panel--it was the Wowzer and Dago Jim! And drunk, both of them--and both
in a blind fury!
It happened quick then, almost instantaneously it seemed to Jimmie Dale.
He was crouched now close against the door, his eye to the crack in the
panel. There was only one figure in sight--Dago Jim--standing beside
a table on which burned a lamp, the table top littered with watches,
purses, and small chatelaine bags. The man was lurching unsteadily on
his feet, a vicious sneer of triumph on his face, waving tauntingly
an open letter and Jimmie Dale's pocket-book in his hands--waving them
presumably in the face of the Wowzer, whom, from the restrictions of the
crack, Jimmie Dale could not see. He was conscious of a sickening sense
of disaster. His hope against hope had been in vain--the letter had been
opened and read--THE IDENTITY OF THE GRAY SEAL WAS SOLVED.
Dago Jim's voice roared out, hoarse, blasphemous, in drunken rage:
"De Gray Seal--see! Youse betcher life I knows! I been waitin' fer
somet'ing like dis, damn youse! Youse been stallin' on me fer a year
every time it came to a divvy.
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