There
came the faintest creak from the stairs. Jimmie Dale's brows gathered.
It was strange! The knocking had not lasted long. Whoever it was was
going away--but it required the utmost caution to descend those stairs,
rickety and tumble-down as they were, with no more sound than that!
Why such caution? Why not a more determined and prolonged effort at his
door--the visitor had been easily satisfied that Larry the Bat was not
within. TOO easily satisfied! Jimmie Dale turned the key noiselessly in
the lock. He opened the door cautiously--half inch--an inch, there was
no sound of footsteps now. Occasionally a lodger moved about on the
floor above; occasionally from somewhere in the tenement came the murmur
of voices as from behind closed door--that was all. All else was silence
and darkness now.
The door, on its well-oiled hinges, swung wide open. Jimmie Dale thrust
out his head into the hall--and something fell upon the threshold with
a little thud--but for a moment Jimmie Dale did not move. Listening,
trying to pierce the darkness, he was as still as the silence around
him; then he stooped and groped along the threshold. His hand closed
upon what seemed like a small box wrapped in paper. He picked it up,
closed and locked the door again, and retreated back across the room. It
was strange--unpleasantly strange--a box propped stealthily against the
door so that it would fall to the threshold when the door was opened!
And why the stealth? What did it mean? Had the underworld with its
thousand eyes and ears already succeeded in a few days where the police
had failed signally for years--had they sent him this, whatever it was,
as some grim token that they had run Larry the Bat to earth? He shook
his head.
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