There was need
for silence, need for caution. In five minutes, ten at the outside, he
must emerge again--as Jimmie Dale.
With a smile on his lips that mingled curiously chagrin and
self-commiseration, he took the letter from his pocket and tore it open.
It was she, then, who had been following him all evening, and, like a
blundering idiot, he had wasted precious, perhaps irreparable, hours!
What had she meant by "It's for my sake to-night"? The words had been
ringing in his ears since the moment she had whispered them in that
panic-stricken crowd. Was it not always for her sake that he answered
these calls to arms? Was it not always for her sake that he, as the
Gray Seal, was--The mental soliloquy came to an abrupt end. He had
subconsciously read the first sentence of the letter, and now, with
sudden feverish eagerness and excitement, he was reading it to the last
word.
"DEAR PHILANTHROPIC CROOK: In an hour after you receive this, if all
goes well, you shall know everything--everything. Who I am--yes, and
my name. It has been more than three years now, hasn't it? It has been
incomprehensible to you, but there has been no other way. I dared not
take the chance of discovery by any one; I dared not expose you to
the risk of being known by me. Your life would not have been worth
a moment's purchase. Oh, Jimmie, am I only making the mystery more
mystifying? But to-night, I think, I hope, I pray that it is all at an
end: though against me, and against you to-night when you go to help
me, is the most powerful and pitiless organisation of criminals that the
world has ever known; and the stake we are playing for is a fortune of
millions--and my life.
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