"
Jimmie Dale scowled. Sick, shaken, and weak as he was, the cool,
imperturbable impudence of the man was fast growing unbearable.
The man laughed. "I am sure you will not refuse, Mr. Dale--since we
insist. The condition of the clothes you have on at present might--I say
'might'--in a measure support your story with some degree of tangible
evidence. It is not at all likely, of course; but we prefer to discount
even so remote a possibility. When you have changed, you will be motored
back to your home. I bid you good-night, Mr. Dale."
Jimmie Dale rubbed his eyes. The man was gone--through a door at the
rear of the desk, a door that he had not noticed before, that was not
even in evidence now, that was simply a movable section of the wall
panelling--and for an instant Jimmie Dale experienced a sense of
sickening impotence. It was as though he stood defenceless, unarmed,
and utterly at the mercy of some venomous power that could crush what it
would remorselessly and at will in its might.
The place was a veritable maze, a lair of hellish cleverness. He had
no illusions now, he laboured under no false estimate of either the
ingenuity or the resources of this inhuman nest of vultures to whom
murder was no more than a matter of detail. And it was against these men
that henceforth he was to match his wits! There could be no truce, no
armistice.
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