"No," he answered, after an instant."Not that I know of.""And yet"--she smiled wanly again--"you have not lived, or made the place you hold in the underworld, without having heard of Silver Mag.""You!" exclaimed Jimmie Dale."You--Silver Mag!" He stared at her wonderingly, as, crouch-shouldered now, the hair, gray-threaded, straggling out from under the hood of a faded, dark-blue, seam-worn cloak, she sat before him, a typical creature of the underworld, her role an art in its conception, perfect in its execution.Silver Mag! Yes, he had heard of Silver Mag--as every one in the Bad Lands had heard of her.Silver Mag and her pocketful of coin! Always a pocketful of silver, so they said, that was dispensed prodigally to the wives and children temporarily deprived of support by husbands and fathers unfortunate enough in their clashes with the law to be doing "spaces" up the river--and therefore the underworld swore by Silver Mag.Always silver, never a bill; Silver Mag had never been seen with a banknote--that was her eccentricity.Much or little, she gave or paid out of her pocketful of jangling silver.She was credited with being a sworn enemy of the police, and--yes, he remembered, too--with having done "time" herself."I don't quite understand," he said, in a puzzled way."I haven't run across you personally because you probably took care to see that I shouldn't;but--it's no secret--every one says you've served a jail sentence yourself.""That is simply enough explained," she answered gravely."The story is of my own making.When I decided to adopt this life, both for my own safety and as the best means of keeping a watch on that man, Iknew that I must win the confidence of the underworld, that I must have help, and that in order to obtain that help I must have some excuse for my enmity against the man known as Henry LaSalle.To be widely known in the underworld was of inestimable value--nothing, Iknew, could accomplish that as quickly as eccentricity.You see now how and why I became known as Silver Mag.I gained the confidence of every crook in New York through their wives and children.I told them the story of my jail sentence--while I swore vengeance on Henry LaSalle.I told them that he had had me arrested for something Inever stole while I was working for him as a charwoman, and that he had had me railroaded to jail.There wasn't one but gave me credit for the theft, perhaps; but equally, there wasn't one but understood, and my eccentricity helped this out, my wanting to 'get'
Henry LaSalle.Well--do you see now, Jimmie? I had money, I had the confidence of the underworld, I had an excuse for my hatred of Henry LaSalle, and so I had all the help I wanted.Day and night that man has been watched.He receives no visitors--what social life he has is, as you know, at the club.There is not a house that he has ever entered that, sooner or later, I have not entered after him in the hope of finding the headquarters of the clique.Even the men and women, as far as human possibility could accomplish it, that he has talked to on the streets have been shadowed, and their identity satisfactorily established--and the net result has been failure; utter, absolute, complete failure!"Jimmie Dale's eyes, that had held steadily on her face, shifted, troubled and perplexed, to the table top.
"You are wonderful!" he said, under his breath."Wonderful! And--and that makes it all the more amazing, all the more incomprehensible.It is still impossible that he has not been in close and constant touch with his accomplices.He MUST have been!
We would be blind fools to argue against it! It could not, on the face of it, have been otherwise!""Then how, when, where has he done it?" she asked wearily.
"God knows!" he said bitterly."And if they have been clever enough to escape you all these years, I'm almost inclined to say what you said a little while ago--that we're beaten."She watched him miserably, as he pushed back his chair impulsively and, standing up, stared down at her.
"We're against it--HARD!" he said, with a mirthless laugh.Then, his lips tightening: "But we'll try another tack--the chauffeur--Travers.Though even here the Crime Club has a day's start of us, even if last night they knew no more about the whereabouts of that package than we know now.I'm afraid of it! The chances are more than even that they've already got it.If they were able to catch Travers as the chauffeur, they would have had something tangible to work back from"--Jimmie Dale was talking more to himself than to the Tocsin now, as though he were muttering his thoughts aloud."How did they get track of him? When? Where? What has it led to? And what in Heaven's name," he burst out suddenly, "is this box number four-two-eight!""A safety-deposit vault, perhaps, that he has taken somewhere," she hazarded.
Jimmie Dale laughed mirthlessly again.