"I'll just ask you gents not to leave the room," he said meaningly, over his shoulder, as he stepped toward the rear door."It's kind of a fad of mine to keep some things even from my wife!""All right, Spider--I understand," the chauffeur returned readily.
Jimmie Dale's knife cut a tiny slit in the cretonne on a level with his eyes.The three men had seated themselves at the table, and appeared to be listening intently.Spider Jack's footsteps echoed back as he crossed the rear room, sounded dull and muffled descending the stoop outside, and died away.
"I told you it wasn't in the house!" the man who had been introduced as Stead laughed shortly."We wasted the hour we had here."The third man spoke crisply, incisively, to the chauffeur.
"Turn down that gas jet a little! You've got across with it so far--but you can't stand a searchlight, Clarke!
And at the words, in a flash, the meaning of it, all of it, to the last detail that was spelling death, ruin, and disaster for her, the Tocsin, for himself as well, burst upon Jimmie Dale.That VOICE!
He would have known it, recognised it, among a thousand--it was the masked man of the night before, the leader, the head of the Crime Club! And it was not Travers there at all! He remembered now, too well, that second room they had showed him in the Crime Club--its multitude of disguises, though in this case they had the dead man's clothes ready to their hands--the leader's boast that impersonation was but child's play to them! And now he understood why they had covered up the traces of their search in only so curiously inadequate a manner.They had failed to find the package, and, as a last resort, had adopted the ruse of impersonating Hilton Travers, the chauffeur, which made it necessary that when they called Spider Jack from his bed, as they had just done, that Spider Jack, at a CASUAL glance, should notice nothing amiss--but it would be no more than a casual glance, for, who should know better than they, he would not have to go for the package to any place that they had disturbed! And he, Jimmie Dale, could only stand here and watch them, helpless, powerless to move! Three of them! A step out into the room was to invite certain death.It would not matter, his death--if he could gain anything for her, for the Tocsin, by it.
But what could he gain--by dying? He clenched his hands until the nails bit into the flesh.
Spider Jack re-entered the room, carrying what looked like a large, bulky, manila envelope, heavily sealed, in his hand.He tossed it on the table.
"There you are, Travers!" he said.
"I wonder," suggested the leader pleasantly, "if, now that we're here, Travers, your friend would mind letting us have this room for a few minutes to ourselves to clean up the business?""Sure!" agreed Spider Jack cordially."You're welcome to it! I'll wait out here in the store until you say the word."He went out, closing the door after him.The leader picked up the package.