THE ONLY WAY
It was a horrible thing--and it grew upon him.In a blind, mechanical way, his brain receptive to nothing else, Jimmie Dale walked on along the street.To kill a man! Death he had faced himself a hundred times, witnessed it a hundred times in its most violent forms, had seen murder done before his eyes, had been in straits where, to save his own life, it had seemed the one last desperate chance--and yet his hands were still clean! To kill a man in fair fight, in struggle, when the blood was hot, was terrible enough, a possibility that was always before him, the one thing from which he shrank, the one thing that, as the Gray Seal, he had always feared; but to kill a man deliberately, to creep upon his victim with hideous, cold-blooded premeditation--he shivered a little, and his hand shook as he drew it nervously across his eyes.
But there was no other way! Again and again, insidiously grappling with his revulsion, with the horror that the impulse to murder inspired, came that other thought--there was no other way.If the man who posed as Henry LaSalle were DEAD! If he were dead! If he were dead! See, now, what would happen if that man were dead! How clear his brain was on that point! The whole plot would tumble like a house of cards about the heads of the Crime Club.The courts would require an auditing of the estate by a trustee of the courts'
own appointing, who would continue to administer it until the Tocsin's twenty-fifth birthday, or until there was tangible evidence of her death--but the Tocsin, automatically with her pseudo uncle's death, could publicly appear again.Her death could no longer benefit the Crime Club, since it, the Crime Club, with the supposed uncle dead, could not profit through the false Henry LaSalle inheriting as next of kin! It was the weak link, the vulnerable point in the stupendous scheme of murder and crime with which these hell fiends had played for and won, so far, the stake of eleven millions.Not that they had overlooked or been blind to this, they were too clever, too cunning for that--it was only that they had planned to accomplish the Tocsin's death, as they had her father's and uncle's, and ESTABLISH the false Henry LaSalle in undisputed possession and ownership of the estate--and had failed in that--up to the present.But the material results remained the same, so long as the Tocsin, to save her life, was forced to remain in hiding, so long as proof that would convict the Crime Club was not forthcoming--SO LONG AS THAT MAN LIVED!
Time passed to which Jimmie Dale was oblivious.At times he walked slowly, scarcely moving; at times his pace was a nervous, hurried stride, that was almost a run.And as he was oblivious to time, so was he oblivious to his surroundings, to the direction which he took.At times his forehead was damp with moisture that was not there from physical exertion; at times his face, deathly white, was full as of the vision of some shuddering, abhorrent sight; at times his lips were thinned into a straight line, and there was a glitter in the dark eyes that was not good to see, while his hands at his sides clenched until the skin, tight over the knuckles, was an ivory white.To kill a man!
What other way was there? The proof that it had taken Hilton Travers years to obtain, the proof on which the Tocsin's life depended, was destroyed utterly, irreparably.It could never be duplicated--Hilton Travers was dead--MURDERED.Murder! That thought again! It was their own weapon! Murder! Would one kill a venomous reptile in whose fangs was death? What right had this man to life, whose life was forfeit even under the law--for murder? Was she to drag on an intolerable existence among the dregs and the scum of the underworld, she, in her refinement and her purity, to exist among the vile and dissolute, in daily, hourly peril of her life, because the weapons that these inhuman vultures had used to rob her, to destroy those she loved, to make of her life a hideous, joyless thing, should not be used against them?
But to kill a man! To steal upon a man with cold intent in the blackness of the night--and take his life! To be a murderer! To know the horror of blood forever upon one's hands, to rise, cold-sweated, in the night, fearful of the very shadows around one, to live with every detail of that fearsome act sweeping like some dread spectre at unexpected moments upon the consciousness! He put up his hands before his face, as though to blot out the thought from him.
Mind and soul recoiled before it--to kill a man!
He walked on and on, until at last, conscious of a sense of fatigue, he stopped.He must have come a long way, been walking a long time.
Where was he? He looked about him for a moment in a dazed way--and suddenly, with a low cry, shrank back.As though he had been drawn to it by some ghastly magnet, he found himself standing in front of the LaSalle mansion, on Fifth Avenue.No, no; it was not for that he had come--to kill a man! It was only--only to get that money.
Yes--he remembered now--that money from the safe, before the Magpie got it.The Magpie was to be there at three o'clock--and the Tocsin was to be there, too.The Tocsin! That package! He had failed!
It had been her one hope, and--and it was gone.What could he say to her? How could he tell her the miserable truth? But--but he had not come there in the dead of night to kill a man, these other things were what had--"Jimmie!" It was a quick-breathed whisper.A hand was on his arm.
He turned, startled.It was the Tocsin--Silver Mag.
"Jimmie!" in alarm."Why are you standing here like this? You may be SEEN!"Seen! Suppose he WERE seen? He shuddered a little.
"Yes; that's so!" he said hoarsely.He glanced numbly up and down the wide, deserted, but well-lighted, avenue.It was no place, that most aristocratic section of the city, for such as Silver Mag and Larry the Bat to be seen at that hour of night, or, rather, morning.
And if anything HAPPENED inside that house! "I--I didn't think of that," he said mechanically.