e Dale to be one and the same person--that would inevitably lead
further to the establishment of his identity as the Gray Seal. In time,
of course, the surveillance would cease--but he could not wait. That was
the monumental irony of it--the factor that, all unknown to Kline, was
forcing the issue hard now. It was his move.

Since, years ago now, as the Gray Seal, he had begun to work with HER,
that unknown, mysterious accomplice of his, and the police, stung to
madness both by the virulent and constant attacks of the press and by
the humiliating prod of their own failures, sought daily, high and low,
with every resource at their command, for the Gray Seal, he had never
been in quite so strange and perilous a plight as he found himself at
that moment. To preserve inviolate the identity of Larry the Bat was
absolutely vital to his safety. It was the one secret that even she, who
so strangely appeared to know all else about him, he was sure, had not
discovered--and it was just that, in a way, that had brought the present
impossible situation to pass.

In the month previous, in a lull between those letters of hers, he had
set himself doggedly and determinedly to the renewed task of what had
become so dominantly now a part of his very existence--the solving of
HER identity. And for that month, as the best means to the end--means,
however, that only resulted as futilely as the attempts that had gone
before--he had lived mostly as Larry the Bat, returning to his home in
his proper person only when occasion and necessity demanded it. He had
been going home that evening, two nights before, walking along Riverside
Drive, when from the window of the limousine she had dropped the letter
at his feet that had plunged him into the affair of the Counterfeit
Five--and he had not gone home! Eventually, to save himself, he had, in
the Sanctuary, performing the transformation in desperate haste, again
been forced to assume the role of Larry the Bat.

That was really the gist of it. And yesterday morning he had remembered,
to his dismay, that he had had little or no money left the night before.
He had intended, of course, to replenish his supply--when he got home.
Only he hadn't gone home! And now he needed money--needed it badly,
desperately. With thousands in the bank, with abundance even in
his safe, in his own den at home, a supply kept there always for an
emergency, he was facing actual want--he rattled two dimes, a nickel,
and a fe