th the impetus he smashed against a
wall, was flung back from it in a sort of rebound, and his hands closed,
gripping fiercely, on banisters. It had been the stair well beyond any
question of doubt, but his swing had sent him clear of it.

Above, they had not yet reached the skylight. Jimmie Dale snatched a
precious moment to listen, as he rose, and found himself, apart from
bruises, perhaps unhurt. There was commotion, too, in this house below,
the alarm had extended and spread along the block--but the commotion was
all in the FRONT of the house--the street was the lure.

Jimmie Dale started down the stairs, and in an instant he had gained the
landing. In another he had slipped to the rear of the hall--somewhere
there, from the hall itself, from one of the rear rooms, there must be
an exit to the fire escape. To attempt to leave by the front way was
certain capture.

They were yelling, shouting down now through the sky-light above, as
Jimmie Dale softly raised the window sash at the rear of the hall. The
fire escape was there. Shouts from along the corridor, from the tenement
dwellers who had been crowding their neighbours' rooms, craning their
necks probably from the front windows, answered the shouts now from the
roof and the skylight; doors opened; forms rushed out--but it was dark
in the corridor, only a murky yellow at the upper end from the opened
doors.

Jimmie Dale slipped through the window to the fire escape, and, working
cautiously, silently, but with the speed of a trained athlete, made his
way down. At the bottom he dropped from the iron platform into the back
yard, ran for the fence and climbed over into a lane on the other side.

And then, as he ran, Jimmie Dale snatched the mask from his face and
put it in his pocket. He was safe now. He swept the sweat drops from his
forehead with the back of his hand--noticing them for the first time.
It had been close--almost as close for him as it had been for old Luddy.
And to-morrow the papers would execrate the Gray Seal! He smiled a
little wanly. His breath was still coming hard. Presently they would
scour the lane--when they found that their quarry was not in the house.
What a racket they were making! The whole district seemed roused like a
swarm of angry bees.

He kept on along the lane--and dodged suddenly into a cross street where
the two intersected. The clang of a bell dinned discordantly in
his ears--a patrol wagon swept by him, racing for the scene