pped at the end of its run. Jimmie Dale
clambered down from the top, threw a pleasant "good-night" to the
conductor, and headed briskly down the street before him. A little
later he crossed into West Broadway, and his pace slowed to a leisurely
stroll.

Here, at the upper end of the street, was a conglomerate business
section of rather inferior class, catering doubtless to the poor,
foreign element that congregated west of Broadway proper, and to the
south of Washington Square. The street was, at first glance, deserted;
it was dark and dreary, with stores and lofts on either side. An
elevated train roared by overhead, with a thunderous, deafening clamour.
Jimmie Dale, on the right-hand side of the street, glanced interestedly
at the dark store windows as he went by. And then, a block ahead, on the
other side, his eyes rested on an approaching form. As the other reached
the corner and paused, and the light from the street lamp glinted on
brass buttons, Jimmie Dale's eyes narrowed a little under his slouch
hat. The policeman, although nonchalantly swinging a nightstick,
appeared to be watching him.

Jimmie Dale went on half a block farther, stooped to the sidewalk to
tie his shoe, glanced back over his shoulder--the policeman was not in
sight--and slipped like a shadow into the alleyway beside which he had
stopped.

It was another Jimmie Dale now--the professional Jimmie Dale. Quick as
a cat, active, lithe, he was over a six foot fence in the rear of a
building in a flash, and crouched a black shape, against the back door
of an unpretentious, unkempt, dirty, secondhand shop that fronted
on West Broadway--the last place certainly in all New York that the
managing editor of the NEWS-ARGUS, or any one else, for that matter,
would have picked out as the setting for the second debut of the Gray
Seal.

From the belt around his waist, Jimmie Dale took the black silk mask,
and slipped it on; and from the belt, too, came a little instrument
that his deft fingers manipulated in the lock. A curious snipping sound
followed. Jimmie Dale put his weight gradually against the door. The
door held fast.

"Bolted," said Jimmie Dale to himself.

The sensitive fingers travelled slowly up and down the side of the door,
seeming to press and feel for the position of the bolt through an inch
of plank--then from the belt came a tiny saw, thin and pointed at the
end, that fitted into the little handle drawn from another receptacle in
the l