as peril here, live and imminent. Suppose that some day he should
be caught in some little affair, recognised and identified as the Gray
Seal, there would be the charge of murder hanging over him--and the
electric chair to face!

But the peril was not the only thing. Even worse to Jimmie Dale's
artistic and sensitive temperament was the vilification, the holding up
to loathing, contumely, and abhorrence of the name, the stainless name,
of the Gray Seal. It WAS stainless! He had guarded it jealously--as a
man guards the woman's name he loves.

Affairs that had mystified and driven the police distracted with
impotence there had been, many of them; and on the face of them--crimes.
But no act ever committed had been in reality a crime--none without
the highest of motives, the righting of some outrageous wrong, the
protection of some poor stumbling fellow human.

That had been his partnership with her. How, by what amazing means, by
what power that smacked almost of the miraculous she came in touch with
all these things and supplied him with the data on which to work he
did not know--only that, thanks to her, there were happier hearts and
happier homes since the Gray Seal had begun to work. "Dear Philanthropic
Crook," she often called him in her letters. And now--it was MURDER!

Take Carruthers, for instance. For years, as a reporter before he had
risen to the editorial desk, he had been one of the keenest on the scent
of the Gray Seal, but always for the sake of the game--always filled
with admiration, as he said himself, for the daring, the originality of
the most puzzling, bewildering, delightful crook in the annals of crime.
Carruthers was but an example. Carruthers now would hunt the Gray Seal
like a mad dog. The Gray Seal, to Carruthers and every one else, would
be the vilest name in the land--a synonym for murder.

On the car flew--and upon Jimmie Dale's face, as though chiselled in
marble, was a look that was not good to see. And a mirthless smile set,
frozen, on his lips.

"I'll get the man that did this," gritted Jimmie Dale between his teeth.
"I'll GET him! And, when I get him, I'll wring a confession from him if
I have to swing for it!"

The car swept from Broadway into Astor Place, on down the Bowery, and
presently stopped.

Jimmie Dale stepped out. "I shall not want you any more, Benson," he
said. "You may return home."

Jimmie Dale started down the block--a nonchalant Jimmie Dale now, if
anything, b