at she had said was vital to
them was still beyond their reach; the chauffeur was dead; and he,
Jimmie Dale, alone remained--a clew that they had still to prove valid
or invalid it was true, but the only clew in their possession. And,
gaining nothing from him by a show of force, to throw him off his guard,
they had let him go--meaning him to believe they were convinced he knew
nothing, and that the episode, the adventure of the night, was, as far
as they were concerned, ended, finished, and done with!

Time passed, a very long time, as he sat there. It might have been an
hour--he could only hazard a guess. Not one of the men in the car
had spoken a word. But to Jimmie Dale, the car itself, the ride, its
duration, these three strange companions, were for the time being
extraneous. Even that sick giddiness in his head had, at least
temporarily, gone from him.

And so, all unsuspectingly, he was to lead them to the Tocsin and fall
into the trap himself! His hands, thrust deep in his pockets, were
tightly clenched. They were clever enough, ingenious enough, powerful
enough to watch him henceforth at every turn--and from now on, day and
night, they were to be reckoned with. Suppose that in some way, as it
might well have happened, for it was now vitally necessary that she
should communicate with him and he with her, he had played blindly into
their hands, and through him she should have fallen into their power! It
brought a sickening chill, a sort of hideous panic to Jimmie Dale--and
then fury, anger, in a torrent, surged upon him, and there came a
merciless desire to crush, to strangle, to stamp out this inhuman band
of criminals that, with intolerable effrontery to the laws of God and
man, were so elaborately and scientifically equipped for their monstrous
purposes!

And then Jimmie Dale, in the darkness, smiled again grimly as the
leader's reference to the Gray Seal recurred to him. Well, perhaps, who
knew, they would have reason more than they dreamed of to wish the
Gray Seal enrolled in their own ranks! It was strange, curious! He had
thought all that was ended. Only a few short hours before he had hidden
away all, everything that was incident to the life of the Gray Seal, the
clothes of Larry the Bat, that little metal case with the gray-coloured,
adhesive seals, a dozen other things, believing that it only remained
for him to return and destroy them at his leisure as a finishing touch
to the Gray Seal's career--and