at ten years from now, and, perhaps,
only then, will culminate in the final success of their schemes--and
they play only for enormous stakes. But"--her lips grew set--"you will
see for yourself. I must not talk any longer than is necessary; we must
not take too much time. You count on three days before they begin to
suspect that all is not right with Jimmie Dale--I know them better than
you, and I give you two days, forty-eight hours at the outside, and
possibly far less. Jimmie"--abruptly--"did you ever hear of Peter
LaSalle?"

"The capitalist? Yes!" said Jimmie Dale. "He died a few years ago. I
know his brother Henry well--at the club, and all that."

"Do you!" she said evenly. "Well, the man you know is not Peter
LaSalle's brother; he is an impostor--and one of the Crime Club."

"Not--Peter LaSalle's brother!"--Jimmie Dale repeated the words
mechanically. And suddenly his brain was whirling. Vaguely, dimly, in
little memory snatches, events, not pertinent then, vitally significant
now, came crowding upon him. Peter LaSalle had come from somewhere in
the West to live in New York; and very shortly afterward had died. The
estate had been worth something over eleven millions. And there had
been--he leaned quickly, tensely forward over the table, staring at her.
"My God!" he whispered hoarsely. "You are not, you cannot be--the--the
daughter--Peter LaSalle's daughter, who disappeared strangely!"

"Yes," she said quietly. "I am Marie LaSalle."

CHAPTER IX

THE TOCSIN'S STORY

LaSalle! The old French name! That old French inscription on the ring:
"SONNEZ LE TOCSIN!" Yes; he began to understand now. She was Marie
LaSalle! He began to remember more clearly.

Marie LaSalle! They had said she was one of the most beautiful girls
who had ever made her entree into New York society. But he had never met
her--as Marie LaSalle; never met her--until now, as the Tocsin, in this
bare, destitute, squalid hovel, here at bay, both of them, for their
lives.

He had been away when she had come with her father to New York; and
on his return there had only been the father's brother in the father's
place--and she was gone. He remembered the furor her disappearance had
caused; the enormous rewards her uncle had offered in an effort to trace
her; the thousand and one speculations as to what had become of her;
and that then, gradually, as even the most startling and mystifying of
events and happenings always do, the affair had drop