l
evidences of Larry the Bat--and from the Sanctuary went home to
Riverside Drive.

In his den there, in the morning after breakfast, Jason, the butler,
brought him the papers. Three-inch headlines in red ink screamed,
exulted, and shrieked out the news that the Gray Seal, in the person of
Stace Morse, fence, yeggman and murderer, had been captured. The public,
if it had held any private admiration for the one-time mysterious crook
could now once and forever disillusion itself. The Gray Seal was Stace
Morse--and Stace Morse was of the dregs of the city's scum, a pariah,
an outcast, with no single redeeming trait to lift him from the ruck
of mire and slime that had strewn his life from infancy. The face of
Inspector Clayton, blandly self-complacent, leaped out from the paper
to meet Jimmie Dale's eyes--and with it a column and a half of perfervid
eulogy.

Something at first like dismay, the dismay of impotency, filled Jimmie
Dale--and then, cold, leaving him unnaturally calm, the old merciless
rage took its place. There was nothing to do now but wait--wait until
Carruthers should send that photograph. Then if, after all, he were
wrong--then he must find some other way. But was he wrong! The notebook
that Carruthers had given him, open at the sketch he had made of
Clayton, lay upon the desk. Jimmie Dale picked it up--he had already
spent quite a little time over it before breakfast--and examined it
again minutely, even resorting to his magnifying glass. He put it down
as a knock sounded at the door, and Jason entered with a silver card
tray. From Carruthers already! Jimmie Dale stepped quickly forward--and
then Jimmie Dale met the old man's eyes. It wasn't from Carruthers--it
was from HER!

"The same shuffer brought it, Master Jim," said Jason.

Jimmie Dale snatched the envelope from the tray, and waved the other
from the room. As the door closed, he tore open the letter. There was
just a single line:

Jimmie--Jimmie, you haven't failed, have you?

Jimmie Dale stared at it. Failed! Failed--HER! The haggard look was in
his face again. It was the bond between them that was at stake--the Gray
Seal--the bond that had come, he knew for all time in that instant, to
mean his life.

"God knows!" he muttered hoarsely, and flung himself into a lounging
chair, still staring at the note.

The hours dragged by. Luncheon time arrived and passed--and then by
special messenger the little package from Carruthers came.

Ji