f the rooms
upstairs--if--you--want proof of what--the gang's been doing. Hurry!
Hurry! I'm--I'm--done for--I--"

Jimmie Dale permitted the telephone to drop with a clash from his hand
to the table.

The face of the man on the floor was livid.

"Who are you? In God's name, who are you?" he cried out wildly.

"Does it matter?" inquired Jimmie Dale grimly. "Your game is up. You'll
go to the chair for the murder of 'Henry LaSalle'--if it is by proxy!
Those rooms upstairs alone are enough to damn you, to prove every word
of that dying 'confession'--but to-morrow, added to it, will come the
story of Marie LaSalle herself."

For a moment the man hung there swaying on his elbow, his face working
in ghastly fashion--and then suddenly, with a strange laugh, he carried
one hand swiftly to his mouth--and laughed again--and before Jimmie Dale
could reach him was lifeless on the floor.

A tiny vial rolled away upon the carpet. Jimmie Dale picked it up. A
drop or two of liquid still remained in it--colourless, clear, like
that liquid this same man had dropped into the rabbit's mouth the night
before, like the liquid in the glasses they had carried into that third
room, like the liquid that his man had said was from a formula of their
own, that was instantaneous in its action, that defied detection by
autopsy!

The set, stern features of Jimmie Dale relaxed. It was justice--but it
was also death. In a surge of emotion, the events of scarcely more
than twenty-four hours, began to crowd upon him--and then, ominously
dominant, above all else, that slogan of the underworld, "Death to the
Gray Seal!" came ringing once more in his ears. It brought him, with a
startled movement of his hand across his eyes, to a realisation of his
own desperate position. Yes, yes, he must go! The way was clear now for
the Tocsin--clear now for her!

He dropped the vial into his pocket, and, running to the safe, quickly
scraped the gray seal from the dial's knob; then he drew the packages of
money from his shirt and pockets and tossed them on the floor among the
litter of papers already there--she would get it back again when it had
served its purpose, it would be self-evident that it was the proceeds of
that day's sale of the estate's securities over which the "quarrel" had
occurred!

And now the window! He ran to it, closed it, and LOCKED it; then,
laying the revolver he had taken from the leader down beside the man,
he stepped across the room ag