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"O, luddy!" he cried, "wouldn't I have a time to-night if I was in London and had this money in my pocket? Wouldn't I drink 'alf and 'alf till I couldn't speak, and then go to bed with " So elated did Day get with the idea that he clapped his hands together, and sprang into the air, cutting antics of the most singular kind.
He swept the sweat drops from his forehead with the back of his hand noticing them for the first time. It had been close almost as close for him as it had been for old Luddy. And to-morrow the papers would execrate the Gray Seal! He smiled a little wanly. His breath was still coming hard. Presently they would scour the lane when they found that their quarry was not in the house.
They had loosened the scuttle during the day, probably when old Luddy was away one of them had crept down there now to chloroform the old man into insensibility the others would complete the ghastly work presently by stringing their victim up to the ceiling and it would be suicide, for, long before morning came, long before the old man would be discovered, the fumes of the chloroform would be gone.
The groom shook his head sadly. "Not that, Miss Janice. They robbed me of both honour and revenge. I was powerless to punish either except by Bah! I've done with them for ever." "Foh mussy's sakes, chile," came Sukey's voice, "what youse dam' hyar? Run quick, honey, foh your mah is 'quirin' foh youse." "Oh, Luddy!" cried the girl, reaching out for the miniature.
And then, about to open the door, a sort of sudden dismay fell upon him. He had not thought of that somehow, it had not occurred to him! WHAT WAS IT THEY WERE WAITING FOR? Why had they not struck at once, as, when he had first entered the house, he had supposed they would do? What was it? Why was it? Was old Luddy out? Were they waiting for his return or what?
Old Luddy could be made to leave New York, and, once away, with the Skeeter and his gang robbed of incentive to pay any further attention to him, the stones could be secretly returned to the old man. And it would to the public, to the police, be just another of the Gray Seal's crimes that was all! Jimmie Dale had reached old Luddy's door. The Gray Seal?
A man's life any time for twenty-five dollars! No, they were not likely to forget the affair of the pushcart man, to forget old Luddy and his diamonds, to forget the Gray Seal! And they were only the vanguard of what was to come! Some one was working at the lock now. There was one way to stop that. It would not take them long to find out that he WAS there once the door was opened!
How had she found that out? Jimmie Dale sank into a deeper reverie. He could steal them all right, and they would be well worth the stealing old Luddy had done well, and lived and existed on next to nothing the stones, she said, were worth about fifteen thousand dollars. Not so bad, even for twenty-five years of vegetable selling from a pushcart!
Who would ever have suspected old Tom Ludgate, known for years throughout the squalour of the East Side as old Luddy, the pushcart man, of having a bag of unset diamonds under his pillow or under the sack, rather, that he probably used for a pillow! What a queer thing to do!
"Y'ain't the police!" it came in a choked gasp from the other, as he blinked in the sudden light "Say then " "Shut up!" ordered Jimmie Dale curtly. "And mind what I told you about moving!" He leaned over the bed. Old Luddy, though under the influence of the chloroform, was moving restlessly. Thoms had evidently only begun to apply the chloroform old Luddy was safe!
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