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Updated: June 12, 2025
This might even have explained his acquaintanceship with Clarie Archman, except for the fact that it did not explain Clarie Archman's co-operation in a premeditated robbery with any one! Again Jimmie Dale shook his head and there came another question, one for which no answer, even of a suggestive nature, had been supplied in the Tocsin's letter.
There was a flash in mid-air, the roar of the report went racketing through the silent house, and the revolver, spinning from the other's hands, struck against the wall across the room. And then Jimmie Dale had the boy by the shoulders, and was shaking him violently. Clarie Archman was like one stunned, numbed, and bereft of his senses. "It's all right you're clear!
I fancy you can find a means of inducing Sonnino here to keep his mouth shut; and I fancy that of the two evils holding young Archman as a club over his father, or of your employers facing their trial and conviction you can convince the 'Private Club Ring' that the lesser, the lesser as regards your risk, say, is to face that trial and conviction. Do I make myself plain Laroque?
Sonnino was forewarned, and undoubtedly forearmed! The front door closed softly, so softly that had Jimmie Dale, supersensitive as his hearing was, not been intent upon it, it would have escaped him. The glow from the inner room, faint as it was, threw into shadowy relief a man's form tiptoeing forward and then a board creaked. "What's that!" came in a wild whisper from Clarie Archman.
It still seemed incredible that Clarie Archman was a thief, a safe-tapper, even if but an amateur one. The boy must have travelled a pace of late that was fast and furious. How had he ever become intimate enough with Gentleman Laroque to be associated with the other in such a crime as this?
Yes, it was a vitally personal matter now; there was an added incentive to-night spurring the Gray Seal on to act. David Archman had been his father's closest friend; and he, Jimmie Dale, himself had always looked on David Archman, and with reason, as little less than a second father. His frown grew deeper he did not understand. But Tocsin did not make mistakes.
Their last card! The safe swung open. Their last card was Clarie Archman, the son! He reached into the safe, took out an automatic, and placed it in his pocket. There was no necessity to go to the Sanctuary what he would need was here in duplicate, and it would be Jimmie Dale, not Smarlinghue, who played the role of the Gray Seal to-night.
You'd make a wooden Indian nervous!" There was silence for an instant, then a curious gnawing sound punctuated with quick, low, metallic rasps as of a ratchet at work and upon Jimmie Dale for a moment came stunned dismay. Time, the one factor upon which he had depended, was lost to him; Clarie Archman and Gentleman Laroque were already at work in there in that room beyond.
And then suddenly Jimmie Dale rose from his chair, and slipped into the window recess behind the portieres. The front door closed, a step came along the hall, the library opened, closed again and Clarie Archman, his face as the flickering firelight played upon it, like a face of death, came forward into the room.
His first impulse had been to surprise the two, hold them up at the revolver point, but the result of such an act would have been abortive, for the disfigured safe would stand a mute, incontrovertible witness to the fact that an attempt to force it had been made and, whether it was actual robbery or attempted robbery that was proved against the son, it in no way deflected the blow aimed at David Archman.
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