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Updated: May 25, 2025
Another shot from the gunman, as though to make his work doubly sure, followed the first but now some of the fear-stricken crowd had come between them, plunging, falling, tripping over tables and chairs, seeking the rear exit. "Quick!" Jimmie Dale breathed in Klanner's ear. He was half lifting, half dragging the man along. "Quick get your feet, man!"
Again Jimmie Dale's eyes made a circuit of the place, failed to identify the person of one Kid Greer, and, giving up the attempt, rested speculatively instead on Klanner's back. Yes, he could quite fully understand why the Tocsin could not have warned Klanner to beware, for instance, of Kid Greer.
A minute passed; the door opened, closed, the two figures had disappeared and then, in a flash, Jimmie Dale had straightened up, and a steel jimmy was working with deft, silent speed at the window sash. He had the time it would take Hunchback Joe to reach and open Klanner's door from the hall inside no more.
The Kid can pull a fake play to make up with some moll across the room. Klanner's no friend of his, he never saw the man before you understand? just ran into him outside the dance hall, if any questions are asked. But I don't want any questions, and there won't be any if he plays his hand right. Tell him I said his job's over once he has Klanner inside and to stand from under. Get me?"
Having failed at Baldy Jack's, it was certain, since Clarke's whole plan hinged on Klanner's death, that they would try again. After to-night if all went well it did not matter, for Klanner then would be no longer a factor to Clarke or Hunchback Joe!
"... I did not mean to bring you into the shadows... but there is another life, not mine, at stake ... I have no right to do anything else ... if I intervened, or gave warning, the evidence that will convict Clarke's agent, and will convict Clarke through the agent, is lost... that is why, in spite of all, I am writing this ... do you understand? ... for three nights he disappeared, and somehow, I do not yet know how, evaded me in the daytime ... no trace, just as I believed I had the man through whom Clarke is working trapped ... dared not take the chance of giving up watch for an instant ... did not know about this afternoon until an hour ago ... too late ... Jathan Lane's murder at the bank ... Klanner, the janitor of the bank ... very fair hair, scar on left cheek bone ... worked at night ... under passage from private office ... blackjack with which murder was done, document and money in Klanner's room ... unmarried ... lives in rear room, first floor of tenement at ... you must get the evidence ... unto Caesar!.. ship chandler's store, junk shop ... Larens, Joe Larens, the hunchback ... Clarke's agent ... another murder to cover up their tracks ... must get Clarke through Hunchback Joe ... will squeal if he sees no way of escape ... Klanner's room at once ... Klanner with Kid Greer will be at Baldy Jack's at ten o'clock ... will stop at nothing ... innocent bystander ... document of international importance, ... gold and details ... Federal authorities, not the police ... will see that Secret Service men get tip where to raid at midnight ... under the sail cloth in left corner ..."
The smile died away, and an angry red tinged Jimmie Dale's cheeks he was picturing again that scene in Klanner's room, the bestial deviltry of that deformed and hideous creature who, to cover up his own guilt, was railroading an innocent man to death. "Unto Caesar!" yes, there was grim justice here but that was not enough!
Hunchback Joe's eyes, with that curious, unpleasant trick of which the man seemed possessed, were blinking ceaselessly. "I want to give this back to you," said Jimmie Dale quietly and flung the roll of bills that he had taken from Klanner's trunk down upon the table. Hunchback Joe's eyes ceased to blink. "Why, thanks!" grinned Hunchback Joe. "You're a queer sort of a night marauder, you are!
The minutes passed, five of them, and then Jimmie Dale, too, was making his way softly along the areaway to the street but in Jimmie Dale's pockets were the short leaden blackjack, ugly for the stain on its leathern covering, the packet of papers, and the roll of banknotes that had been in Klanner's trunk.
"Quick!" said Jimmie Dale again and, with his hand on Klanner's arm, broke into a run. Those running in the same direction turned off from the lane at the first cross street; but Jimmie Dale held to the lane, and it was three blocks away from Baldy Jack's before he stopped. Klanner was panting from his exertions. "My God what's it mean!" he gasped.
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