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Markel blew his nose vigorously, coughed asthmatically, and held out his hand. "Of course, certainly," said he effusively. "I've met Carruthers several times used his sheet more than once to advertise a new bond flotation." The dominant note in Markel's voice was an ingratiating and unpleasant whine, and Carruthers nodded, not very cordially and shook hands.
A month had gone by and he had not heard a word from HER. The break on West Broadway, the murder of Metzer in Moriarty's gambling hell, the theft of Markel's diamond necklace had followed each other in quick succession and then this month of utter silence, with no sign of her, as though indeed she had never existed. But it was not this temporary silence on her part that troubled Jimmie Dale now.
A man by the name of Thurl, Jason T. Thurl, another mining engineer, a steamer acquaintance, was out there at the time he was a partner of Markel's, though I didn't know it then. I started to work the mine. It didn't pan out. I dropped nearly every cent. Then I struck a small vein that temporarily recouped me, and supplied the necessary funds with which to go ahead for a while.
Jimmie Dale's voice was curt now, uncompromising. "And step lively!" They passed on along the side of the house and in among the trees. Fifty yards or so more, and Jimmie Dale halted. He backed Markel up against a large tree not over gently. "I I say" Markel's teeth were going like castanets.
And it had been useless all useless. Through his own endeavours, through the help of his friends of the underworld, the lives of half a dozen men, Bert Hagan's on West Broadway, for instance, Markel's, and others', had been laid bare to the last shred, but nowhere could be found the one vital point that linked their lives with hers, that would account for her intimate knowledge of them, and so furnish him with the clew that would then with certainty lead him to a solution of her identity.
But therein Carruthers was wrong the NEWS-ARGUS carried the "story" of Markel's diamond necklace in three-inch "caps" in red ink on the front page in the next morning's edition and Carruthers gloated over it because the morning NEWS-ARGUS was the ONLY paper in New York that did.
He can't help it. He's been trying so long to catch the chap that it's become an obsession. Eh, Carruthers?" Carruthers smiled seriously. "Perhaps," he admitted. "I hope, though, for Mr. Markel's sake, that the Gray Seal won't take a fancy to it if he does, Mr. Markel can say good-bye to his necklace." "Pouf!" coughed Markel arrogantly. "Overrated! His cleverness is all in the newspaper columns.
"The only decent thing you'll ever do will be to die and if those men of yours on the stairs move another step it will be your death warrant. Do you understand? I would suggest that you request them to stay where they are." Cold sweat was on Markel's face as he stared into the muzzle of the revolver, and his teeth chattered. "Go back!" he screamed hysterically at the servants. "Go back! Sit down!
The case lay open patently displaying the name of the most famous jewelry house in America. Jimmie Dale's eyes fixed on Markel's whiskers where they were brushed outward in an ornate and fastidious gray-black sweep. "By Jove!" he commented. "You don't do things by halves, do you, Markel?"
"I didn't break into Markel's safe for this it wouldn't have been worth while. It's only paste." "PASTE!" exclaimed Wilbur, in a slow way. "Paste," said Jimmie Dale placidly, dropping the necklace back into its case. "Quite in keeping with Markel, isn't it to make a sensation on the cheap?" "But that doesn't change matters!" Wilbur cried out sharply, after a numbed instant's pause.
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