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The Wolf and Spider Webb and Larry the Bat! It was a curious trio! Smarlinghue's lips, perhaps because the wax beneath was not yet moulded comfortably into place, twitched queerly. One of them was dead the Spider. There remained the Wolf and Larry the Bat! No, he did not underestimate the Wolf only a fool, and a blinded fool, would do that.
I was still looking for it when I came out of the lane you remember, Smarlinghue, don't you? you got your memory back, ain't you? that I was a bit ahead of the rest of 'em? It didn't take a second to spot that on the doorstep, and there's some more of it in the hall. Damned queer, ain't it that it led right to Smarlinghue's room!" The laugh was gone. The Wolf began to come forward across the room.
"You you mean you want me for for a stool pigeon?" he faltered. "You got it!" said Clancy bluntly. Smarlinghue's eyes roved about the room in a furtive, terror-stricken glance, his hand passed aimlessly over his eyes, and he crouched low down in his chair. "No, no!" he whispered. "No, no for God's sake, Mr. Clancy, don't ask me to do that! I can't I can't! I I wouldn't be any good, I I can't!
It would give the Mole and the underworld nothing to work on afterwards if Larry the Bat went to the rescue of Silver Mag; and if he won through there would then still be "Smarlinghue's" sanctuary, this place here, as a temporary refuge.
Jimmie Dale was retreating back along the corridor and a minute later he was in the street, and scuffling along in a downtown direction. His hands, in the pockets of his tattered coat, were clenched, and through the pallor of Smarlinghue's make-up a dull red burned his cheeks. Old Grenville and the Rat! The smile that found lodgment on Smarlinghue's contorted lips was mirthless.
That was the Wolf but that was not all! Jimmie Dale's face hardened into grim lines, as he lifted out from under the baseboard "Smarlinghue's" frayed and seedy coat, and put it on. Between the Wolf and the Gray Seal there was now a personal feud.
He lifted the glass to his mouth, his head thrown back as though to drain a final, lingering drop, then he thumped the glass down on the table, licked his lips thin and distorted by "Smarlinghue's" makeup and wiped them with the sleeve of his threadbare coat.
The intimate, personal acquaintance of Larry the Bat with every crook and dive in Gangland had aided him, as Smarlinghue, to gain an initial foothold, but his complete establishment there had necessarily had to be of Smarlinghue's own making. And it had taken time.
An instant later, with the loose section of the base-board removed, he reached inside, and took out a curious assortment of garments, which he laid on the floor beside him. They were not Smarlinghue's clothes they were even more shoddy and disreputable.
A passing cloud for a moment obscured the moonrays from the top-light; the gas-jet choked with air, spluttered, burning with a tiny, blue, hissing flame; then the white path lay across the floor again, and the yellow flare of gas spurted up into its pitiful fulness and in Smarlinghue's stead stood another man.
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