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Updated: May 12, 2025
It was dark out here in the courtyard, and objects were only faintly discernible; but there were few localities in that neighbourhood with which Jimmie Dale, either as Smarlinghue, or in the old days as Larry the Bat, was not intimately acquainted. To call it a courtyard hardly described the place.
"I'll give you nothing!" snarled the Wolf. "Half give me a quarter then?" whimpered Smarlinghue. "Drop it!" The Wolf's revolver jerked forward into Jimmie Dale's face.
But otherwise his lips thinned otherwise, he did not know. Otherwise, there was promise of strange, grim work before daylight came, work that might lead him out of necessity to the role of Smarlinghue, and as Smarlinghue anywhere! He did not know; he knew only one thing that, at any cost, if it lay within any power of his to prevent it, David Archman should not live a broken man.
To risk the attempt to follow the Rat now, to risk discovery by the Rat, was to risk, not only the admission that he had been playing a part, but to risk what he had fought for and staked his life for months now to establish the role, the character of "Smarlinghue" in the underworld.
And then, by and by, when the bulls get wise, it'll be yours for the juice route, not just a space or two for cracking a box! Get me again?" Smarlinghue, struggling weakly, pulled the other's hand from his throat. "You you were there, too, at at the Spider's," he choked craftily. "You're you're in it as as bad as I am."
If, as Jimmie Dale, he had had reason to keep out of the affair before, it was imperative that he should do so now or he might find himself in a very awkward situation, so awkward, in fact, that the consequences might lead anywhere, and "anywhere" to Jimmie Dale, to the Gray Seal, to Smarlinghue, might mean ruin, wreckage and disaster.
But Smarlinghue had retreated now, and, crouched upon the cot, was mumbling through twisted lips. And again the Wolf laughed, and, gathering up the jewels, dropped them into his pocket, and backed to the door. He stood there an instant, his eyes narrowed on Jimmie Dale. "I got the stuff now" he was snarling low, viciously "and mabbe that puts it a little more up to me.
His glance, strangely whimsical, strangely wistful now, travelled again over the room. If it was the end to-night, this was his good-by to Smarlinghue, to Larry the Bat and the Gray Seal. This was his exit from the sordid stage of the underworld forever.
It seemed as though he had combed the East Side from end to end, and he had found neither Curley, nor Haines, nor Patsy Marles nor had he heard anything nor had such guarded questions as he had dared to ask without involving possible disastrous consequences to "Smarlinghue," should the Rat, after all, succeed and hear of his activities, had any result.
No one had seen him enter it was vital now that he should not be heard moving around the room, and so invite the chance of some aimless caller in the person of a fellow-tenant, for it was no longer Smarlinghue who would be found there!
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