He sprang for it, entered, and, suddenly silent now in his
tread, reached the door of his own room, slipped through and closed it
softly behind him.
And now Jimmie Dale worked with frantic speed. He could hear them
racing, yelling, shouting along the lane. A match crackled in his hand,
and the gas-jet spluttered into flame--the light in the room could not
be seen from the lane. He ran across the room, tearing off his mask as
he went, and, wrenching the cash-box from his pocket, tucked mask and
cash-box behind the disordered array of dirty canvases on the floor--he
dared not take the risk or the time that loosening the base board would
entail. He flung his hat into a corner, and, ripping off his coat,
tossed it upon the cot; then, snatching up a paint tube, he smeared a
daub of paint upon the palette that lay on the table, and laid a wet
brush hurriedly several times across the canvas on the easel.
From the corner of the lane and street outside came the scuffling to and
fro of many feet, as though in uncertainty, in indecision, in hesitancy.
A dozen voices spoke at once, high-pitched, wild, frenzied.
"Where is he?... Which way did he go?... Where--"
And then the Wolf's voice, above the rest, in a sudden, excited yell:
"What's that across there! It's him! There he is! He's kept on up the
lane! He's--"
The voice was lost in a chorus of shouts, in the pound and stampede of
racing feet again, of the pack in cry.
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