Futility seemed to haunt, yes, and torture him!
Even his rehabilitation of Larry the Bat, with all its attendant risk
and danger, had been futile as far as _she_ was concerned. And he had
counted so much on that! And that had failed, and nothing was left to
him but to pursue again the one possible chance of success, the hope
that somewhere in the innermost depths of the Bad Lands he might pick up
the clue he sought. And so, to-night, he was listening again to the
voices of the underworld--and so far he had heard nothing but ominous
mutterings, proof that the sordid denizens of crimeland were more than
usually disturbed. The Wolf had gone to join his _friend_ Frenchy Virat
in the Tombs! The twisted lips of the underworld whispered the name of
the Gray Seal!
Jimmie Dale's fingers, twitching, simulating even in that little detail
the drug-wrecked role of Smarlinghue that he played, clutched with a
sort of hideous eagerness at the hypodermic syringe which he held in his
hands. How many times, here in Foo Sen's, or in other lairs that were
but the counterpart of Foo Sen's, had he lain, stretched out, a
pretended victim to a vice that robbed his face of colour, that shook
his miserably clad body, that clouded his eyes and stole from them the
light of reason--_while he listened_! How many times--and how many
times in the days to come would he do it again! Would it never be his,
the secret that he sought--the clue that would divulge the identity of
those who threatened the Tocsin's life; those who, like human wolves,
like a hell-pack snarling for its prey, had driven her again into hiding
and made of her a hunted thing!
The fingers closed convulsively over the hypodermic.
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