.."
In a stunned way now, Jimmie Dale stared for a long minute at the
letter in his hand--then he read it again--and yet again. And then, the
flashlight out, as he tore the letter into fragments, he stared again,
for a long minute--into the blackness.
It was damnable, it was monstrous, this thing that he had read; it
plumbed the dregs of human deviltry--but for once the Tocsin was at
fault. Of the plot that had been hatched, of those details that she
described, there could be no doubt, there was no question there, and
there the Tocsin, he knew, had made no mistake; but the Tocsin, yes, and
those who had hatched the crime themselves, had taken no account of the
possible intervention of an outsider in the person of--the Rat! There
was even a sort of grim irony in it all--that the Rat should quite
unconsciously have feathered his nest at the expense of a far more
elaborately arranged crime than his own, and at the expense of those who
were of even a more abandoned, dangerous and unscrupulous type of
criminal than himself!
Jimmie Dale's face hardened suddenly--and suddenly he stooped and pulled
his clothes from their hiding place, and began to dress.
Pages:
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227