Block after block of dark, ill-lighted streets Jimmie Dale traversed,
until, perhaps fifteen minutes after he had left the Sanctuary, he
swerved suddenly for the second time that night into a lane. He might
not have known English Dick, but he knew Reddy Mull, and he knew
Marloff's! Reddy Mull was a gangster, a gunman pure and simple, whose
services were at the call of the highest bidder; and Marlopp's was a
pool and billiard hall--to the uninitiated. Marlopp's, however, if one
had ears well trained enough to hear, resounded to the click of ivory
that was not the click of pool and billiard balls! Upstairs, if one
could get upstairs, a gambling hell supplanted the billiard hall below.
It was an unsavoury place, the resort of crooks, some of whom lived
there--amongst them, Reddy Mull.
Jimmie Dale, close against the fence, and halfway down the lane now,
paused and looked about him, straining his eyes through the
blackness--then with a lithe spring he caught the top of the fence,
swung himself over, and dropped to the ground on the other side. The
rear of a row of low buildings now loomed up before him across a narrow
yard. Window lights showed here and there from the houses on either
side; and from the upper windows of the house directly in front of him
faint threads of light filtered out into the darkness through the cracks
of closed shutters, but the lower part of the house was in blackness.
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