He crept forward silently across the yard. There was a back entrance,
but it led to the basement--Jimmie Dale's immediate attention was
directed to the rear window, the window of one Reddy Mull's room. And
here, crouched beneath it, Jimmie Dale listened. From the front of the
establishment came muffled sounds from the pool and billiard hall; there
was nothing else.
The window was above the level of his head, but still easily within
reach. He tested it, found it locked--and the steel jimmy crept in
under the sash. A moment passed, there was a faint, almost
indistinguishable creak; and then Jimmie Dale, drawing himself up with
the agility of a cat, had slipped through, and was standing, listening
again, inside the room.
The sounds from the pool room were louder, more distinct now, even
rising once into a shout of boisterous hilarity; but there was no other
sound. The round, white ray of Jimmie Dale's flashlight circled the room
suddenly, inquisitively--and went out. It was a bare, squalid place,
dirty, filthy, disreputable. There was a bed, unmade, a table, a few
chairs, a greasy, threadbare carpet on the floor--nothing else, save
that his eyes had noted that the electric-light switch was on the wall
beside the jamb of the door.
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