It must be that way, Jimmie; there is no other
way, and what I am about to say must not lead you to think that I am
hesitating now, or have changed my mind. It is only this--that the game
is not won until the last card is played, and, while I am almost
certain that I see the way now, there _is_ still that last card to
play. Do not let us mince matters, Jimmie. If I fail, you know what it
means. But, in the bigger way, Jimmie, I can only count for but very
little in the balance. There is the afterwards that is of far more
moment--that justice, swift and sure, should put an end to the
depredations and the menace to society that exists to-day in the
person of one of the cleverest and most conscienceless fiends that ever
plotted crime. Nor, in case you should have to take up the work where I
leave off, would you be even then obliged to come into those shadows
again. It is very strange, Jimmie. It is almost like some grim,
terribly grim, ironical joke. Everything, all the power, all the
resources that this man possesses have been used against me in the last
few months, because he knows that unless he accomplishes my death he
must remain in hiding just as he has forced me into hiding; and yet at
the same time--and this he does not know, because he does not know that
he is known to you, and that you, as Jimmie Dale, a man whose position
and prominence would carry conviction with every word you might say,
are in a position to testify against him--with my death he
automatically accomplishes his own destruction.
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