The escape! Jimmie Dale had turned suddenly into a pitch-black areaway,
and, cautiously now, was making his way to the rear of a three-story
tenement of the poorer class. The escape had naturally been accomplished
in exactly the same way--the rear door unlocked again to obviate any
immediate attention being paid to the passage--the murderer lowering
himself through the aperture, and, as he replaced the flooring,
manipulating the rug so that it would drop innocently back into place--
and the exit from the basement would of course already have been
provided for. Jimmie Dale's face was hard. The newspapers, going to
press almost at the moment the murder was discovered, though giving a
general description of the bank's premises, had had no opportunity to
furnish details of the ensuing police investigation; but that the police
would eventually discover the hole in the flooring was obvious; that
they would also discover it without much delay was equally obvious--_and
it had been intended that they should_. Clarke's object, acting through
Hunchback Joe, had been to provide only for the _immediate_ escape--and
after that, with callous deviltry, he proposed to utilise this very
means of escape to cover up the tracks of the tools who were doing his
work, and, backed with another murder, to put the crime upon another's
shoulders!
Jimmie Dale had halted now to survey his surroundings, and, his eyes
grown accustomed to the darkness, he could make out a door opening on
the small yard in which he stood, and to the right of the door an
unlighted and closed window.
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