_What was that_? It came
again----a step, stealthy, cautious, from the areaway--and now another
step--there were two men there.
The picklock was back in his pocket, and, in its place, his fingers
closed around the stock of his automatic. A shadow showed around the
corner of the building, a queer, twisted, misshapen shadow--it was
followed by another. Jimmie Dale drew in his breath softly. Hunchback
Joe! He had rather expected that the man would already have come and
gone, that this initial act of the brutal drama staged for the night's
work would already have been performed. Well, it did not matter! There
was still time--time to wait while Hunchback Joe did his work here, time
in turn to do his own and still reach Baldy Jack's before ten o'clock.
From somewhere in the distance came the roar and rattle of an elevated
train; from a neighbouring tenement came the strains of a wheezy
phonograph. The figures were at the rear door of the tenement now. A
minute passed; the door opened, closed, the two figures had
disappeared--and then, in a flash, Jimmie Dale had straightened up, and
a steel jimmy was working with deft, silent speed at the window sash.
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