"Sure!" said Klanner. "And I--"
"Good-night," said Jimmie Dale, and started abruptly across the street,
entering the lane on the other side again--but here, in the shadows, he
paused for a moment, watching until Klanner boarded the uptown car.
CHAPTER XXIV
AT FIVE MINUTES OF TWELVE
Twenty minutes later, well along the East River front, in an unsavoury
and deserted neighbourhood, Jimmie Dale was crouched before the door of
a small building that seemed built half on the shore edge, and half on
an old and run-down pier that extended out into the water. The building
itself was little more than a storage shed, and originally had probably
laid claims to nothing more pretentious--to-day it served as warehouse
and office for Hunchback Joe's "business," and, above, for Hunchback
Joe's living quarters. Jimmie Dale glanced around him sharply--not for
the first time. There were no other buildings in his immediate vicinity,
and such as could be seen loomed up only as black, shadowy, distant
shapes--warehouses and small factories, for the most part, and empty and
deserted now at night. It was intensely black--only a twinkling light
here and there from a passing craft on the river, and the glow from
thousands of street lamps that, like some strange aerial illumination,
hovered over the opposite shore.
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