"You're a queer sort of a
night marauder, you are! Sure this is for me, and that you aren't
making a mistake?"
"Quite sure," said Jimmie Dale, still quietly. "It's yours. It's the
money you planted in Klanner's trunk a couple of hours ago."
"I never heard of Klanner," said Hunchback Joe.
"It's simply the evidence that that isn't all I found in the trunk,"
said Jimmie Dale. "There was a packet of papers, and the blood-stained
blackjack with which Jathan Lane was murdered in the bank this
afternoon."
"My God, the man's mad!" muttered Hunchback Joe under his breath. "I'm
up against a maniac!"
Jimmie Dale had taken his handkerchief from his pocket, and, carrying it
to his mouth, had moistened the adhesive side of the little seal. His
voice rasped, as his hand went down upon the table.
"You blot on God's earth!" he said hoarsely. "That's enough of that!
The buttons are off the foils to-night, Hunchback Joe!"
For the second time, Hunchback Joe's eyes had ceased to blink. He was
staring at the gray seal on the table top in front of him, and now in
spite of his effort to maintain nonchalance, a whiteness had come
into his face.
"You!" he shrank back a little in his chair.
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