Yes, he saw it now!  Their backs were against the wall, they were at their wits’ end, these men!  The knowledge that the chauffeur possessed, that they knew he possessed, was evidently life and death to them.  To kill the man before they had wormed out of him what they wanted to know, or, at least, until, by holding him a prisoner, they had exhausted every means at their command to make him speak, was the last thing they would do!

Jimmie Dale sat for a long time quite motionless.  The car was speeding at a terrific rate along a straight stretch of road.  He could almost have sworn, guided by some intuitive sense, that they were in the country.  Well, even if it were so, what did that prove!  They might have started from New York itself—­only to return to it when they had satisfied themselves that he was sufficiently duped.  Or they might have started legitimately from outside New York, and be going toward the city now.  Since the ultimate destination was New York, and they had made no attempt to hide that from him, it was useless to speculate—­for at best it could be only speculation.  He had decided that once before!  The man at his side felt again over the scarf to see that it was in place.

Curiously now Jimmie Dale recalled the inward monitor that had warned him the honours had not all been his in this first round with the Crime Club to-night.  If they had deliberately murdered the chauffeur because of a refusal to answer, they would equally have done the same to him.  Fool that he had been not to have seen that before!  And yet would it have made any difference?  He shook his head.  He could not have acted to any better advantage than he had done.  He could not—­his lips curled in grim derision—­have been any more convincing.

Convincing!  It was all clear enough now!  If the chauffeur had suffered death rather than talk, even admitting the fact that they had more grounds for suspecting the chauffeur’s complicity, would his, Jimmie Dale’s, mere denial, his choice, too, of death, have been any the more convincing, or have saved his life where it had not saved the other’s?  A certain added respect for these men, against whom, until the end now, his victory or theirs, he realised he was fighting for his life, came over him as he recognised the touch of a master hand.  They did not know where to find the Tocsin; the package that she had said was vital to them was still beyond their reach; the chauffeur was dead; and he, Jimmie Dale, alone remained—­a clew that they had still to prove valid or invalid it was true, but the only clew in their possession.  And, gaining nothing from him by a show of force, to throw him off his guard, they had let him go—­meaning him to believe they were convinced he knew nothing, and that the episode, the adventure of the night, was, as far as they were concerned, ended, finished, and done with!

Time passed, a very long time, as he sat there.  It might have been an hour—­he could only hazard a guess.  Not one of the men in the car had spoken a word.  But to Jimmie Dale, the car itself, the ride, its duration, these three strange companions, were for the time being extraneous.  Even that sick giddiness in his head had, at least temporarily, gone from him.