“Hello?” he said.

“Hello!  Hello!  Jimmie!” came a voice.  “This is Carruthers.  That you, Jimmie?”

“Yes,” said Jimmie Dale and sat down limply in the desk chair.

“It’s the Gray Seal again.  I promised you I’d let you in on the ground floor next time anything happened, so come on down here quick if you want to see some of his work at firsthand.”

Jimmie Dale flirted a bead of sweat from his forehead.

“Carruthers,” said Jimmie languidly, “you newspaper chaps make me tired with your Gray Seal.  I’m just going to bed.”

“Bed nothing!” spluttered Carruthers, from the other end of the wire.  “Come down, I tell you.  It’s worth your while—­half the population of New York would give the toes off their feet for the chance.  Come down, you blast idiot!  The Gray Seal has gone the limit this time—­it’s murder.”

Jimmie Dale’s face was haggard.

“Oh!” he said peevishly.  “Sounds interesting.  Where are you?  I guess maybe I’ll jog along.”

“I should think you would!” snapped Carruthers.  “You know the Palace on the Bowery?  Yes?  Well, meet me on the corner there as soon as you can.  Hustle!  Good—­”

“Oh, I say, Carruthers!” interposed Jimmie Dale.

“Yes?” demanded Carruthers.

“Thanks awfully for letting me know, old man.”

“Don’t mention it!” returned Carruthers sarcastically.  “You always were a grateful beast, Jimmie.  Hurry up!”

Jimmie Dale hung up the receiver of the city ’phone, and took down the receiver of another, a private-house installation, and rang twice for the garage.

“The light car at once, Benson,” he ordered curtly.  “At once!”

Jimmie Dale worked quickly then.  In his dressing room, he changed from dinner clothes to tweeds; spent a second or so over the contents of a locked drawer in the dresser, from which he selected a very small but serviceable automatic, and a very small but highly powerful magnifying glass whose combination of little round lenses worked on a pivot, and, closed over one another, were of about the compass of a quarter of a dollar.

In three minutes he was outside the house and stepping into the car, just as it drew up at the curb.

“Benson,” he said tersely to his chauffeur, “drop me one block this side of the Palace on the Bowery—­and forget there was ever a speed law enacted.  Understand?”

“Very good, sir,” said Benson, touching his cap.  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

Jimmie Dale, in the tonneau, stretched out his legs under the front seat, and dug his hands into his pockets—­and inside the pockets his hands were clenched and knotted fists.

Murder!  At times it had occurred to him that there was a possibility that some crook of the underworld would attempt to cover his tracks and take refuge from pursuit by foisting himself on the authorities as the Gray Seal.  That was a possibility, a risk always to be run.  But that murder should be laid to the Gray Seal’s door!  Anger, merciless and unrestrained, surged over Jimmie Dale.