He hesitated miserably.  What could he do—­if she would not go!  And it was true—­the moments were flying.  Better, rather than futile argument, to use them as she said.  There was still a chance!  Why not!  Five minutes!  He could do better than that!  He must do better than that!

Without a word, he ran back across the room.  In frantic haste, from face, hands, wrists, and neck came the stain.  There was still time.  She was standing there by the door, listening.  She, the Tocsin, she whom he loved, she who, all through the years that had gone, had been so strangely elusive and yet so intimately a part of his life, she was standing there now, here with him—­in peril with every second that passed!

He had only to slip on his coat and vest now—­and make a bundle of Larry the Bat’s things on the floor, so that he could carry them away to destroy them.  He stooped to gather up the clothes—­and straightened suddenly—­and jumped toward the door again.

“They are coming, Jimmie!” she called, in a low voice.  But he had already heard them—­the stairs were creaking loudly under the tread of many feet.  He pushed the Tocsin hurriedly back against the wall at the side of the door.

“Stand there!” he said, under his breath.  “Out of the line of fire!  Don’t move!”

There was a rush against the door—­and then a voice growled: 

“Aw, cut dat out!  Wot do youse want to do—­scare him away by bustin’ it!  Pick de lock, an’ we’ll lay for him inside till he shows up.”

It was the Skeeter’s voice.  The Skeeter and his gang—­the worst apaches in the city of New York!  Professional assassins, death contractors, he had called them—­and the lowest bidders!  A man’s life any time for twenty-five dollars!  No, they were not likely to forget the affair of the pushcart man, to forget old Luddy and his diamonds, to forget—­the Gray Seal!  And they were only the vanguard of what was to come!

Some one was working at the lock now.  There was one way to stop that.  It would not take them long to find out that he was there once the door was opened!  Better know it with the door shut!  Jimmie Dale lifted his revolver coolly and fired through the panel.

A burst of yells answered the shot; and among them, high above the others, the Magpie’s scream: 

“We got him!  We got him!  He’s dere now!”

And then it seemed that pandemonium broke loose—­there was a volley of shots, the bullets splintering through the door panels as from a machine gun, so fast they came—­and then another rush against the door.

Flat on the floor, but well back and to one side, Jimmie Dale fired steadily—­again and again.

Came screams of pain, yells, and oaths—­and they fell back from the door.

And now from above, from overhead, came tumult—­windows thrown up, the stamp of feet, cries of fright.  And from the street, a low, sullen roar.  The underworld was gathering fast!