Again Smarlinghue nodded--unhappily this time.
"All right!" said Clancy crisply. "I'm not coming around here any more--_unless I have to_. It might put you in bad. You can make your reports and get your orders through Whitie Karn at his dance hall."
"Whitie Karn!" The exclamation seemed to come involuntarily, in a quick, frightened way from Smarlinghue.
"Kind of a jolt--eh--Smarlinghue? You didn't suspect he was one of _us_, did you?--and there's more than Whitie Karn. Well, it will teach you to be careful. Suppose Whitie, for instance, passed the word that you were a snitch--eh? It won't do you any harm to keep that in mind once in a while." He moved over to the door. "Well, good-night, Smarlinghue! I guess you understand, don't you? You ought to be a pretty valuable man, and I expect a lot from you. If I don't get it--" He shrugged his shoulders, held Smarlinghue for an instant with half-closed, threatening eyes--and then the door closed behind him.
Smarlinghue did not move. The steps receded from the door, and died away along the passage. A minute, two minutes went by. Suddenly Smarlinghue pushed back the wristband of his shirt, and pricked the skin with the needle of the hypodermic. The door, without a sound, swung wide open. Clancy stood in the doorway.
"Good-night again, Smarlinghue," he said coolly.
The hypodermic fell clattering to the floor; Smarlinghue jumped nervously in his chair.
Clancy laughed--significantly; and, without closing the door this time, strode away again. His steps echoed back from the passageway, the front door opened and shut, his boot heel rang on the pavement without--and all was silence.
Smarlinghue rose from his chair, shuffled across the room, closed the door and locked it, then shuffled back again to the roller shade over the little French window, and, taking a pin from the lapel of his coat, fastened the rent together.
A passing cloud for a moment obscured the moonrays from the top-light; the gas-jet choked with air, spluttered, burning with a tiny, blue, hissing flame; then the white path lay across the floor again, and the yellow flare of gas spurted up into its pitiful fulness--and in Smarlinghue's stead stood another man. Gone were the stooping shoulders, gone the hollow cheeks, the thin, extended lips, the widened nostrils, as the little distorting pieces of wax were removed; and out of the metamorphosis, hard and grim, set like chiselled marble, was revealed the face of--Jimmie Dale.