movement, made no attempt to evade discovery, made no sound; and then
Jimmie Dale stooped quickly, and raised one of the other's feet a few
inches from the floor. It fell back--a dead weight.

Jimmie Dale's jaws were hard clamped. There was devil's work here--some
of the Magpie's, possibly. Every faculty alert now, Jimmie Dale was
quietly lifting aside the small iron bed. The Magpie was no fool! By
underworld and police alike it would be accepted without questions that
the Gray Seal had held a day of reckoning in store for the Magpie. Had
the Magpie traded on that--to get rid of some one who was in his way,
this out-stretched, inert thing on the floor, and lay it to the door of
the Gray Seal? It was clever, hellish in its cunning. And it would
appear plausible enough. The Gray Seal had come here, say, searching for
the Magpie, and in the darkness had struck another down! Yes, the Magpie
could get away with that. It would stand to reason that the Magpie would
not lure a victim to his own den, and--

A low cry was on Jimmie Dale's lips. The bed was moved out now, and he
was stooping over a man whose head was gruesomely battered above the
right temple and back across the skull. The flashlight wavered in his
hand, as he held it focussed on the other's face. It was the
Magpie--dead.




CHAPTER VII


THE BOND ROBBERY