But now it was different.

Up and down through the Bad Lands, in gambling hells, in vicious resorts, in the hiding places where thugs and crooks burrowed themselves away from the daylight, through the heart and the outskirts of the underworld travelled the fiat, whispered out of mouths crooked to one side--DEATH TO THE GRAY SEAL! Gangland differences were forgotten in the larger issue of the common weal.

The gang spirit became the spirit of a united whole, and the crime fraternity buzzed and hummed poisonously, spurred on by hatred, thirst for revenge, fear, and, perhaps most potent of all, a hideous suspicion now of each other.
The underworld had received a shock at which it stood aghast, and which, with its terrifying possibilities, struck consternation into the soul of every individual of that brotherhood whose bond was crime, who was already "wanted" for some offence or other, whether it ranged from murder in the first degree to some petty piece of sneak thievery.
Stangeist, the Indian chief, the lawyer whose cunning brain had stood as a rampart between the underworld and a prison cell, was himself now in the Tombs with the certainty of the electric chair before him; and with him, the same fate equally assured, were Australian Ike, The Mope, and Clarie Deane! Aristocrats of the Bad Lands, peers of that inglorious realm were those four--and the blow had fallen with stunning force, a blow that in itself would have been enough to have stirred the underworld to its depths.

But that was not all--from the cells in the Tombs, from the four came the word, and passed from mouth to mouth in that strange underground exchange until all had heard it, that the Gray Seal had "SQUEALED." The Gray Seal who, though unknown, they had counted the most eminent among themselves, had squealed! Who was the Gray Seal?
It he had held the secrets of Stangeist and his band, what else might he not know?
Who else might not fall next?
The Gray Seal had become a snitch, a menace, a source of danger that stalked among them like a ghastly spectre.

Who was the Gray Seal?
None knew.
"Death to the Gray Seal! Run him to earth!" went the whisper from lip to lip; and with the whisper men stared uncertainly into each other's faces, fearful that the one to whom they spoke might even be--the Gray Seal! Jimmie Dale's lips twisted queerly as he looked around him at the squalid appointments of the Sanctuary.