For a moment he made no attempt to read it, his dark eyes, now that he was free from observation, full of troubled retrospect, fixed on the window at his side.

It was not a pleasant thought that it had cost a man his life, nor yet that that life was also the price of his own freedom.

True, if there were two men in the city of New York whose crimes merited neither sympathy nor mercy, those two men were the Wowzer and Dago Jim--but yet, after all, it was a human life, and, even if his own had been in the balance, thank God it had been through no act of his that Dago Jim had gone out! The Wowzer, cute and cunning, had been quick enough to say so to clear himself, but--Jimmie Dale smiled a little now--neither the Wowzer, nor Chang Foo, nor Chinatown would ever be in a position to recognise their uninvited guest! Jimmie Dale's eyes shifted to the letter speculatively, gravely.

It seemed as though the night had already held a year of happenings, and the night was not over yet--there was the letter! It had already cost one life; was it to cost another--or what?
It began as it always did.

He read it through once, in amazement; a second time, with a flush of bitter anger creeping to his cheeks; and a third time, curiously memorising, as it were, snatches of it here and there.
"DEAR PHILANTHROPIC CROOK: Robbery of Hudson-Mercantile National Bank--trusted employee is ex-convict, bad police record, served term in Sing Sing three years ago--known to police as Bookkeeper Bob, real name is Robert Moyne, lives at -- -- Street, Harlem--Inspector Burton and Lannigan of headquarters trailing him now--robbery not yet made public--" There was a great deal more--four sheets of closely written data.