With an exclamation almost of dismay, Jimmie Dale pulled out his watch.

So that was what Burton and Lannigan were up to! And he had actually run into them! Lord, the irony of it! The--And then Jimmie Dale stared at the dial of his watch incredulously.

It was still but barely midnight! It seemed impossible that since leaving the theatre at a few minutes before eleven, he had lived through but a single hour! Jimmie Dale's fingers began to pluck at the letter, tearing it into pieces, tearing the pieces over and over again into tiny shreds.

The train stopped at station after station, people got on and off--Jimmie Dale's hat was over his eyes, and his eyes were glued again to the window.

Had Bookkeeper Bob returned to his flat in Harlem with the detectives at his heels--or were Burton and Lannigan still trailing the man downtown somewhere around the cafe's?
If the former, the theft of the letter and its incident loss of time had been an irreparable disaster; if the latter--well, who knew! The risk was the Gray Seal's! At One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street Jimmie Dale left the train; and, at the end of a sharp four minutes' walk, during which he had dodged in and out from street to street, stopped on a corner to survey the block ahead of him.