Club, since it, the Crime Club, with the supposed uncle dead,
could not profit through the false Henry LaSalle inheriting
as next of kin! It was the weak link, the vulnerable point
in the stupendous scheme of murder and crime with which
these hell fiends had played for and won, so far, the stake
of eleven millions. Not that they had overlooked or been
blind to this, they were too clever, too cunning for that -- it
was only that they had planned to accomplish the Tocsin's
death, as they had her father's and uncle's, and establish the
false Henry LaSalle in undisputed possession and ownership
of the estate -- and had failed in that -- up to the present.
But the material results remained the same, so long as the
Tocsin, to save her life, was forced to remain in hiding, so
long as proof that would convict the Crime Club was not
forthcoming -- so long as that man lived!

Time passed to which Jimmie Dale was oblivious. At
times he walked slowly, scarcely moving; at times his pace
was a nervous, hurried stride, that was almost a run. And
as he was oblivious to time, so was he oblivious to his sur-
roundings, to the direction which he took. At times his
forehead was damp with moisture that was not there from
physical exertion; at times his face, deathly white, was full
as of the vision of some shuddering, abhorrent sight; at
times his lips were thinned into a straight line, and there was
a glitter in the dark eyes that was not good to see, while his
hands at his sides clenched until the skin, tight over the
knuckles, was an ivory white. To kill a man!

What other way was there? The proof that it had taker
Hilton Travers years to obtain, the proof on which the
Tocsin's life depended, was destroyed utterly, irreparably.
It could never be duplicated -- Hilton Travers was dead --
murdered. Murder! That thought again! It was their own
weapon! Murder! Would one kill a venomous reptile in
whose fangs was death? What right had this man to life,
whose life was forfeit even under the law -- for murder?
Was she to drag on an intolerable existence among the dregs
and the scum of the underworld, she, in her refinement and
her purity, to exist among the vile and dissolute, in daily

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