fashioned diamond-shaped, stuck somewhere where it would be the first
thing your eyes would light upon when you reached the scene, and--"

"Don't go so fast," smiled Jimmie Dale. "I don't quite get the
connection. What did you have to do with this--er--Gray Seal fellow?
Where do you come in?"

"I? I had a good deal to do with him," said Carruthers grimly. "I was a
reporter when he first broke loose, and the ambition of my life, after
I began really to appreciate what he was, was to get him--and I nearly
did, half a dozen times, only--"

"Only you never quite did, eh?" cut in Jimmie Dale slyly. "How near did
you get, old man? Come on, now, no bluffing; did the Gray Seal ever even
recognise you as a factor in the hare-and-hound game?"

"You're flicking on the raw, Jimmie," Carruthers answered, with a wry
grimace. "He knew me, all right, confound him! He favoured me with
several sarcastic notes--I'll show 'em to you some day--explaining
how I'd fallen down and how I could have got him if I'd done something
else." Carruthers' fist came suddenly down on the table. "And I would
have got him, too, if he had lived."

"Lived!" ejaculated Jimmie Dale. "He's dead, then?"

"Yes," averted Carruthers; "he's dead."

"H'm!" said Jimmie Dale facetiously. "I hope the size of the wreath you
sent was an adequate tribute of your appreciation."