pallor of his make-up; and then slowly as though his mind were in
dismay, he walked across the room, turned off the gas, and going to the
cot flung himself down upon it.

What was he to do? What ghastly irony had prompted Clancy to sort _him_
out for a police spy? If he refused, if he attempted to stall on Clancy,
Clancy's threat to stamp him in the eyes of the underworld as a snitch
meant ruin and disaster, absolute and final, for "Smarlinghue" would
then have to disappear; on the other hand, to be allied with the police
increased his present risks a thousandfold--and they were already
hazardous enough! It meant constant surveillance by the police that
would hamper him, rob him of his freedom of movement, adding
difficulties and perils innumerable to the enacting of this new dual
personality of his.

Jimmie Dale's hands clenched more fiercely. It was an impossible
situation--it was untenable. That he could play his role in the
underworld with only the underworld to reckon with--_yes_; but with the
police as well, watching him in his character of a poor, drug-wrecked
artist, constantly in touch with him, likely at any moment to make the
discovery that Smarlinghue and Jimmie Dale, the millionaire clubman, a
leader in New York's most exclusive set, were one and the same--_no_!
And yet what was he to do? With the Gray Seal it had been different.
Then, police and underworld alike were openly allied as common enemies
against him--but none had known who the Gray Seal was until that night
when the Magpie had roused the Bad Lands like a hive of swarming hornets
with the news that the Gray Seal was Larry the Bat; none had known until
that night when it was accepted as a fact that Larry the Bat, and
therefore the Gray Seal, had perished miserably in the tenement fire.