She had not needed to mention any scar to enable him to identify Birdie
Lee. He knew the man of old. The slickest of them all, the cleverest of
them all, before he had been caught and sent to Sing Sing for a
five-years' term, was Birdie Lee--the one man of them all that he,
Jimmie Dale, might regard as a rival, so to speak, where the mastery of
the intricate mechanism of a vaunted and much advertised "guaranteed
burglar-proof safe" was concerned! And Birdie Lee was out again!

There was danger if he went to Malay John's, she had said--and it was
true. But what if he did _not_ go! What, for instance, if Birdie Lee
went through with this night's work!

Jimmie Dale walked slowly across the room, halted before the wall near
the door, stood for an instant hesitant there--and then, as though in a
sudden, final decision, dropped down on his knees, and, working swiftly,
removed the section of the base-board from the wall for the second time
that night.

Out came the neatly folded clothes of Jimmie Dale; and with them,
serving him so well in the days gone by, the leather girdle, or
undervest, with its stout-sewn, upright pockets in which nestled, in an
array of fine, blue-steel, highly tempered instruments, a compact
powerful burglar's kit. It was the one thing that he had saved from the
fire in the old Sanctuary--and that more by accident than design. He had
been wearing the girdle that night when he had stolen into the Crime
Club, and afterwards had returned to the Sanctuary with the intention of
destroying forever all traces of Larry the Bat; and then, only half
dressed, as he was changing into the clothes of Jimmie Dale, the alarm
had come before he had taken off the girdle, and, without thought of it
again at the time, he had still been wearing it when he had made his