Jimmie Dale

A wealthy playboy by day, at night he puts on inconspicuous dark clothes, a mask and a black slouch hat and becomes The Grey Seal, who enters businesses or homes and cracks safes, always leaving a diamond shaped, grey paper "seal" (with gum on the back) behind to mark his conquest (so others will not be blamed for his crimes), but never taking anything.

As the Grey Seal, he wears a mask and carries a girdle full of lock picks and such meaning no door or safe can defy him.

Though Dale carries a gun, he does not kill, not even when a thief stole a letter before he read it and learned his identity.

Educated at Harvard and with a house on the expensive Riverside Drive, Dale is a member of the very select St. James Club, having inherited a lot of money from his late father when he sold his safe making business.

He also owns an old house with three exits (one hidden) in the Bowery (Manhattan) which he calls his Sanctuary and keeps some changes of clothes and make up there under loose boards for when he becomes the hard faced dope fiend, "Larry The Bat" who has access to all the Underworld because they trust him.

Chapter 20 of the first book explains all about the Tocsin and the evil Crime Club, an organisation of master criminals with their fingers in most things crooked.

After some more adventures, she explains all in Chapter 22 (second book), and after the villain is finally killed, they escape in a boat together for hopefully a new life together.

2017 saw the publication of the pastiche novel, Jimmie Dale, Alias the Grey Seal, by Michael Howard.

[4] Jimmie Dale/The Grey Seal is often credited with popularizing and evolving what would greatly influence later pulp and comic book heroes.

He also established the concept of a hero's secret hideout or lair, The Sanctuary, a precursor of the Batcave or the Fortress of Solitude.