Before your call either insert the loading image in a div/span somewhere and then on the success function remove that image. Alternatively you can set up a css class like loading that might look like this
.loading
{
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
background:transparent url('loading.gif') no-repeat 0 0;
font-size: 0px;
display: inline-block;
}
And then assign this class to a span/div and clear it in the success function