Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 49/Number 1/Under Sparkling Lights

by C. S. Montanye

 

Under Sparkling Lights

By

C. S. Montanye

Chapter I.

THE KATUPUR RUBY.

WHEN Archer Glendale shook hands with Fosdick, promising that he would dine with his friend before the week was out, he went as far as the curb and saw the other off in one of the taxicabs that invariably fronted the façade of the vast hotel. Then, conscious of having nothing particularly inspiring to accomplish, Glendale made his way back into the ornate lobby of the King William and helped himself to a seat on one of the slip-covered lounges.

New York in August is anything but a prepossessing or desirable spot, especially for one who has left the cool greenery and the deep blue of the Sound off Connecticut shores. The metropolis, since Glendale's arrival three days previous, had scorched in what was unpopularly known as a “heat wave.”

By day the city lay breathless and panting under a relentless sun; the nights brought but little relief. Thunderstorms, lurking over the Palisades, had failed to make good reluctant promises, and what faint, fitful breezes wandered through the wilderness of the side streets were humid and unwelcomed.

Glendale lighted a cigarette and reflected. He knew that unless Martin Fosdick had some sort of definite good news on the morrow, his stay on the island metropolis might prove to be of some duration. Fosdick was the head and shoulders of the Bryant Agency, a private-detective bureau celebrated throughout the country. Because of their long friendship, Glendale had scorned using the metropolitan police as an instrument to help him recover the family heirlooms stolen from Port Royal, his country estate at Sogesitt.

Fosdick was positive that his operatives were on a hot trail and that before another forty-eight hours should elapse a dénouement and climax must impend. So positive was he that he had wired to Port Royal, bringing Glendale to the city where his presence would be necessary when the trap should be sprung and the plunder recovered and made ready for identification.

Glendale tapped the long ash from his cigarette and crossed his legs. He began to allow his mind to roam back over the affair at Sogesitt. It had been a high-handed and bold venture on the part of the miscreants. The Glendale heirlooms, jewelry that was prized more for its sentimental associations than for its actual value, had been kept for years in an antiquated safe at Port Royal.

No one had thought very much about taking the jewels down to the city and locking them up in a vault. Indeed, the heirlooms had not even been insured. It seemed incredible that any marauder should make the safe a target of his operations, for, with the solitary exception of the Katupur Ruby, all the heirlooms sold together would not bring more than a few thousand dollars.

The ruby was different. The stone, large and fiery, polished but not faceted, had been the former property of an Indian rajah. The potentate, for one reason or another, had seen fit to dispose of it to a dealer in Holland who, in turn, had sold it to a Bond Street firm of London jewelers. It was from this concern that old Peter Glendale, grandfather of the present owner of Port Royal, had purchased it more than three decades before.

The stone always had been looked upon as a curiosity rather than a jewel to wear as an article of personal adornment. It was unset and about the size of a pigeon's egg. That its intrinsic value was large had been evident to all Glendales, past and present. None of them ever had thought of either having it mounted or selling it.

Grandfather Peter, somewhat of a lapidary, had brought the ruby home to please his own and the eyes of his friends. So it had remained for thirty-odd years, displayed only when there were guests at Port Royal who wished to view it and who enjoyed the sensation of cupping the stone in a hand where it glittered, glowed, and sparkled like a thing of live, crimson flame.

The robbery at Sogesitt was scarce a week old. At the time of its occurrence, Archer Glendale had been motoring through the Berkshires. The house proper, save for an elderly caretaker and a trio of doddering servants, had been untenanted. The crooks, supposed by Fosdick to have been headed by an archrogue known internationally as Hugo March, had gained entry in the small hours of the morning.

The ancient safe had melted before their attack like snow beneath fire. The first servant down in the morning had discovered the outrage and had immediately telegraphed his master.

Thereafter, Martin Fosdick had been summoned from New York by telephone. Glendale had firm faith in the powers of his friend. Fosdick had been a classmate at college. He had founded and become the head of the Bryant Agency more to gratify a keen desire to match his wits against those of crookdom than for any financial reason. Fosdick came of a family of wealth and position which was properly horrified that one of its blood should become what they fondly believed was little better than an ordinary policeman.

A year had changed their viewpoint considerably. It was the long arm of Martin Fosdick that had reached across the ocean adroitly to pluck a celebrated American bank thief from the Limehouse district of London. It was Fosdick who had turned a white light upon the Wall Street “conspiracy” and the group of crooks who had for so long plundered messengers and runners of valuable bonds and securities. And it was Fosdick who had solved in a day an atrocious Philadelphia murder, bringing the criminal summarily before the bench of justice.

He had built up a smooth-functioning organization that was second to none in the country. His employees and agents were the cleverest and most intelligent to be obtained. A large measure of his success was due to the extreme care with which he handled each case. If there were gifts to be guarded at a society wedding, it was some man who looked the part who mingled with the guests and not an unintelligent, cigar-chewing, fat individual whose position was recognized at a glance. If gangster-land was to be invaded, Fosdick sent a slinking roughneck into its jungle and not a flat-footed detective who would have been recognized for what he was before he had gone a pace.

“Martin will recover the heirlooms,” Glendale told himself. “If he can't no one else on earth can!”

He discarded his cigarette and considered what his friend had told him regarding Hugo March. March was a person who dwelt behind a curtain of mystery. Little or nothing was known about him save that his activities ranged the globe. The New York police department boasted neither his photograph nor finger prints, though some of his largest raids had been made on the island between the two rivers.

March's expeditions were carried out in bold, sweeping strokes that rendered pursuit futile and arrest ludicrous. Success after success was written in golden ink in the diary of Hugo March's life. The raillery of the newspapers, because of the failure of headquarters to trap the man, was a rankling thorn in the side of police dignity.

Glendale smothered a yawn and looked at his watch. The hour was well after four o'clock. He turned on the lounge so that his gaze might move through the open doorway and focus on the dusty green of Central Park, a grateful oasis in a bleached desert of steel and stone.

The lobby of the Hotel King William, for all of the heat, was fairly well filled. Out-of-town merchants, who were visiting the metropolis for a usual summertime holiday with their families, rested in the swathed chairs, awaiting wives on shopping pilgrimages.

North and south along the avenue, crowded surface cars, controlled by coatless motormen, clanged heavily past. Taxicabs and motors in a never-ending stream kept pace with them. No matter what the weather, the surge and turmoil of the great city never seemed to lessen.

Glendale's gaze, idle and retrospective, came to focus on a man in green flannels who occupied a chair to the left of the entryway. The man was tall, sinewy, and darkly tanned. There was something about him, some alert and pantherlike quality, that held Glendale's attention. He was at a loss to discover what this was until the other lowered the copy of an afternoon newspaper he had been reading and looked at his watch.

It was then that Glendale saw his eyes—eyes that were like swords of polished steel, gray and deadly—eyes that were merciless and without pity.

“Old Hawk Eye, the curse of the crooks!” Glendale thought. “He looks like a tough customer. Not the kind of a person you'd like to meet alone on a dark and stormy night.”

The man examined his watch again and peered across the lobby. Presently he stood with what might have been a shrug and fitted his straw hat to his head. He walked leisurely toward the switchboard and public telephone booths of the hotel. Here he gave the girl on duty a number and after a short wait was assigned to the end booth in line, one that was only a few feet distant from Glendale's lounge. “Green Flannels” held the door of the booth an inch or two ajar so that he might not entirely bake in the little tin-lined compartment.

The first part of his conversation escaped the man on the lounge. It was only when he let his voice rise sharply that Glendale listened.

“She hasn't shown up yet,” the stranger said. “You say there has been no word since her first message? That is strange. It is just possible he found her trail and headed her off. She's not the kind of person to be tardy.”

There was a pause. Then the man in the booth went on: “I'm at the King William. I've been waiting here for some time. The appointment was for four o'clock precisely. It's well past that now. I won't delay longer—something's happened. Look for me in twenty minutes.”

He hung up the receiver, paid the girl at the switchboard, and left the hotel without a backward glance.

Speculating absently on the fragments of the conversation and wondering a little what they might concern, Glendale decided to seek his suite on the fifth floor of the building and use the shower. That, at least, was a temporary means of keeping cool. Accordingly he walked toward the elevator shafts.

But before he had reached them, he caught sight of a girl coming into the lobby from the hot street outside, and, standing, Glendale remained motionless.

Chapter II.

A MARKED MAN.

WITHOUT question, the girl who had just entered the lobby was one of the most attractive young women Glendale ever had beheld; so much so, in fact, that he stared with kindling eyes, aware of his rudeness, but untroubled because of it.

The girl was neither short nor tall, a brown-hair-and-eyed divinity in whose piquant face bloomed a youthful beauty, a face shadowed by some fugitive distress. She wore a cool, summery frock and a black straw sailor, under the brim of which her lustrous hair was like shining autumn leaves, a light that illumined as well eyes that were twin pools of limpid darkness.

There was about her, Glendale was quick to observe, some sort of harried haste. She clutched a beaded hand bag, and, immediately upon entering, shot a glance first at the watch on her white wrist and then about the lobby. This glance was followed by patent disappointment—something not unlike fear. She took a dozen steps forward, swept the place with still another glance that included Glendale, and made her way directly to him.

It was when she had almost reached his side Glendale seemed to imagine that somewhere, some time, he had seen her before.

“I beg your pardon,” the girl said nervously, “but can you tell me if you happened to notice a tall man in green flannels in the lobby here? I mean,” she added, with a trace of confusion, “if you have been here any length of time. You see——”

Before Glendale could frame a reply the girl broke off, stiffened, and stifled a gasp, looking transfixed at the open doors of the hotel.

Following her gaze with his own, Glendale saw that a taxicab had stopped directly in front of the King William and that from it had alighted a small, round-shouldered little man who carried a Malacca stick.

Before Glendale could link the obvious connection between this individual and the girl at his side, she had snapped open her beaded bag and was delving in its depths. In an instant she had produced a small, square package which she pressed hastily into Glendale's hands with hurried instructions:

Keep this safe! Guard it well until you hear from me.”

Before he could understand the significance of her request she had left his side and had slipped into a corridor that led to a side entrance. Glendale pocketed the package, astonished at the rapidity of it all, turned to consider the small, round-shouldered man, and then looked back for the girl, to find she had vanished.

Then an elevator descended, and there was nothing to do but enter it. The episode had flared up like a flash of lighted powder and was over. As the cage began an ascension, looking down Glendale saw the little man standing before the desk of the clerk on duty, engaged in earnest conversation.

Glendale's suite on the fifth floor consisted of parlor, bedroom, and bath—comfortable rooms that overlooked Central Park. Still a little dazed by the affair in the lobby, he entered his parlor and closed and locked the door behind him.

What mishap of fate was responsible for the occurrence? What was its signification? He crossed to the windows, drew the package from his pocket, and eyed it. It was small and square, possibly eight inches in length, six in width, and five in height. The paper used was stout and ornamented with a number of thick splashes of black sealing wax. Though it was devoid of any markings, it seemed to have been prepared for mailing. From its size and shape it was entirely evident that the paper masked a box beneath it. It was rather heavy.

Glendale finished an intent inspection, as much puzzled as he had been upon receiving the package. He turned away from the window as the telephone on a table beside him rang shrilly; he picked it up, half inclined to believe that it was the girl herself until he heard the telephone operator below say in her drawling voice:

“A Mr. Winter calling to see you, sir. Shall I send him up?”

Glendale drew his brows together. Memory conjured up no recollection of any acquaintance bearing that seasonable name. “Inquire the gentleman's business, if you please,” he said.

There followed a short interlude in which he heard far-away voices blending.

“Mr. Winter says his business is private and very important,” the operator stated.

Glendale shrugged. “Ask him to come up.”

He rehooked the receiver on its metal arm, dropped the mysterious package in his pocket, and waited.

Some minutes elapsed before he heard an elevator stop down the corridor. More time passed before a brisk knock sounded on the door. Glendale opened it, not greatly surprised to find that the Mr. Winter on his threshold was the same small, round-shouldered man whose appearance had so startled the pretty girl in the lobby.

“Mr. Glendale?”

The other bowed, ushered in his caller, and closed the door behind him. “Mr. Winter?”

The little man nodded jerkily. Viewed at close range he resembled nothing so much as a work-worn bookkeeper or office drudge. In addition to his meager height, he was thin and angular. His scanty hair was in a fringe about a bald pate, his face was gray and wrinkled, his eyes of infantile blue looked out from a guileless face beneath scraggly brows.

His nose had a crook to it, and his upper lip was long and pendulous. He wore a shabby serge suit that apparently had seen better days and of late had known the application of many tailor's irons. Even his low shoes, highly polished though they were, were well worn.

“I ascertained your name from the desk clerk,” he said, in a mild, almost apologetic voice. “Only a few minutes ago, as I arrived you were conversing with my daughter. I happened to notice that she handed you a small package. She did, did she not?”

Harmless though the blue eyes were, Glendale knew that before their level stare there could be no subterfuge or deception.

“Yes,” he answered frankly; “the young lady did give me a package.”

At once the face of the little man brightened. He jerked his head again in a nod. “Exactly! You will oblige me by turning it over to me immediately.”

Glendale let his face fall into thoughtful lines. Again the words of the girl came back to him. Was it possible the little man was really her father and had a rightful claim upon what had been given him to guard?

“I'm sorry,” Glendale said at last; “I'm afraid I cannot do what you ask. At least, not without some better proof.”

The other's face darkened. He drew his scraggly brows together in what was intended for an ominous scowl. “Proof be hanged!” he exclaimed. “The package belongs to me. If you insist on the truth I'll tell it to you. My daughter is little better than a common, ordinary thief. What the box contains is mine and mine only. She deliberately sneaked it from its hiding place. Hand it over and be sure that you're doing the right thing. Come, my time is limited!”

Some of Grandfather Peter's stubbornness had been the inheritance of the present Glendale. Once filled with a resolve to do a certain something, persuasion and argument only made him hold the more steadfastly to it.

“I regret it,” he said; “but I can't do what you request. The matter concerns me not at all, but I was instructed to care for and guard the package, and I won't betray my trust. Bring your daughter here, let her tell me to turn the package over to you, and I'll be only too happy to do so.”

Mr. Winter fingered his pendulous upper lip. “Impossible! I'm leaving at seven for the Pacific coast. Once more I ask you to restore what is rightfully mine. Will you or won't you?”

“Won't you!” Glendale answered cheerfully.

The teeth of the little man closed firmly. His childlike blue eyes, filling with venom, narrowed to slits. He appeared to quake from some inner storm that rendered him speechless for a long minute.

“Very well, then,” he said at length; “I have asked you as one gentleman might ask another. Mr. Glendale, I'm not a pleasant person when aroused. Possession of the package makes you a marked man. You have utterly no conception of the danger that hems you in while you retain it. Smile if you wish, but what I say is the gospel truth. For the last time, will you return what I'm asking for?”

There was something distinctly amusing in the little man's bluster. It was like that of a school bully threatening his entire class; the snapping bark of a Pekingese, straining to attack a bloodhound.

“No,” Glendale answered. “The package stays where it is.”

With a sigh the self-styled Mr. Winter turned to the door without further comment. Glendale's last impression before the man departed was of the blue eyes filled with frustrated rage.

He shut the door after him, turned the key in the lock, and went back into the room. What, he wondered, was the meaning of it all? What deep, sinister game was being played? What were the contents of the package that made it wanted so badly? It seemed impossible to Glendale that the pretty, brown-haired girl could be either the little man's daughter or the thief he had termed her.

Yet, the episode reversed, it was just as possible that Winter had spoken the truth. He had no way of telling, of knowing. Still warm within recollection was the face of the young lady of the lobby. Something told him that she was not dishonest, that she was brave and courageous and was playing a lone hand against overwhelming forces.

“I'll stake everything on her honesty,” Glendale assured himself.

He contemplated the package once more and dropped it into a drawer in his bureau. It was the solving of tangles of this kind in which Martin Fosdick excelled. Should he call up his friend and ask advice? Glendale shook his head. Fosdick had his hands full with the Port Royal affair; and his friend would think him a spineless sort of being, unable to care or look out for himself in any sort of predicament.

It would be better, Glendale decided, to let events shape their own course. Patience always had its own reward. If the package was so badly wanted, it was possible to believe that something would turn up before the evening merged with midnight.

He seemed to know that what had happened was only a prelude to the drama itself, and that there lay in store for him a rush of happenings that would solve to his complete satisfaction the identity of the rightful owner of the box, who the girl was, what part Winter played, and in what manner Green Flannels of the sharp eyes fitted into the picture.

Glendale tubbed, changed to summer tweeds, and at seven sought the grill, pleasantly swept by a battery of electric fans. Almost the minute he sat down at his table he grew aware of the open regard of a dapper youth at a table across the aisle from him.

The young man was blond and immaculate, dressed in fashionable garments. Yet there was a certain set to his jaw and a hardness of expression that were at obvious odds with the impression of refinement and breeding he endeavored to give.

Once or twice he caught the youth's full stare, but, engrossed with his summary of the afternoon's incidents, Glendale paid no particular attention. His demi-tasse consumed, he initialed the bill and sought the lobby. He reached it, to hear his name being stridently bawled by a bell hop who was industriously paging him.

“Telephone call for you, sir,” the boy said, when he overtook him and checked the public use of his name.

With an anticipative pulse stirring, Glendale hurried to the switchboard. The operator assigned him to the end booth in line, the same booth occupied earlier in the day by Green Flannels.

With the pulse still stirring, Glendale spoke and waited. For a minute he heard nothing except the buzz and sing of the wires, fairy cracklings and elfin echoes. Then some one asked:

“Is this Mr. Glendale?”

He knew a pleasant exhilaration.

Even across the wires, the voice of the girl with the brown hair, low and sweet, was recognizable.

“This is Mr. Glendale speaking,” he said.

“Listen carefully, please,” she continued. “Would it be possible for you to do me a favor? Would it be convenient for you to bring the package I gave you this afternoon to Au Printemps in a half hour? If so, I will be waiting for you in the foyer on the main floor just beyond the entrance.”

The place she named was a popular Broadway café situated in the early Fifties. Its fame was known even to transient members of the seven million. It was noted for its expensiveness, its dance floor, and its celebrated orchestra.

“It is entirely convenient,” he answered promptly. “Au Printemps in a half hour. Please expect me.”

She thanked him and rang off.

When Glendale opened the door of the booth and stepped out it was to find the blond youth of the grill circling the telephone switchboard like a wolf, drawing closer to bend a head in conference with the operator.

With a shrug Glendale sought his room. He collected hat and stick and wondered if it would be wise to arm himself. His shoulders moved once more. This was New York in an age of enlightenment, not some Western mining camp where it was dangerous to prowl at night without a weapon. He recalled the threats of the stoop-shouldered Winter and suppressed a laugh. Evidently the little man delighted in melodrama.

With his watch showing that five of the thirty minutes had been consumed, Glendale dropped the mysterious package into his pocket, extinguished the light, and let himself out.

The August twilight, thick, humid, and oppressive, had lowered itself over Manhattan's thirteen miles of table-land. Stars were beginning to swim mistily in the blue-black sea of the heavens; the moon crept up over the eastern rim of the world, hanging like a crystal lamp. Distantly, heat lightning glimmered like the swing of a saber in the hands of a whirling dervish.

On Central Park West, Glendale decided that the best way to reach his destination would be to walk to Broadway and take a surface car. Au Printemps was not more than a journey of ten minutes or less. Accordingly he rounded the corner the hotel was set upon and started west.

The block was old-fashioned and tawdry. Several dingy tenements, a building that had once been a skating rink, a silent armory, and, farther on, a popular night restaurant occupied it. Save for the glimmer of street lamps set at infrequent intervals, the block was dark and untenanted.

It was when he had passed the first tenement that Glendale realized he was being followed. This impression, hazy and vague at first, became a certainty almost at once. He traced the feeling from effect to cause and over his shoulder saw, some distance behind, an idly sauntering figure that slowed when he slowed and went forward rapidly when he quickened hjs pace.

Glendale considered the problem. Not alone was he weaponless, but no minion of the law was visible. He recalled vividly the threat of the round-shouldered Winter, but this time he found no mirth in it. He had been intrusted with the package and must fight to the last breath to retain it.

As his shadow came abreast of a street lamp and he turned for another backward glance, Glendale recognized the debonair figure of the blond youth of the King William grill. At the same minute a taxicab turned into the block from Columbus Avenue, and, on the wrong side of the street, began to edge toward the curb.

Back of him some one whistled three times. Glendale knew a quick, stabbing thrill of excitement. The appearance of the taxicab and the whistle of the blond youth had a meaning all their own. What in the patois of the underworld was termed a “stick-up” impended.

He realized only too well that if he was to save the package it was up to himself to do something. And, as he groped blindly for ways and means, he saw just a few feet distant the mouth of a small, black alley, made by the last two of the tenements joining.

Quickening his gait not at all, Glendale cut sharply into the alley. His first glance discovered a refuse can filled to overflowing with old papers and trash. In one watch tick he had dragged out the small square package and had buried in the can—in another second a cigarette was between his lips, and he was lighting it, his back to the street.

The match he struck had hardly ignited the tobacco and spluttered out before a footfall sounded behind him, something hard and cold bored into his side, and a suave voice spoke in his ear:

“Put your dukes up! Open your face and I'll scatter you!”

Chapter III.

THE GIRL OF MYSTERY.

OBEDIENTLY Glendale lifted his arms. A swift, deft, and delicate hand explored his person. It dipped into each pocket, padding him while the gun continued to remain fixed at his side.

“Where's the box?” the blond youth demanded sibilantly.

Glendale endeavored to give every appearance of one badly frightened. “The—the package?” he stammered witlessly.

“Yes, the package!” the other snapped. “Come to life! Where is it?”

“I—I haven't got it with me,” Glendale replied shakily.

With an exclamation the other stepped back and away from him. “You stay here!” he ordered curtly. “Stick here for a full five minutes and keep your mouth shut. If you come out before that time I'll blow your head off!”

Menacing Glendale with the gun he backed out of the alley. He had scarcely disappeared before the door of the taxicab on the wrong side of the block slammed, and the motor thrummed. When Glendale reached the street and peered cautiously out, it was to find the cab headed toward Central Park West and the hotel.

Well pleased by the success of his stratagem, Glendale retrieved the package from the rubbish can, pocketed it once more, and, continuing on to Broadway, boarded a southbound car. He had foiled the second attempt to wrest the package from him. Would the third be equally as successful?

Au Printemps, when he left the surface car and approached the restaurant under the sparkling lights of the Great White Way, was in the full plumage of night, gaudily bedecked with a glowing incandescent sign that bore its name in multicolored bulbs. It was a three-story building of white stucco, pseudo-Spanish in architecture, with long open windows draped in pink silk and protected by square, fantastic awnings. Perennial greens in Roman pots flanked a narrow doorway. From its interior drifted the raucous voice of King Jazz—the laughter of saxophones, the beat of eccentric drums, and the trombone's wail of anguish.

Entering, Glendale stepped into a foyer alcove that was a sort of waiting room. It was filled with a scattering of ornate chairs; back and away from it, through hanging tapestries, was the main dining room and dance floor, well populated, despite the heat, by a gyrating throng.

As he went in and looked around, a girl got up from a cushioned nook and came toward him. Glendale drew a breath. In silhouette against the shaded table lamps of the restaurant and the dim sconces of the alcove, her loveliness was that of a star falling to earth. She wore a little semi-evening frock that was of blue silk and vastly becoming.

Her brown hair had been modishly arranged and jade earrings dangled against the smooth whiteness of her cheeks and rounded neck. Nothing of the trouble shadows of the afternoon marred her piquant face. She seemed animated and vivacious, a trifle excited, as if some unpleasant task was over and done with.

“You have the box?” was the first thing she said.

Glendale, deciding to say nothing of the happening in the alley, inclined his head.

“Quite safe—tucked snugly away in my inner coat pocket.”

She looked at him out of clear brown eyes, and he wondered again where it was he had seen her before—why he should imagine that he had seen her.

“Thank you so much for your trouble. I'll take the package if you don't mind.”

He gave it to her, waiting while she excused herself to cross to a person who was evidently the manager of the café. He was a paunchy, puffy, florid man with an engaging grin and evening clothes that fitted him so well he might have grown in them.

Glendale saw the girl give him the package and heard her request that he lock it up in his safe. He patted her arm and disappeared into a room the door of which opened out on the alcove.

The girl returned to Glendale, her head high. “There! A load is off my shoulders because the package is safe enough now. You might not think so, but Jimmy Hope is one of the squarest men in the world. If every crook in creation stormed the safe he'd defend my package and guard it!”

A silence fell over them. The girl looked at her wrist watch and then at Glendale. He felt his heart slowly sink. Was this the last of the adventure? Had his services terminated when the restaurateur locked up the mysterious package?

Was he now destined to bid her adieu and step back into Broadway, never knowing the answer to the riddle; never to understand the plot of the drama—never to see her again? It was this last thought that filled him with dismay.

“I am wondering,” she said quietly when he looked up, to find her eyes fixed wistfully upon him, “if I might place myself a little further in your debt? You have been so kind that I dislike asking you——”

“Please do!” Glendale entreated.

She gave him a demure smile. “It's nothing arduous this time. I merely have to go uptown to Seventy-fifth Street, stop off and get a valise. The house has been empty for some time and—well, it will be comfortable knowing some one is with me. If I may encroach upon your time that much further, perhaps we had better start directly.”

She picked up a light summer wrap and draped it over one arm.

They went out upon light-smitten Broadway and found a taxicab. While the girl addressed the chauffeur, Glendale looked over his shoulder as if to find, lurking close at hand, either the little, round-shouldered man who called himself Winter, or the dapper, blond youth of the alley.

“I suppose,” he said, when they were both seated on the worn upholstery of the vehicle, “it is useless to ask an explanation.”

She allowed her hand to flutter out and touch his arm, her voice pensive as she said: “Oh, please don't think me ungrateful. I would tell you everything if I were free to, I know you must be dreadfully puzzled and perplexed, but be patient for a little while. The skies seem to be getting brighter. Soon, I have every reason to hope, the last card will be played, and you will be in a position to know everything.”

Glendale knew he would have to be content with the statement. “I know I have seen you before,” he continued. “Can you tell me where it was? Can you tell me how it was you knew my name? Can you tell me your own name?”

She leaned a little toward him. “I have seen you before, but I cannot tell you where. Neither can I tell you how I knew your name, for one concerns the other. I am Marion North—if that means anything.”

The cab had rounded Columbus Circle and was continuing on up Broadway. Glendale compressed his lips, thinking. Marion North—the name told him nothing, left him as much in the dark as to her identity as he had been before. He debated the idea of inquiring whether she was the daughter of Winter, decided she would evade the question as she had the others, and resigned himself to the best sort of patience he could muster up.

“We're almost there,” she declared after a time.

Glendale looked out of the side window. Despite the traffic flood of early evening, the taxicab had made steady progress. They were already in the lower Seventies. Three more streets put behind, the vehicle sheered west and ran into the gully of a quiet side street where the street lamps were tethered moons, strung together.

It crossed the ribbon of an aristocratic avenue and decreased its speed. Below them lay Riverside Drive, full of the staring eyes of passing motors, the broad, level stretch of the North River, flowing down to the open sea, the gaunt pile of the Palisades.

Glendale noticed that the majority of the private houses they passed had drawn shades and were boarded up, showing their occupants were out of town for the heated months. The brownstone residence they stopped before was one that boasted neither the regular neat shield of a burglar protective bureau nor the wooden sheathing worn by most of the other houses. It was lightless, dark, and obviously deserted.

“We get out here,” the girl said nervously, when the cab stopped. “Please instruct the chauffeur to wait for us one block around the corner on West End Avenue. I don't imagine we will be long, but I do not wish him standing here. I imagine there is a watchman somewhere on duty.”

Obediently Glendale passed the instructions on to the driver of the cab and assisted the girl to alight. They stood together on the pavement until the taxi disappeared; then they mounted the stone steps of the house, Marion North shooting anxious little glances back over her shoulder.

The outer vestibule door was opened without difficulty. She fumbled in the beaded bag she carried and produced a fat bunch of latchkeys. With these in hand and Glendale beside her, she centered her attention on the lock of the inner door, this a stout affair of oak, trying each key in turn.

At her elbow, Glendale caught the fragrance of her hair, heard the soft flutter of her breath, and observed that there was a certain furtiveness to the manner in which she tried the various keys. Could it be, he asked himself, that they were trespassing; that she was attempting unlawful entry; was bound on some nefarious errand?

At length, while he combated doubts, her smothered exclamation of relief sounded together with the harsh click of the lock. The door gave into purple-black darkness. Cool air gushed out, spiced with a musty tang that told of premises long unoccupied.

“So much for that,” she said brightly. “Please close the door tight. Our destination is the front room on the floor above. We will,” she added, “be only a minute or two longer at best now.”

Glendale closed the inner door and struck a match, wishing that he had brought a pocket flash. In the flickering reflection she guided him accurately to an uncarpeted stairway, up which they moved, neither seeing fit to speak until the first landing was reached and the match went out. The hush of the house was disturbed only by those inexplicable sounds of the night, ever to be found where darkness reigns.

Once a board in the floor snapped so loudly that Glendale turned his head, positive that some one was behind him. Mice scampered through the walls, leaving the rattle of falling plaster pebbles. Then followed a deep, eerie silence in which the encompassing murk seemed alive with crouching, sinister shapes and watching eyes.

Just a step ahead now,” the girl whispered. “Please make another light. I'm afraid that I'm dreadfully frightened.

The second match lasted until they were over the threshold of the room she led the way to. This, so far as Glendale could determine, was a chamber of some dimensions, dusty and devoid of furniture. Drawn shades at double front window's sealed it like a mausoleum. The blackness was absolute; beyond the small yellow ring made by the match, it seemed to roll forward in thick, oily waves.

“The closet!” the girl said breathlessly. “It is a brown leather valise. Let's get it and hurry away from here—as fast as we can!”

The closet was to the left of a passage, connecting the front room with one in the rear. The door of it was half ajar. Glendale handed the box of matches to his companion and swung the door wide. She stepped forward, holding the light so that the interior of the compartment was illumined. In it were merely a broken coat hanger, an empty champagne bottle with an inch of candle stuck in its neck, and a pile of dust.

There was no sign of a valise—brown or of any other color.

“Gone!” the girl cried in a stricken voice. “Too late——”

The next instant her hand was on Glendale's arm, tense as a vise. Even as it moved down and hid itself in his fingers, he detected the reason for the gasp that escaped her lips.

In the street a panting motor had stopped; the outer and inner vestibule doors closed. There followed voices mingling in the lower hallway. Then Glendale and the girl of mystery heard footsteps on the stairs.

Chapter IV.

THE FIFTH VISITOR.

IT was Glendale who recovered first from the shock of surprise. With something telling him that the intruders on the stairs were enemies and that observation meant disaster, he quickly drew the girl into the passageway—not an instant too soon. Hardly had they taken up their new stand in the sheltering murk before the mingling footsteps were in the hall, across the threshold of the room they had vacated.

A man's voice, easily recognizable as that belonging to the round-shouldered little Winter, broke out complainingly: “Well, here we are, Pinkie. A minute now and we can shake a farewell day-day to this town. Once we secure the valise, at least half of our task is done. Then for the charming young lady who is responsible for all this trouble! You're positive, are you, that Glendale hasn't the box?”

“I went through his rooms like a cyclone,” the tones of the dapper youth with the blond hair said. “There wasn't a sign of it anywhere.”

“Then he's given it back to her,” the other murmured decidedly. “I thought it was only a bluff when she passed it to him in the lobby. She had put through a phone call. Chick found out she had a date with Ranscome. When she saw me she got rattled and lost her head. Ten to one Glendale handed her the package back fifteen minutes or so after she gave it to him. She's entirely too clever to let a thing like that be out of her sight for more time than she can help.”

“I don't think so,” the blond one said. “I think Glendale had it, but smuggled it back to her after I frisked him in the alley. I'll tell you why I think so. When he came out of the grill he had a phone call and I was just in time to tip the moll on the board to trace it. It was from Au Printemps. That's where she hangs out, you know, when there's something stirring.”

“H'm—maybe,” Winter conceded reluctantly.

“Let's get the bag and blow out,” the dapper youth said. “This house gets on my nerves. I always imagine it's full of dicks waiting to jewel me! Turn on the light, chief.”

Footsteps were heavy on the bare floor. The slender beam of an electric torch lanced the gloom like a golden arrow. With the fingers of Marion North tight in his hand, Glendale peered forward, seeking to realize what climax lurked before them, what a whimsical fate had in store, what the secret was of the brown valise that was conspicuous by its absence.

His ruminations were ended by the jar of the closet door opening—the baffled fury of Winter's voice:

“Pinkie, it's gone!”

Whatever answer the man's helpmate might have made, was blotted out by Winter's tense whisper: “Sh! Listen! Some one coming!”

The sun of the torch was plunged out. Silence again was unbroken save for the sound of mice in the walls, something that made Glendale's pulses vibrate. Low, but perfectly distinct, there came to his strained ears the quiet sound of the inner vestibule door closing below, the quick breath of Marion North in his ear, the muted creak of the stairs.

To the quartet in the vacant house was being added a fifth visitor. Who?

The girl released Glendale's hand; in the staring darkness of the outer room the quiet gave no clew to the person who approached it of the two lurking within its confines. Nearer the footsteps in the hall came until Glendale could almost count the number necessary to carry the intruder into the room. He inclined forward, waiting with every nerve on edge for what he knew must occur and what, without subjecting the girl and himself to a greater peril, he was powerless to prevent.

There came without forewarning, like a bolt from the blue, a harsh order: “Let him have it, Pinkie!”

Winter's vicious exclamation was followed by the thud of a blow, a thin moan, the clatter of something falling, and the dull slump of a body sinking to the floor.

“Got him good!” the dapper youth cried. “Come on, let's get out of here!”

“Wait!” Winter said. “Who is it? Make a light. Maybe it's His Royal Highness.”

Some one struck a match and laughed. There was a pause.

“Swell chance on the big game!” Pinkie said disgustedly. “It's only Ranscome after the valise! And that means they haven't got it!”

Abruptly the two quit the room. Their steps dwindled on the stairs. The outer and inner vestibule doors closed with a slam; outside in the street the murmur of their voices ceased.

“Oh, they've killed him!” Marion North cried tremulously.

She pressed the box of matches Glendale had given her back into his hands. Acutely realizing the significance of her action, he stole forward, making a light that trembled despite his efforts to keep it steady. Breathlessly dreading what he knew he must behold and striving not to shrink from it, he found the figure of the fifth intruder and knelt over it.

An explanation of the man's downfall lay in the broken torch on the floor beside him. The person addressed as “Pinkie” had used it as a blackjack in the cover of the doorway. Yet his blow had not been fatal, for the man breathed and moved.

Glendale let the glow of the match fall on the upturned face. He was not half as surprised as he felt he should have been when he recognized the cold, dispassionate features of the hawk-eyed man who, wearing green flannels, had, that afternoon, lingered in the lobby of the Hotel King William.

Glendale got up and went back to the girl who was at the end of the passage.

“Is—is he——” Her voice quavered.

Glendale touched her hand reassuringly, understanding what she feared to say. “No. They struck him with the torch—a glancing blow. He'll be around all right in a few minutes.”

Her breathing became more regular. “Then let's hurry back to Au Printemps. They know I met you there. I must speak to Jimmy Hope at once.”

Side by side they picked a cautious way to the well of the stairs, descended the steps, and passed out between the double doors of the vestibule that had seemed so stanch and adequate, but which had been opened so easily by three different factions.

Out in the street, Marion North sighed. Her vivacity, displayed in the restaurant, was gone; once more dejection seemed to weigh upon her. Was this, Glendale thought, because of the mishap that had overtaken Green Flannels or because of the sought-for but missing valise?

The question started a new train of thought. He had believed it entirely evident that two opposing forces were at work. On one side was an alliance between the round-shouldered Winter and the dapper youth. Opposed to them was the girl herself and the man with the hawk eyes. Still it appeared that neither side had secured the wanted valise. Who, then, had taken it?

Turning into West End Avenue, Glendale discovered their taxicab driver dutifully awaiting them.

“Au Printemps,” he said to the chauffeur, helping the girl to enter the cab and seating himself beside her.

They moved off, retracing their way toward the Rialto.

“I had such hopes,” she began, “such hopes that everything was moving for the best. But now I am not so sure of it. If the man who calls himself Winter has failed to get the valise, it is not unreasonable to believe it has got into other wrong hands. And if this is so, the tangle is more complicated than ever.” She sighed again heavily.

“I don't suppose,” Glendale said ruefully, “you can tell me what connection there is between the valise and the package you handed me this afternoon? Yet there must be a connection—I am sure of it.”

The girl's brown eyes regarded him lingeringly. “Yes; there is a decided connection between the two. When you learn what I mean you will be astonished, I know. It isn't at all kind to keep you in the dark, but it can't be helped. Another directs my moves and to this person I have pledged my silence. You didn't tell me,” she added after a pause, “that you had been held up and searched.”

Glendale explained in a few words, and she nodded. Then Miss North went on:

“You have been awfully kind and brave. I'm sure I don't know what I ever could have done without you. First, this afternoon—Winter knew I had the box, because, you see, by a stroke of luck I was able to take it from his apartment. The fact I was in the busy lobby of a hotel meant little to him. He is the most dangerous man in the world; he stops at nothing. I know he would not have hesitated to attack me. Then, to-night, I would have positively expired if you were not with me to go into that house.”

The taxicab was passing the Winter Garden. The hour lacked only a few minutes of eleven, and in anticipation of the theaters closing, lines of motors were beginning to thread the aisle of Broadway. Ahead, Glendale glimpsed the sparkle of Au Printemps, the girl stirring on the cushions beside him.

“One last favor. When we reach the café I will wait outside in the taxi. Will you go in and tell Jimmy Hope that I would like to speak to him a minute?”

As Glendale nodded, the cab came to a stop before the dazzling face of the café. He alighted and made his way inside, seeing nothing of the rotund manager—which led him to ask a pompous captain of waiters for information.

“Is Mr. Hope about?”

The head of the serving brigade turned. “No, sir. Mr. Hope left about ten minutes ago. He won't return here until to-morrow morning.”

With the syncopated beat of music, following him like a horde of goblins, Glendale picked his way back to Broadway. On the pavement he came to an abrupt halt, something sinking within him that was as heavy as lead. The night life of the White Way flowed from gutter to gutter in a brilliant pageant, but the curb fronting Au Printemps was free from vehicles of any description. The taxicab in which Marion North awaited him had disappeared.

Chapter V.

LABYRINTH OF THE UNKNOWN.

GLENDALE was neither enraged nor astounded to find his rooms at the King William in a chaos of disorder. From what he had heard Pinkie saying to Winter, he knew that the search for the mysterious package had penetrated to his suite. The dapper youth had left no stone unturned in seeking it.

The bedchamber had suffered the most. Here the bureau drawers had been yanked open and their contents strewn about. Pictures on the wall were awry, rugs heaped together, the mattress on the bed slashed in four different places. The living room was upset, but by comparison it was more orderly, for the reason that it offered less chances for concealment. Glendale perceived the miscreant had gained entry through a fire-escape window. A circle had been cut in the glass under the latch, large enough to admit a slender hand.

Glendale tidied up the best he could and retired. When he awoke, the hot sun of another day was well up over the city. From early indications it promised to be a torrid record breaker.

Glendale tubbed, shaved, and breakfasted, resolved that, now he had lost all traces of the mystery, it was time to seek the advice of his friend Martin Fosdick. Perhaps, he concluded, after all he had made a mistake in not telephoning him the previous evening.

How was Glendale to know that some malignant fate had not overtaken the girl with the wistful brown eyes and the lustrous brown hair? Try as he might, he could not put from him the recollection of what she had termed Winter. “The most dangerous man in the world,” she had called him. And secretly, though he would not admit it, he felt that it was the hand of the round-shouldered man that had drawn the taxicab away from the entrance of Au Printemps.

Breakfast completed and the first cigarette of the day afire, Glendale obtained his hat and stick. He informed the management of the hotel that his suite had been broken into; then he went out. Martin Fosdick's agency occupied two floors in Harpsichord Hall, a modern office building on Forty-second Street, across from Bryant Park and the Public Library.

When Glendale reached it his card was taken in by an office boy who requested that he seat himself in the waiting room. Five minutes elapsed before a blond young woman, whom he recognized from previous visits as his friend's secretary, came in with his card.

“Mr. Fosdick,” she said, “will not be in to-day. He is away on a very important case. I don't expect him here much before to-morrow afternoon.”

Back on Forty-second street Glendale knit his brows. Fate appeared to be in a jesting humor. He could think of no possible means of finding a way back to the girl through the labyrinth of the unknown. As shadowy as the preceding night itself, the drama with all the characters concerned in it had vanished into thin air. It was as if a curtain had rolled down between a stage and the audience of one. The riddle intricate had got away from Glendale.

It was only when he was crossing Times Square he suddenly remembered that, alone of all things, something still was stationary and permanent, bulking largely through the mists of his perplexities.

This was the empty house on Seventy-fifth Street which he had penetrated with Marion North so recently.

Could he hope to find in the building some tangible something that would reward his labor? Did the hawk-eyed Green Flannels still lie supine on the floor in the front room on the second story? At least, he told himself, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain if he decided upon a pilgrimage to the house. Recrossing the Hub of the Universe, Glendale hailed a surface car and boarded it.

There was no chance of mistaking the house in the vivid shine of the hot August day. The block itself displayed but little activity. A coal truck was running a stream of black diamonds down a hole in the pavement; an express wagon, piled high with trunks, was receiving more from a house nearest the corner of West End Avenue. A maid was lowering the awnings of a place across the street.

Glendale continued until he was abreast of the house in which he had lurked the night before. Viewed by daylight it was a complacent affair of brownstone, different neither in size, shape, nor appearance from those hedging it in. Its windows were fairly clean; save for the fact that every shade was jealously drawn, it appeared inhabited.

Glendale appraised the house quizzically, passing its stoop and trying to decide if it was worth while to test its double doors and seek admittance. He was a pace or two away from it when something shot through him that was like the flash of a spark along a fuse.

This was the closing swing of one of the doors he had been thinking about, and the sudden appearance on the top step of Pinkie, the dapper youth with the blond hair.

Lifting his hands to shield his face, in the attitude of a person trying to light a cigarette, Glendale stopped in his tracks and used his eyes. Without the trouble of a glance about him, the youth ran lightly down the steps and turned in the direction of Broadway. When he had crossed West End Avenue, Glendale leisurely followed.

There was a cigar store on the southwest corner of the street's intersection with the avenue. The blond youth promptly stepped into it. When Glendale reached it and looked cautiously through the open door, it was to find that the person he followed was in the act of entering a telephone booth, four of which were at the rear of the store.

Judging the proximity of the cigar counter to the booths, and deciding to risk it, Glendale entered. Keeping his back to the rear of the shop and his face out of range of the other's vision, through the door of the booth, he edged along the plate-glass case, bending and considering the cigars on display. When he had backed to within earshot of the booth, he heard the blond youth give the central operator a number which was unintelligible. His words, however, which immediately followed, were not.

“This is Pinkie speaking, boss,” he said. “I just left the house. Ranscome's gone. I don't know whether he pulled out by himself or if some one helped him. Anyway, he's taken the air. What's the next thing on the books? I'm up here on the corner of Seventy-fifth Street.”

Glendale tingled. Without question the youth was conversing with Winter. He had taken the one chance and made good on it. At last he was on a highway that led to something definite. He purchased three cigars and continued to hang upon every word that filtered out from the booth.

“I'll fix that up right away,” Pinkie went on. “I'll see Mike Ryan and hire his bus. I'll be up about eleven o'clock unless I get a bad breakdown here in town. You know what I mean. Have Chick meet me at eleven at the float. Tell him to wait if I'm not there on the dot. Right? 'By,”

He left both the booth and the store hastily, passing so close to Glendale that his sleeve brushed his arm.

When Glendale followed him out, the dapper one was swinging up on the front of the running board of a south-bound open car. For a wild instant it appeared that he must make a clean getaway. Disregarding all traffic laws, Glendale surged forward in a fifty-yard sprint that carried him up to the end platform of the car where he scrambled aboard, turned, and discovered his quarry well forward, still unsuspecting.

Intuition told Glendale that there was still much to learn. Whether he learned it depended upon his ability to stick close to the heels of the aggressive Pinkie. What he had heard in the cigar store seemed to suggest that the last scenes of the drama were shifting to a locale other than the metropolis.

Pinkie had spoken of a “bus” and a “float;” the former seemed to insinuate flight, the latter a rendezvous somewhere upon the water. High hope flooded him. At last, after hours of stress and doubt, the girl with the brown eyes seemed somewhere just beyond, not swallowed up and lost in a muffling desert of darkness.

Keeping a wary eye glued to Winter's accomplice, Glendale allowed his imagination to paint mental pictures of Marion North. Once more she was in the lobby of the Hotel King William, giving him the package. Once more she was radiant and beautiful against the shaded table lights and sconces of Au Printemps. Once more her little white hand rested in his in the blackness of the passage of the empty house. He felt himself strangely drawn to her, with heart and pulses quickening their beat.

He had nothing save his own steadfast confidence and faith to cling to—no logical way of knowing who and what she was; no certain way of proving she was not Winter's daughter, an adventuress, a bird of black plumage, a thief. By her own admission Miss North confessed that she had filched the package she had handed him from the apartment of the round-shouldered little man.

But despite this, his heart told him that she was unsoiled and guiltless; a girl whose feet trod dark ways, but whose eyes were turned always to the light.

Glendale's reflections were ended by the sight of Pinkie arising to give the bell rope a lusty tug. The surface car had delved into the Fifties, and Flash Alley roared just ahead. The dapper youth swung off the car and headed for the pavement. Glendale allowed his conveyance to move on to the next corner before alighting and turning back.

It was now somewhat after the noon hour and the thoroughfare was well populated with pedestrians, clerks, and office hands of the neighborhood bound for luncheons. The throng checked Glendale's advance and it was three minutes before he discovered Pinkie well down a side street, swinging briskly along.

He took up the pursuit again with a breath of relief, taking pains not to press the other too hard, for, despite his haste, the immaculate youth seemed to have an inclination to look back every now and then, a fact that made Glendale dodge behind people in front of him and linger in doorways until the other put more ground between them.

In this fashion they both crossed Eighth Avenue. It was then that Glendale sighted the destination of the one he trailed. Midway down the block was a large garage. It was into this building that the man turned.

With an introspective frown, Glendale halted and narrowed his eyes. So far his good fortune had been phenomenal. His feet were firmly planted on the brink of clear revelations; he must do nothing to jeopardize his luck, lest, when victory confronted him, it be snatched away, its laurels replaced by the sour grapes of humiliation. He decided to maneuver with infinite care and so began to edge closer to the garage.

This, a three-story building, sprawled well along the street. Its fireproof doors were drawn wide. Out of them floated the splash of a hose, the pur of a motor being started and stopped, the cheerful sound of whistling. Because the hour was lunch time, no chauffeurs idled before it.

Prudently Glendale approached the first open door. Though he was favored by no loungers loitering about to speculate upon his presence, this piece of luck was balanced by the fact that some one from within might glimpse him and come out to learn his wishes. But the good fortune that guided him continued to smile, for he had hardly taken up his new stand, before the voice of Pinkie, loudly lifted, sounded.

“Where's Ryan, Eddie?” he called to some one presumably in the rear of the place. “Hey, Eddie, come here a minute, will you?”

The purring of the engine ceased.

“'Lo, Pinkie,” some one said cordially. “Looking for Mike? He went over to see about getting some tires vulcanized. What's on your mind besides your hat?”

“How are the chances for getting the Packard at ten to-night? I got a lot of things to do this afternoon and I can't fool around and wait for Ryan to come back. You know whether the bus is booked or not, don't you? What's the answer?”

“She's booked up to six,” said the other. “After that you can have her any time you want. Where are you going and how long do you want to keep her?”

Glendale's lips tightened. On the answer of the blond youth hinged the complete success or failure of the enterprise.

“We're going up to Bailey's place beyond Pelham Bay Park. I'd like to have a clever boy at the wheel. The boss and me might have to get out in a hurry, and I want some one who knows how to drive a few on the job. I'll hire the bus until five or six to-morrow morning. Write me a ticket for it and tell Ryan I will be here at ten o'clock sharp. It's worth a century. Got that all straight, Eddie?”

“Got you!” the second speaker said. “She'll be ready when you want her, and——”

Glendale waited no longer.

Aware that what else he might hear probably would be inconsequential and that Pinkie was likely to come out at any minute, he crossed the street and headed for Broadway. A warm flush of success rioted in his veins. The last link in the chain seemed welded. “Bailey's place beyond Pelham Bay Park!” He had learned the setting for the last act of the mystery, a definite clew to the whereabouts of the picaroons who he was sure had everything to do with Marion North's disappearance.

On Broadway he determined to put into effect a plan he had stored in the back of his mind and walked south, to the outskirts of theater land.

An Printemps, two streets below, was a different place by day. With its glittering sign extinguished and its pink draperies limply disconsolate in the streaming August sunshine, it was cheap and tawdry. Glendale entered between the Roman pots of plants, stepping into the foyer alcove where, the previous evening, the girl with the brown eyes had arisen to meet him.

The café catered principally to the night crowd of the Rialto. But few of its tables were occupied by diners consuming a midday meal. Tranquillity prevailed; the restaurant was a very different place from what it had been on the occasion of his last visit.

The door of the manager's office was ajar. Within it, Jimmy Hope, in flamboyant black-and-white checks, a pongee shirt with a soft collar speared by a jeweled pin and a knitted cravat, sat before his desk, engaged with a cigar and a heap of bills.

He looked up as Glendale's shadow fell athwart his desk and nodded affably.

“How are you? Not looking for Miss North, are you?”

“I was wondering.” Glendale began awkwardly, “whether she had called for the package she gave you last night?”

The restaurateur shook his head. “No; not yet. It is locked up in the safe and it's going to stay locked up until she comes here and asks me for it. Say, what does the darn thing contain, anyway? You're the third person who's been in here this morning trying to get a line on it.”

“The third!” Glendale exclaimed.

The manager grinned mirthlessly. “Yes; the third! One—two—three, count 'em. The first was some chap with patent leather, yellow hair, and a pair of shifty eyes. He had the nerve to tell me that Miss North sent him down for the package. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about and sent him on his way. The second was a little better. He just came in a little while ago. His name was Ranscome, and he seemed to be trying to get a line on where Miss North was.

“I gave him all the information I had until he began to chirp about the package,” Hope continued. “Then I told him not to slam the front door on his way out. You're the third one. I don't know what the idea is, but I'll tell you this much. The one who gets that little package out of my safe will have to use either hypnotism or dynamite!”

Chapter VI.

WEARING A MASK.

AGAIN on Broadway, Glendale turned in the direction of the Bryant Agency, which he soon reached. Fosdick had returned, it appeared. The office boy once more disappeared with his card, came back, and bade him follow.

With anticipation keen within him, Glendale was ushered into the private office of his friend. Fosdick sat before a glass-covered desk. He was dictating a letter to his blond secretary, but dismissed her and turned to Glendale.

“Hello, Archer! Sorry I wasn't in when you called this morning. I returned about ten minutes ago—didn't expect to, but affairs rather slumped at the last minute. You look worried. Here, sit down and tell me all your troubles.”

Glendale seated himself and without prelude plunged into his story. He began with the scene in the lobby of the King William, building the tale step by step until he concluded with his visit to Au Printemps. Fosdick listened without comment, punctuating the narrative once or twice with a nod, but otherwise displaying no particular interest or concern.

“I'm going up to Bailey's place beyond Pelham Bay Park to-night. I'm going to follow the Packard this Pinkie hired,” Glendale added after he had finished the narrative of past events.

“If your friend spoke about a float,” Fosdick said, “it means his destination is somewhere other than Bailey's. I know that place well. The chances are that the rendezvous is at Cranberry Island, farther out.”

For some time the two spoke earnestly; Fosdick became attentive, anxious, displaying a flash of animation which told the other that the detective's indifference had been merely a bland mask which hid a keen interest.

“Another thing,” Fosdick said at last. “I'll supply you with a car so you can follow the Packard. I'll send it up to the hotel at half past nine. Drop a gun in your pocket before you start out.” He stood and offered his hand.

“Do you believe there's something big in it?” Glendale asked.

The detective donned his mask again and shrugged. “Perhaps. It won't hurt to look into it. It's an interesting story. You can never tell what's going to result until you probe things.”

They shook hands, and Glendale departed.

Chapter VII.

BIRDS OF PREY.

THE night held the promise of thunderstorms. Far away lightning flickered; thunder was like the echoes of elfin artillery. The metropolis, expectant of cooling showers, lay in a breathless calm. The street noises were hushed. The city seemed to go on tiptoe; a spirit of adventure was abroad, Orientalizing street and avenue that writhed in a welter of their own heat.

In the two-seated racing roadster that Fosdick had sent to the hotel for him, some forty minutes previous, Glendale lurked a hundred yards west of Ryan's garage. The car was drawn toward the curb in such fashion as not only to command a view of the doors of the place, but to be free to spring away in instant chase, once the pirate vehicle chartered by Pinkie made an appearance.

His watch marking the hour of ten precisely, Glendale lifted his gaze to the chauffeur. The man, lank and tall, had introduced himself as Gus Tremaine. Whether he was one of Fosdick's aids or only drove for the Bryant Agency, Glendale had no way of knowing. The man sat moodily taciturn, only the brightness of his eyes betraying his interest in the proceedings.

Glendale turned his gaze from his watch to the open doors of the garage. “We shouldn't have to wait long now,” he remarked. “The man we're to follow said ten o'clock. When the Packard appears I don't want you to crowd it too closely; neither do I want you to lose sight of it. A happy medium between far and near will be the right thing, I think.“

“He won't get away,” Tremaine promised.

Ten more minutes elapsed without sign of the dapper Pinkie or the hired car. Glendale trained his glance on the garage. A night-hawking taxicab was having its tank filled from the gasoline pump on the sidewalk. A limousine with a chauffeur dozing on its front seat was the only other car before it. Somewhere inside a dim light burned and the splash of the hose sounded again. Fifteen more minutes elapsed. At last half past ten arrived and then twenty-five minutes to eleven.

“Looks like he wasn't coming,” the lean Tremaine remarked casually.

Glendale grew restless. Had something unlooked for cropped up to mar what seemed a perfect plot? Had Pinkie been aware that he had been trailed and had he made the arrangements to throw his shadower off the scent?

Mature consideration of the idea made Glendale conscious that his deductions might be correct in every particular. Thinking it useless to sit and speculate idly with the minutes running away, he opened the side door of the car and got out.

“Wait here,” he said to Tremaine. “I'll be back directly.”

Slipping across the street he found it an easy matter to peer into the garage from the outer gloom. Visible within the place were two men in rubber hip boots who with hose and sponges were industriously cleaning a seven-passenger touring car. Of Winter's partner there was no sign; neither did Glendale see a Packard standing in readiness for use.

With a twitch to the soft cap donned for the occasion, he entered the garage and addressed the mechanic who was using the sponge. “Seen anything of my friend Pinkie? I was to pick him up at ten-fifteen and he hasn't shown himself yet.”

The man tossed his sponge into a pail of water and signaled the custodian of the hose. “What time did Pinkie's bus roll out, Eddie?”

The other rubbed a cauliflower ear. “Fifteen after nine. It was to pick him up at Skelley's place in Harlem at quarter of. If you're looking for him you're out of luck, bo. By now he's halfway up to Bailey's place.”

“What's the quickest way to get up there?” Glendale inquired.

The man shifted his tobacco from one side of his face to the other. “Straight up to Pelham Parkway. Follow it to the Shore Road. Take the City Island turn to the right, but turn left before you reach the bridge. It's a dirt road all the way out to Bailey's, but it ain't so bad. Stay on it, and it will take you right out at the hotel.”

Glendale thanked him and returned to the roadster. He informed Tremaine of the new turn of events and asked an opinion.

“The best thing is to get right out there,” the other advised. “If your man hasn't got too much of a start on us we can overtake him on the road. Jump in and let's go!”

Through the lower part of the city and the Bronx Tremaine drove with a vast respect for traffic rules and regulations. But once Bronx Park was passed and the smooth level of Pelham Parkway began, lie coaxed the roadster forward, swinging the needle of the speedometer far over.

They rushed through the night like an express train striving to make up lost time. A self-created wind whistled by Glendale's ears; the arc lights dipped past like shooting stars; twice he heard the scream of a patrolman's whistle and once glimpsed a chasing motor cycle which they lost instantly. The boulevard ran straight and true into the Shore Road.

Here Tremaine slowed the roadster to a more decorous rate of speed, snapped back a lever on the dash he had pulled up before their flight, and chuckled.

“A little invention of Mr. Fosdick's. When I open her up wide I pull the switch and a couple of wires turn the license plates over so nobody can read them. Of course the cops will phone ahead, but the description they got of us when we passed don't cut any ice. I'll put up the top and dim the big front headlights and nobody will as much as speak to us. Wait and see if I'm not right.”

Nobody did halt them though they passed a patrol booth at the City Island turn, where two policemen with motor cycles were watching the highway.

“First road to the left before you reach the bridge,” Glendale said.

“I know the road,” Tremaine answered. “It leads to Bailey's old place. It used to be a hang-out for picnickers, bathers, fishing parties, and soaks in the old days before prohibition came along. Now it's pretty well run down. I'll open her up again as soon as we make the turn.”

The dirt road the mechanic in Ryan's garage had spoken of was discovered without trouble. It was perhaps five miles long, narrow, and full of unexpected twists—turns that bothered Tremaine not at all.

Once more he shot the car along like a locomotive, slowing only when the road became full of broken clamshells, and a mile ahead the misty vista of the Sound spread out like a flat, black mirror, hung with filmy curtains.

They turned twice and then struck a down grade that led to some sort of a shelving beach, back from which bulked a huge, ramshackle wooden building, dark except for the shine of a kerosene lamp in one window that overlooked a rickety porch with a sagging railing.

“That's Bailey's,” Tremaine announced. “Looks like the Ritz, don't it? Lot of folks mistake it.”

The car stopped. Staring, Glendale stroked his chin. To the east, in the night, the north shore of Long Island loomed vaguely, like a low-drifted bank of cloud. Off to the left were the faraway lights of some town that might have been New Rochelle or Larchmont. Between the two, a wall of humidity, dull and lusterless, had taken body since the twilight, masking the skies and shutting down upon the sea like the rim of some great bowl.

Glendale shook himself. This was the setting for the last act of the drama. What would come out of it? What were the true characters and the identity of those who took the leading roles? He alighted from the roadster and looked at his watch. It was some twenty minutes after eleven—twenty minutes past the time that Pinkie had promised to be present at the “float.”

He wheeled and surveyed the night-draped panorama in front of him. Before the dilapidated building was a sort of wooden runway that led across the beach, against which small, puny wavelets flung themselves monotonously, to a landing wharf of some size, close to which a few dingy boats nestled wearily.

As his eyes fell upon the float, Glendale recalled what Fosdick had said concerning Cranberry Island. He knit his brows, wondering if the speculation of his friend were correct—determining to verify it.

Putting his feet in motion he made his way to the empty hotel, mounted the veranda steps, and knocked loudly on the weather-stained door. The summons was such as to bring him face to face with an angular man, whose seamy, tanned face wore a sandy stubble of several days' growth. This individual was attired in a soiled, collarless shirt, a pair of khaki trousers, and apparently not much else.

He favored his caller with a sleepy stare. “What you want?”

“I'm looking for a pal of mine,” Glendale replied glibly. “Friend by the name of Pinkie. I was to meet him at Skelley's at a quarter of ten, but I was late and missed him. Do you know if he's got up here yet?”

The man in the doorway hesitated a moment; then he said: “He went out to the island about twenty minutes ago.”

Glendale knew the tingle of triumph. Fosdick was right. It was an island!

“You mean Cranberry Island, don't you?” he questioned.

“Sure. What do you think I mean—Blackwell's?” the other answered sarcastically. “If you want to get out there you'll find boats a plenty down at the float There's oars in the boathouse. The door of it's open. Bring the boat back and tie it up when you get through with it.”

“How do I get out to the island?” Glendale asked dubiously. “Where does it lie?”

The man laughed unpleasantly. “Say, sonny, don't you know nothin'?”

“Pinkie didn't tell me,” Glendale replied smoothly. “I was supposed to meet him here and go out with him. I've never been up this way before.”

“Well, it's a mile and a half straight out,” his informant said sullenly. “Just lay on to the oars and mind the rocks when you get offshore. There's not much current to speak of. Pull straight and you can't miss it.”

The door, slamming in Glendale's face, cut short his thanks.

He returned to the roadster and found Tremaine drawing meditatively on a corncob pipe. Glendale's watch showed him that it was half past eleven. He turned to the road and listened.

“Are you one of Mr. Fosdick's assistants?” he asked the silent Tremaine.

The man stirred and looked up.

“No; I only drive for him.”

Glendale, after a few more words with Tremaine, located the boathouse the angular gentleman in the khaki trousers had spoken of, helped himself to a pair of oars, and made his way down to the wharf. Here, with the aid of a pocket flash he had brought, he selected a fishing dory that seemed cleaner and lighter than the other boats about it.

With pulses beginning to hammer anew, Glendale, alone, took his bearings, cast off, fitted the oars to rusty locks, seated himself, and pulled lustily toward the open Sound.

The humidity walled him in; the lights of the waiting roadster became firefly specks and then disappeared entirely. Fantastic water sounds floated back to him from the open sea. Once he heard the pant of a ghostly motor boat passing on the starboard beam; once the sucking gurgle of a whirlpool; the unceasing toll of a bell buoy, and, far away, the grind of the propellers of some night-prowling Sound steamer.

Glendale continued to row. He stopped only to consult his watch in the light of the flash, judging his distance by the elapsing minutes more than by anything else. His strenuous efforts at the oars brought no fatigue to weigh heavily upon him.

He seemed as fresh and vigorous as an athlete ready for some grueling, crucial test of strength. His nerves were steady and alert; he believed that he was ready to face what might confront him, resolute, spurred, fired, and inspired by the knowledge that each and every tick of his watch and stroke of the oars brought him closer to information concerning Marion North.

It was almost a half hour later before his quick ears caught the sibilant sigh of the Sound along a sandy shore, the beat of it against rocks. Backing water, he stared narrowly over the bow of the dory, detected the dim outlines of the island, and began sculling cautiously in.

He discovered the rocks spoken of, negotiated a careful passage through and between them, and came upon placid water that flowed up to the edge of a natural beach out from which a dock jutted and two motor boats, a dinghy and a rowboat with an Evinrude motor at its stern, were moored. Glendale shipped his oars quietly, secured the dory to the landing pier with a length of ill-smelling bowline, and climbed out and up on the dock.

A minute later his feet were planted firmly on solid terrain. Through the mist, less than a quarter of a mile away, a light burned steadily. He walked toward it, his right hand dropping to the fully loaded automatic he had stored away in his hip pocket. Come what may, he informed himself grimly, this time he would not be found weaponless and unprotected.

The light grew. Closer to it, Glendale saw that .it burned behind the drawn shades in the first-floor window of a building that appeared not a whit different from Bailey's hotel that he had left on the mainland. Here before him was the same bulk of decaying wood, rickety, weather-beaten porch, tumbledown steps, and broken railing. He stood still and considered it, asking himself if, at last, his journey had ended; if perplexity was over and done with for once and all.

The sand muffled his footsteps effectually. He crept up to the window and listened at its sill. Voices were faint and indistinct within; for all of its antiquity and desuetude, the place had stout and substantial walls. Moving away, Glendale continued on, circling the place and seeking a means of entrance which he presently found in a small, rear door that hung on a single hinge.

He used his flash, entered, and found himself in a small hallway that skirted what, in an earlier and happier day, had been kitchens and serving rooms. The passage ambled complacently around bends and corners, ending at length in a wide, oblong space in the front of the building where Glendale hesitated, a thrill of excitement stabbing him.

Directly opposite from the place where he stood, light stained a grimy transom and gushed out from under the closed door. He was separated only by a few feet from the black birds of prey.

Drawing his automatic he inched his way toward the door, reached it, and crouched beside it. The voices now were perfectly audible. He heard some one giving an order and then a careless answer:

“Sure! I'll fetch her in right away!

Before Glendale could move, the door he crouched against was yanked open from the inside, and a rush of illumination blinded him.

In a flash savage arms gripped his throat, wrested the weapon from his hand, and dragged him forward while a harsh voice, filled with a jubilant note of surprise, rang in his ears:

“Well, well! Will you look who's here! If it isn't our merry little playmate of the King William with a popgun and everything!

Chapter VIII.

IN THE MURKY LIGHT.

BEFORE he could strike a blow in his own defense or wrench himself free from the clutching fingers of the dapper, blond man, some one in back of Glendale pinned his arms to his sides, holding him with strait-jacket force. Simultaneously another occupant of the room, a burly man with the dark, vice-marked face of an underworld gangster, caught up a coil of tarred rope from one corner and surged forward.

In a trice Glendale was securely trussed up and pushed into a backless chair. The one who had seized his arms stepped around in front of him, looked him over with a half smile, and turned to the man who resembled a gangster.

“Slip out, Chick,” the round-shouldered Winter said, “and see if our friend brought any of his pals or relatives with him. Take a good look while you're at it and don't be afraid to use your rod.”

The gangster left the room; Winter, as harmless and inoffensive appearing as ever, blinked his mild, blue eyes and turned back to Glendale.

“So it's you,” he said unconcernedly. “Frankly, your perseverance and stubbornness astound me. Will you never learn to stop butting in on what does not concern you? You're almost as annoying as some of these stupid detectives I occasionally jest with. What brought you here? What do you want? What's the idea?”

The angry retort on Glendale's lips remained unuttered. After all, words would avail him or aid him but little. He realized that the most important thing was to keep a cool, level head and try to reason a way out of his predicament—which appeared so hopeless as to be ludicrous.

“Pretty foxy,” Pinkie chuckled, touching his slightly disarranged cravat. “Trailed us all the way here from the city like a great big man and was planted right at the front door the minute I opened it. What'll we do with him, boss?”

Winter's wrinkled face assumed an owlish expression. “Do? Leave him to cool his head and heels and to ponder what it means to be rash. Ah, Chick. Coast clear?”

The burky gangster, returning, closed the door behind him. “He's alone, boss. He come out in Bailey's dory. There's no one else around.”

Winter nodded. “I thought so. Get the girl, Pinkie. We can't afford to waste all night on this interfering gentleman, as much as we love his company.”

As the blond youth left the room, Glendale's heart leaped and hammered. Marion North was a prisoner in the island rookery! Hot blood pounded within him. He strained forward in his chair; but he was forced to content himself with working his bound wrists together behind his back and letting his eyes roam the chamber.

Though the rest of the building was falling down, the room was neatly appointed in somewhat the style of a modern office. A huge steel vault was opposite Glendale. Set between the windows with the drawn shades and a squat, metal filing cabinet, was a large mahogany desk. A fairly presentable rug was on the floor. The bare plaster walls were hung with shotguns and rifles. The light was from a copper ship's lamp suspended from a chain on a bracket.

“Yes,” Winter said pleasantly, shrewdly interpreting what the medley of thoughts in Glendale's mind concerned; “your pretty young lady friend is here, safe under lock and key. I might explain that I was standing in the shadows on the north side of Au Printemps when you and she drove up last night. When you got out of the taxi I got in.

“The slight and delicate pressure of a .38 is a remarkable thing for making the feminine sex change their minds,” Winter went on. “This is the first opportunity I have had to interview her. Possibly you may be interested in hearing some of my questions and her answers. Do stay a while and make yourself perfectly at home. I might add there is a humorous side to this affair which tickles my risibilities and——” He was interrupted by the opening of the door.

Pinkie entered, a step behind Marion North, who, unbound, crossed the threshold. Her gaze, weary and wistful, darted to Glendale; her pale face mirrored a faint, sensitive flush. He answered the look with a smile that was intended to be brave, reassuring, and free from chagrin, but which he knew was, at best, only a stiff, distorted grin.

She still wore the pretty evening frock of the previous night. Though she had undoubtedly suffered and was at the lowest ebb of her endurance, she held herself proudly erect as Pinkie escorted her to a chair beside the mahogany desk and waved her into it.

“Good evening, my dear Miss North,” Winter said, with a bow. “I sincerely trust you have entirely recovered from your indisposition of last evening. Do sit down and compose yourself. There are several matters which I must talk over with you. I presume you can imagine what they are.”

Glendale, working at the rope at his wrists, saw Pinkie jauntily light a cigarette and wink at the burly gangster. Both took up a station on either side of the chair that the girl occupied, obviously interested to learn what Winter would say.

The little man dropped into the swivel chair and faced Marion North across the desk. He clipped the end from a symmetrical cigar, lighted it, and sat back with the same languid ease he might have used in a club lounge.

“My dear,” he began, with almost parental concern, “surely you are now beginning to realize how extremely silly it is to hope to outwit me. I admit it was very clever of you to learn the location of my apartment in town and to slip in and get the box. But to hope to retain it any length of time is only the fatuous idea of a very unsophisticated young person. By the way, did you happen to tell Mr. Glendale what the box contained?”

“No; I did not,” she replied in a low voice.

Winter exchanged a glance with his confederates. They smiled broadly.

“This is deliciously amusing,” the little man said cryptically. “But to get down to business, I'm going to ask you a frank question and I want a like answer. Was it your charming employer who removed my brown valise from the house on Seventy-fifth Street last night?”

Marion North moved her shoulders. “I don't know,” she answered truthfully. “My instructions were to go there and get it. I was given skeleton keys to open the inner front door. When we—when I opened the closet I found it was empty. I don't know who obtained the valise.”

Glendale saw a shadow of worry darken Winter's sallow face.

“The presence of Ranscome,” he said, “would seem to indicate that your employer didn't get the grip. Ranscome, I have been told, left the building.”

The brown eyes of the girl lighted. “I'm glad!” she said. “It was a dastardly thing to strike him down in the dark!”

“I ought to kick myself in the ribs for not having put more stuff on the torch!” the blond man declared viciously. “I ought to have caved his roof in instead of pulling the soak. That's what I get for being kind-hearted!”

Winter fingered his chin. “Let's return to the box,” he said purringly, “for, after all, it is that which concerns us most. I trust the hours you have been held captive have not been spent in vain. I hope, my dear girl, you have at last come to your senses and will try to hoodwink us no longer.”

With his docility and apparent gentleness vanishing into thin air, Winter swung forward in his chair and rapped out a quantity of staccato sentences: “Where's the box? What have you done with it? I want it! I must have it! I will tolerate no more delay or subterfuge! Where is it?”

The words cracked like the snap of a whip. In white-lipped desperation, Marion North stared into his wrinkled face, small hands clenched and quivering at her sides, her eyes wide and frightened.

“I shan't tell you!” she whispered.

Straining at his bonds and rewarded by a slight loosening of one rope, Glendale flushed with admiration for her courage. Transfixed, he watched Winter's face turn to brass, impenetrable, inflexible, creased by the gash of a grim smile.

“Is that,” he asked suavely, “your final answer?”

“I shan't tell you!” she repeated, closing her lips on a little sob that forced itself between her shut teeth.

Pushing back his chair, Winter got up. He tapped the ash from his cigar and frowned at his watch. “Then, my dear,” he said, with perfect urbanity, “you automatically commit a great crime. By refusing and continuing to refuse to tell me what you know, you definitely put a quick end to the existence of the young man seated on your immediate right. Do I make myself clear?”

With a startled gasp Marion North jumped up. All the color drained from the piquant oval of her face, leaving it pallid, drawn with the agony of a fear she flinched before.

“What—what do you mean?”

Winter looked at the glowing tip of his cigar before turning his back on her to address the blond Pinkie: “Slip your gat out. I shall count three. If this distressed young lady refuses to divulge the whereabouts of the package before I end the count, you will let our interfering friend here have the whole clip. Catch the idea?”

The dapper one smiled eagerly. “Got you coming and going, boss!”

He promptly dragged out an automatic revolver with a short, sawed-off muzzle. Cold perspiration sprang to Glendale's brow. There was no mistaking either the meaning of the vibrant undercurrent in Winter's command or the light of unholy satisfaction that fired the shifty eyes of his associate.

Glendale stared straight into the round, black mouth of the weapon that drew a bead on him. while Winter began to count:

“One—two——”

Marion threw herself forward with a strangled cry: “Wait! I will tell you everything!”

The breath that had caught in Glendale's throat left it. He blinked away the perspiration that trickled down into his eyes as Winter laughed with quiet good humor.

“Didn't I tell you there was nothing like a gun to make young ladies change their minds?” the bandits' leader said smoothly. “Come, speak up, my dear. Where's the box?”

Exchanging a look with Glendale that was filled with the dull hope that flickered low within her, Marion North laid her shaking hands on the desk top. “I gave the package to Jimmy Hope last night,” she whispered in a lifeless voice. “He locked it up in the safe at Au Printemps.”

The faces of the marauders wore smiles of triumph. .

“I knew it!” Pinkie cried. “Hope gave me a song and dance and tried to play the dumb Isaac, but I knew it was a stall!”

Winter tugged at his chin, thinking. “Get the young lady's wrap, Chick.” He looked keenly at the girl. “My dear, you and I will journey forthwith to Broadway. It's scarcely one o'clock, and we can reach the café in an hour if we hurry. I dislike rushing you, but you must get me that box to-night. Mr. Glendale will remain here as a hostage.

“You, Pinkie, and you, Chick, will endeavor to entertain him to the best of your ability,” Winter continued. “If for any reason Miss North should change her mind and refuse to give me what I want, I will telephone old man Bailey and have him row out and tell you. This time we won't bother to do any counting. Just fill Glendale full of lead and let it go at that!”

“Sure thing!” Pinkie said cheerfully, as Chick left the room. “Nothing would give me more pleasure. I owe this lob something on account! I'll croak him the minute I get the word!”

Awaiting the return of the gangster, Winter puffed placidly at his cigar. The girl rested wearily against the desk, head lowered. Perceptible shadows were beneath her eyes and cheek bones, pathetic records of what she had endured, of the stress and tumult within her.

Glendale saw and knew; his throat tightened inexplicably. In a frenzy of desperation he renewed his efforts to free himself, his heart leaping with excitement when one strand of rope dropped over his fingers and his wrists separated, first an inch—more—two inches. The light was dim, and Winter did not see what the captive was doing.

He encountered the brown eyes of Marion North again as Chick returned, bearing her smart, summery cape. She donned it without a word and looked at Winter, who, fitting a cap to his tonsured head, darted another glance at his watch.

“Ready?” he inquired.

Together both moved forward.

“Watch our friend carefully,” the little man said over his shoulder.

“Don't worry,” Pinkie returned, toying with his automatic. “All the cops in the big burg couldn't spring this baby when I'm on the job!”

Winter reached the door and dropped a hand to the knob.

As he did so, Glendale dropped the bonds that had circled his wrists and leaped for Pinkie.

It was the unexpectedness of the move of one supposed to be securely manacled that crowned the stratagem with success. He knocked aside the arm of the blond youth as the automatic exploded harmlessly, tore it from his hand in a twinkling, hurled him into a corner with a short-arm blow, and swept the room with the captured gun; the smothered cry of the girl was music in his ears.

“Back to the wall and hands up! I'll shoot the first one who makes a false move!”

Glendale's order was complied with at once. The burly gangster placed his shoulders to the wall and lifted grimy hands. Winter, less rapid in his movements, allowed the fingers of his right hand to stray toward his jacket pocket.

Glendale took up a position back of the desk. “Up with your hands, Winter! Don't make the mistake of reaching for a revolver! Miss North will attend to getting the artillery out!”

In a silence profound, the little man stretched for the ceiling. The sleek Pinkie, muttering imprecations, attained his feet and took up a stand beside the gangster.

“What now?” Winter inquired placidly.

Glendale surveyed the room with a stern, relentless gaze, master of the situation at last. “Miss North,” he said, disregarding the question of the little man, “you will be good enough to remove the weapons of our friends and place them here on the desk before me. Begin with Mr. Winter, and——”

His words were blotted out by the crash of a revolver—the sudden sweep of blackness as the brass lamp on the bracket plunged out with the silvery tinkle of broken glass.

In a watch tick the stark, awesome darkness was torn with the surge of conflict, the stamp and scuffle of feet, heavy commands, the shrill voice of Pinkie screaming an oath.

Glendale felt the air kicked up by a whistling blow that fanned his face. He rounded the desk, to collide with an invisible body the arms of which promptly twined about him.

“Here's where we even up!” The rasping voice of the burly gangster panted in his ear. “Here's where you get yours!”

Glendale lashed out with both fists. His right crashed to the unseen face of his antagonist with such force as to hurl the gangster away and back from him. The man endeavored to clinch, but Glendale fought him off, finding his jaw with a left hook that had behind it every ounce of power at his command.

The gangster reeled away, toppled, and fell with a crash at the same minute the battle, which had begun so unexpectedly, terminated with disconcerting suddenness.

“Lights!” some one ordered briskly.

The glow of a lamp grew until the room was completely illumined again. Glendale blinked at the shadowy figures filling the room.

Near the door Ranscome, the hawk-eyed man in green flannels, stood guard over the battered Pinkie whose wrists wore steel handcuffs. A pace distant three men with drawn guns hedged in the round-shouldered Winter.

Back and away from them Fosdick stood with an arm about Marion North. “Ah, Archer, safe and sound, I see!” the detective said. “Sorry I was late, and so unable to meet you at Bailey's, as you and I arranged to-day. We had two blow-outs on the way up which delayed us. Tremaine told me where you were, but, to cap the climax, we got lost in the mist and almost rowed to Europe. Excuse us for putting out your light. Ranscome, here, didn't seem to know that you had our friends just where you wanted them!”

Fosdick indicated the silent Winter with an airy gesture; then he went on: “Archer, as a detective you've got me backed off the boards! I had a suspicion who these individuals were, but to you alone must go the credit of bagging your own crook! I didn't tell you to-day. I, too, was after the alleged Winter, because I wanted to give you a little surprise. Let me introduce you to the Port Royal thief—a man I've pursued for many a long day—Mr. Hugo March, alias Winter!”

Chapter IX.

DREAMY STARS.

BY dead reckoning the hour was two o'clock in the morning or something later. A thunderstorm had come and gone, and the air was fresher, cooler. Stars, cold and glittering, were white ships in the blue sea of the heavens. Among them the moon hung like a crystal lantern.

In the roadster driven by the taciturn Tremaine, leaving the City Island road, Glendale looked down at the shadowy face of the girl beside him. Since that minute they had left the room in the island rookery, which he had come to understand was Hugo March's treasure chamber, she had said but little, consenting with a nod to his proposal that he take her back to the metropolis, so that she would not be compelled to ride in Fosdick's machine with the heavily ironed prisoners.

Now, as he bent his gaze upon her, she looked up and smiled faintly.

“I can tell you at last!” she murmured.

“You are one of Martin Fosdick's operatives?” Glendale said.

She inclined her head slowly. “Yes; one of his agents. Don't you understand now where it was you saw me first? It was that afternoon when you came to the office with Mr. Fosdick. You passed me in one of the outer rooms, but you didn't appear to take much notice of me.

“It is not a very long story,” she went on. “Our chief knew that it was Hugo March who had broken into your country estate. We found him here in New York and ringed him in. Ranscome, the man in green flannels, who is another of Mr. Fosdick's agents, discovered that March had split the loot in half. The heirlooms they packed away in a brown leather valise which, I just learned, was taken by Mr. Fosdick from the house yesterday afternoon. The Katupur Ruby——”

All at once knowledge swept through Glendale. “And the ruby,” he exclaimed, “is in the box that is in the safe at Au Printemps!”

The red lips of the girl parted in a smile. “Yes; yours when Jimmy Hope returns it to me on the morrow! He has often aided me before, because, in the café, I have found the beginnings of many trails. You see, when March knew he was trapped, he wrapped the box up and prepared to mail it to himself at some address out of town. By the barest chance I was able to make it mine before he was able to carry out his plans. He learned that I had taken it and hemmed me in closely.

“Meanwhile,” Miss North continued, “I had got a telephone call through to Ranscome and arranged to meet him at the King William so I could give him the box. I'm not certain if March learned of the call or if it was just an accident that brought him to the hotel. Sufficient to say that at the sight of him I completely lost my nerve.”

Glendale drew a breath. “And the presence of Ranscome last night in the empty house?”

“He wasn't aware that Mr. Fosdick had already made the brown valise with the heirlooms his,” Marion North explained. “He had the same orders I had and a duplicate set of the skeleton keys to get in with.”

They were on the Pelham Parkway. To the southwest the island metropolis lay supine, still lifting its garish reflection to the clouds. Glendale glimpsed it before looking down again at the girl whose brown head drooped wearily to his shoulder.

“Is this the end?” Glendale asked in a low voice. “Does the termination of our riddle intricate mean that we are never to see each other again? When may I come for you?”

The brown eyes she gave him were like dreamy stars, confident and trusting. “To-morrow—if you wish,” she whispered.

At the wheel, Tremaine moved his long legs. “It looks as if it's going to be cooler,” he said succinctly.

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