"Put your wrists together!"

The voice was totally different from Dobbs' whine; a strong, deep register, like a ledge of the basal rock peeping out from a smiling meadow. For the first time Robert felt the veiled strength which resided in the detective's character. There was no option but to obey.

"Pull up the curtains, Johnnie."

The servant had been attracted by the crash of the lamp. A faint stream of daylight entered the chamber, and the noises of the city could be heard in the distance. McCausland's face seemed to have altered in every line.

"Get a hack! Jump into those shoes!" He tossed a curt order right and left, one for Johnnie, the other for Robert.

"To the county jail," was his direction to the hack driver. Robert wondered at this, but he sat back smiling and said nothing during all the ride.

"Here's your prisoner," said McCausland when they arrived. It was not yet 6 o'clock, but the sheriff was up and showed no great surprise. Robert wondered at this again and his amazement was not abated when they assigned him to his original cell in murderers' row. However, the change was to his liking, for the surroundings were less presageful of permanency.

"You missed your vocation as a character actor," was his parting shot at McCausland.

It is easy to imagine the dismay in the prison that morning when the escape was discovered. Col. Mainwaring was a very different man from Warden Tapp, and for a time it looked as though McCausland might lose his badge. But when he showed an order from the sheriff empowering him to bring the body of Robert Floyd from the state prison back to the county jail, which had now been put in repair, Col. Mainwaring saw a light; and when McCausland pointed out that he had laid his finger precisely on certain weaknesses of the bastile, frequently suggested without avail to Tapp, the new warden thanked him pleasantly.

The story at first was given to the public that Inspector McCausland had captured the fugitive, Robert Floyd, and for a time not only did the detective's cap wear a bright new feather but all the credit of Robert's conduct during the riot was canceled by this outbreak, which was construed as a confession of guilt. But of course the truth leaked out, and the failure of his "nest-egg game," with its brilliant but desperate climax, was made the occasion of much chaffing to the contriver.

"Has Bill Dobbs been taken yet?" a brother-in-buttons would ask him; and the two lovers had many a good laugh over the game which they had played and won. For the first time since the great shadow fell across them they were as happy and hopeful as lovers should be, and for several days little smiles of reminiscence would creep into the corners of Emily's lips while she was touching out the blemishes in some negative destined to pass from young Amaryllis to her Strephon or old Darby to his Joan.

Meanwhile Shagarach, too, was interesting himself in the study of photographs.

"Have they all been returned?" he asked Aronson one morning.

"All but Meester Davidson's."

"And none of the neighbors saw Arnold coming out?"

"They all shake their heads and say no, they don't know that face."

"Very well. Jacob may put them in his desk. We shall hardly need them again. Go over to the second session and answer for me in the Morrow case. I am expecting Mr. McCausland."

"Speak of angels," said the inspector, entering cordially. "You know the rest of the saying."

"Good-morning. Be seated."

It did not escape even modest Saul Aronson what a contrast the antagonists made, sitting with the table between them. McCausland had, apparently, not glanced around with more than casual interest, yet, if blindfolded then and there and put to the test, he could have surprised those who did not know him with the minute and copious inventory of the office, not excluding its occupants, which this glance had furnished him. It was this, with his almost infallible memory, which made him so formidable an opponent at whist. Shagarach was hardly his equal in mere perception, perhaps not his superior in analysis, when the subject was within McCausland's range. His advantage lay, if anywhere, as he had said himself, in his deeper insight into the human soul, in his psychological reach.

"Sorry I was out when you called the other day," said McCausland. "I've been looking up your matter."

"With what result?"

"These clippings may interest you."

Shagarach glanced rapidly over the newspaper scraps.

"The Broadbane murder—I remember that well."

"It occurred about a week before your first attack. You remember Broadbane lured the young woman to a lonely bridge in his carriage and threw her into the river."

"The circumstances were similar to my adventure. The second item is strange to me."

"It's from a New York paper, dated July 28—the very day before your second attack. The circumstances are closely similar this time again. A jealous husband shot his wife through the window of her room."

"Our monster reads, then."

"He is a lunatic (puff)," said McCausland, who had lighted his invariable cigar.

"You believe so?"

"The evidence convinces me. They have an itch to imitate, as you are aware. This man is a victim of homicidal mania, of which you have unfortunately become the object (puff)."

"Why Shagarach and not another?"

"Newspaper notoriety. You should see my crop of cranks. This particular crack-brain has aimed his illusion at you. We must strait-jacket him before it goes further."

"You expect, then, to have him soon?"

"Sooner or later (puff). Let us know if you hear anything. I see you were hurrying off as I came in. Good-day."

McCausland had been deputed to investigate the attacks on Shagarach, because they connected themselves so manifestly, through the threatening letters, with the Floyd case, which he was handling. Neither he nor Shagarach had objected to this opportunity to meet and possibly force each other's hands a little.

"I shall be in the Criminal Court, second session, Jacob. Remain here till Mr. Aronson comes." Shagarach was gone and Jacob left alone to his meditations.

To judge from his expression, they were never very pleasant. Perhaps, like Job of old, he daringly questioned the power behind human destiny, why he showers cleverness and attraction on one boy of 14, while another is afflicted with a manner of nose preposterous, conspicuous and undistinguishable, to carry which is a burden. That godlike young man in the photograph, how he would like to be as handsome as he! Was there no way to attain it? He took the bundle of photographs out of his drawer and laid them on his desk to study and admire.

While thus engaged the jingle of harness outside attracted him. He knew by the sound that the carriage had stopped before his door. It wasn't often that equipages, sprinkling sleigh-bell music in their course, paused at the door of the dingy old business building. So Jacob became interested enough to approach the window of the inner office languidly and peep down into the street.

There stood a covered black carriage, as polished as a mirror, with a buff-liveried coachman holding the reins. His seat was perched so high that his legs made one straight, unbending line to the footrest, and his back was as vertical as a carpenter's plummet. Mrs. Arnold was not careless of these niceties. It would have shocked her sense of the fitness of things almost as much to publish the fact that her coachman had knees, as if her own lorgnette should stray from the proscenium box higher than the first balcony—an impropriety which had happened only once to her knowledge, and that by inadvertence, on an opera night.

"This is Mr. Shagarach's office, I believe," said the grand lady to Jacob.

"Yes'm," he mumbled, abashed.

"He is out, I perceive. Does he return soon?"

"No'm."

"About when could I see him if I should wait?"

"He is trying a case'm, over in the second court'm, criminal session," answered Jacob, mixing things badly in his confusion.

"Couldn't you send for him?"

"Mr. Aronson will be here soon. Perhaps he would know."

"I will wait a few minutes," said the lady, sitting down with hauteur in the cushioned chair which Jacob pushed toward her. After a spell of silence she addressed him again in a gentler tone:

"What is your name, little boy?" she asked.

"Jacob," he answered. Servants and office boys grow to think of themselves as having only one name.

"Jacob. That is a very old and dignified name. Are you Mr. Shagarach's clerk?"

"No'm."

"His errand boy, then?"

"Yes'm."

"It's too bad you had to leave school so young. I suppose you give all you earn to your mother?"

"Yes'm."

"Haven't you any father?"

"No'm."

Jacob thought he had never met such a kind lady. How sympathetic she seemed and was it not gracious of her to inquire about his father and mother? How much more agreeable it was to deal with real ladies and real gentlemen who never, never would call vulgar names. He would have given almost half his week's spending money to oblige this sweet-tongued lady then, and his only regret was that he could think of no better answer to her questions than "Yes'm" and "No'm."

"If you are an errand boy perhaps you could do a little errand for me," said the lady sweetly after a pause.

"Yes'm," answered Jacob, putting a world of eagerness into the word.

"You are sure you can do errands and not make a mistake?"

"No'm—yes'm," he replied, a little puzzled as to which of the two words which seemed to constitute his whole vocabulary fitted into his meaning here.

"Then, perhaps, I will let you take this for me."

She drew out the tiniest, daintiest purse Jacob's eyes had ever beheld, and, opening its clasp, gingerly fingered forth a bill.

"I want very much to have this changed. Mr. Shagarach will not be back immediately, you say?"

"No'm."

"Then perhaps you can spare a moment to run down to the corner and get some silver for this."

"They'll change it upstairs," said Jacob, at last finding his voice.

"Upstairs? Very well, you may take it upstairs and bring me back small silver, Jacob."

With a skip of elation Jacob mounted the stairs. There was a little delay in the mission, to which he had repaired. When he came downstairs, the silver clutched in his hand, his heart rose to his mouth at discovering that the office was empty. To think that he had kept the kind lady waiting so long! Probably she had become disgusted with him. He stood a moment in perplexity. Then glancing at his own desk, he opened his mouth in horror.

"My pictures!" cried Jacob. The photographs were gone.

If there was one being that Jacob reverenced and feared it was his master. To feel now that he had betrayed him at the prompting of a grand lady, who deceived him with honeyed words and was undoubtedly one of his master's enemies—how could he ever face Shagarach again?

"My pictures!" he cried a second time, running into the entry. But here at the head of the stairs a dubitation seized him. Shrill and re-echoing through the narrow passage came the flute-like warble which Jacob knew only too well. It was the precursor of torment for him. True, the Whistler himself had almost ceased to pick on the office boy and even taken him under his wing of late, but Turkey Fenton and Toot Watts were as implacable as inquisitors turning a heretic on a lukewarm gridiron.

Turkey's tyranny was of the grosser order, as became an urchin who in Jacob's presence had swallowed a whole banana, skin and all. Toot's nature was subtle and spiderlike. He possessed the enviable distinction of being able to wag his ears, and his devices of torture were correspondingly refined and ingenious. During the last visit of the boys he had played a small mirror into Jacob's eyes all the while behind Shagarach's back, and it wasn't until they were going out that Jacob discovered why he had been dazzled almost to blindness.

If he took the stair route down he would be stopped and teased and the wicked lady would get away. Perhaps she was already gone—gone with the photographs which should have been securely locked in his drawer. Why had he ever taken them out?

The emergency was desperate and Jacob met it heroically. Rushing to Shagarach's window, he saw the grand lady just crossing the sidewalk and waving her parasol to the coachman. In a moment she would be ensconced on the cushions within and the disaster would be beyond remedy. The window was open, and there was a little piazza outside. Jacob stepped out and shouted. The lady looked up and hastened her pace. Leading down to the first story from the piazza was a flight of steps, and from the first story down to within twelve feet of the ground, another—an old-fashioned fire-escape.

Down these steps Jacob scrambled, scratching his hands and nearly losing his balance, to the first piazza and thence to the lowermost round, where the awful fall of twelve feet checked him. But the sight of the coachman mounting his box nerved his courage and he released his hands. For a moment he felt dizzy. But the horses were already started. With a flying leap he caught the tailboard in his hand, and after being dragged along with great giraffe-like bounds for nearly a block managed to draw himself up to something like a sitting position.

There, through an eye-shaped dead-light in the back of the carriage he obtained a dim view of its occupant. His master's stolen pictures were in her hand. What was she kissing them for—and crying? But Jacob was determined to have no pity upon her. He had just resolved to call out and demand her attention, when the crack of a lash made him turn and his lip began to tingle. The coachman had discovered his unlawful presence on the tailboard and had reached him with just the tip end of his whip.

Probably he had meant only to frighten the lad. If so, he had thoroughly succeeded. Again the whip curled backward over the coachman's shoulder and snapped like a pistol shot close to Jacob's ear. To add to his discomfort a great St. Bernard, which had been running under the carriage, had become aware of his intrusion, and began rearing at him in a manner more alarming than dangerous, to be sure, but sufficient to make a peaceable lad tremble. Between the whip and the dog's teeth his ride had begun to be worse torture than the gantlet of the stairway, flanked by the three gamins, would have been, when the ordeal was brought to a sudden end by the stopping of the carriage at a great brick railroad station.

Jacob's time had come. Disregarding the St. Bernard, he jumped down and stood on the sidewalk. The dog growled and the coachman spoke to him roughly as he opened the door with practiced alacrity for his mistress. But Jacob was now within his legal rights.

"I want my pictures," he said, catching the grand lady by the arm. Mrs. Arnold looked down at him with amazement not unmingled with fear. It was the same stupid little boy she had bribed to go upstairs in the office where Harry's photographs had been lying—for no good purpose, her instincts told her.

"What does this little ragamuffin say?" she asked.

"I want my photographs," said Jacob, doggedly, as the coachman shoved him aside. He ran after Mrs. Arnold, the tears in his eyes, and clung to her dress. A scene was imminent. The policeman approached, doubtless to render assistance to the lady in distress. But Mrs. Arnold did not desire his assistance just then. With a quick motion she removed a parcel from her pocket and placed it in Jacob's hands.

"Take back your things, then, and don't bother me," she said, with a flushed face.

Jacob gloated on his recovered treasures. Then his hands likewise sought his trousers pocket, and he jingled a handful of silver into Mrs. Arnold's hand.

"Take the money, Joseph," she said to the coachman. "These small storekeepers are so ill-mannered."

The policeman gave Jacob a hard look as he passed him, but the office boy was obliviously counting his pictures.

When he returned to the office the gamins were gone and Aronson was there alone. To Aronson's question where he had been, Jacob, not being an imaginative boy, gave an answer which was strictly truthful, whereupon Aronson, not being a humorous young man (for such are always grave), laughed immoderately, and proposed that the fire escape henceforth be known as Jacob's ladder.