THE light in the porch went out. From within, as though with slow, dubious hesitation, a key turned in the lock. The door opened slightly, and from a dark interior the girl's voice reached Dave Henderson again.

“Tony Lomazzi sent you, you say!” she exclaimed in a puzzled way; and then, a sudden apprehension in her voice: “You are all covered with blood—what is the matter? What do you want?”

From the lane, the sound of pounding, racing feet seemed almost opposite the Italian's porch now. Dave Henderson, without ceremony, pushed at the door. It yielded, as the girl evidently retreated backward abruptly, and he stepped inside, closed the door softly behind him, and, feeling for the key, turned it swiftly in the lock. He could see nothing, but out of the darkness near him came a sharp, quick-drawn intake of breath.

“I'm sorry!” said Dave Henderson quietly. “But it was a bit of a close call. I'm not quite sure whether they are running after me, or running from the police, but, either way, it would have been a little awkward if I had been seen.”

She seemed to have regained her composure, for her voice, as she spoke again, was as quiet and as evenly modulated as his own.

“What do you want?” she asked once more. “Why did Tony Lomazzi send you here?”

He did not answer at once. From somewhere in the front of the house, muffled, but still quite audible, there came the voices of two men—one high-pitched, querulous, curiously short-breathed, the other with a sort of monotonous, sullen whine in it. He listened automatically for an instant, as his eyes searched around him. It was almost black inside here as he stood with his back to the door, but, grown more accustomed to the darkness now, he could make out a faint, blurred form, obviously that of the girl, a few feet away from him.

“I want to see Nicolo Capriano,” he said.

It was her turn now to pause before she answered.

“Is it necessary?” she asked finally.

“To me—yes,” said Dave Henderson.

“My father has already had far too much excitement to-night,” she said in a low voice. “He is a very sick man. There is some one with him now. If you could give me the message it would be better. As for any help you need, for you appear to be hurt, I will gladly attend to that myself. You may be assured of that, if you come from Tony Lomazzi.”

She was Nicolo Capriano's daughter, then! It struck him as a passing thought, though of no particular consequence, that she spoke excellent English for an Italian girl.

“I'm afraid that won't do,” said Dave Henderson seriously. “It is practically a matter of life and death to me to see Nicolo Capriano, and——”

From the front of the house the querulous voice rose suddenly in a still higher pitch:

“Teresa! Teresa!”

“Yes, I am coming!” the girl cried out; and then, hurriedly, to Dave Henderson: “Wait here a moment. I will tell him. What is your name?”

Dave Henderson smiled a little queerly in the darkness.

“If he is alone when you tell him, it is Dave Henderson,” he said dryly. “Otherwise, it is Smith—John Smith.”

She was gone.

He listened as her footsteps died away in the darkness; and then he listened again at the door. There was still a great deal of commotion out there in the lane, but certainly there was nothing to indicate that he and Nicolo Capriano's back porch had in any way been suspected of having had anything in common; it was, rather, as though the entire saloon up there had emptied itself in haste into the lane, and was running pell-mell in an effort to be anywhere but in that vicinity when the police arrived. Well, so much the better! For the moment, at least, he had evaded the trap set for him both by Bookie Skarvan's pack and by the police—and the next move depended very largely upon Nicolo Capriano, or, perhaps even more, upon this daughter of his, since the old man, it seemed, was sick. The girl's name was apparently Teresa—which mattered very little. What mattered a great deal more was that she evidently had her wits about her—an inheritance possibly from the old man, whose reputation, in his day, as one of the coolest and shrewdest of those outside the pale of the law, was at least substantiated by the fact that he had been able to stand off the police for practically a lifetime.

Dave Henderson raised his hand, and felt gingerly over his right temple. The blood had stopped flowing, but there was a large and well-defined lump there. He did not remember at just what particular stage of the fight that had happened. From his head, his hand felt over his clothing. He nodded a little ruefully to himself. He had come off far from scathless—his coat had almost literally been torn from his back.

Voices reached him again from the front of the house; he heard the girl speaking quietly in Italian; he heard some response in the sullen whine that he had remarked before; and then the street door opened and closed. There was silence then for what seemed a long time, until finally he caught the sound of the girl's step coming toward him again.

“My father will see you,” she said. “But I want to warn you again that he is a very sick man—sicker than he imagines he is. It is his heart.”

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson.

“Come with me, then,” she said tersely. “There is a door here—the passage turns to the right. Can you see?”

It was a queer place—with its darkness, and its twisted passage! Quite queer for so small and ordinary a dwelling—but, if rumor were true, it had been queerer still in the years gone by! A grim smile crossed Dave Henderson's lips, as he followed the shadowy form of his conductor. It augured well, at all events! The surroundings at least bore out Nicolo Capriano's record, which was a record much to be desired by a man in his, Dave Henderson's, straits.

The light from an open door beyond the turn in the passage dispelled the darkness. The girl was standing there now, motioning him to enter—but suddenly, for a moment, he stood and stared at her. This was queer, too! Everything about the place was queer! Somehow he had pictured in the darkness an Italian girl, pretty enough perhaps in a purely physical way, with gold rings in her ears, perhaps, such as the men wore, and slatternly, with feet shod in coarse, thick boots; the only kind of an Italian girl he had ever remembered having seen—a girl that hauled at the straps of a hand-organ, while the man plodded along the streets between the shafts. She wasn't like that, though—and he stared at her; stared at the trim, lithe, daintily dressed little figure, stared at the oval face, and the dark, steady, self-reliant eyes, and the wealth of rich, black hair that crowned the broad, white forehead, and glinted like silken strands, as the light fell upon it.

The color mounted in her cheeks.

And then, with a start, he pushed his hand across his eyes, and bit his lips, and flushed a deeper red than hers.

Her eyes, that had begun to harden as they met his gaze, softened in an instant, and she smiled. His confusion had been his apology, his acquittal of any intended offense.

She motioned again to him to enter, and, as he stepped forward across the threshold, she reached in and rested her hand on the doorknob.

“You can call when you need me, father,” she said—-and closed the door softly.

Dave Henderson's eyes swept the room with a swift, comprehensive glance; and then held steadily on a pair of jet-black eyes, so black that they seemed to possess no pupils, which were in turn fixed on him by a strange-looking figure, lying on a quaint, old-fashioned, four-poster bed across the room. He moved forward and took a chair at the bedside, as the other beckoned to him.

So this was Nicolo Capriano! The man was propped upright in bed by means of pillows that were supported by an inverted chair behind them; both hands, very white, very blue under the nails of the long, slender fingers, lay out-stretched before him on an immaculately white coverlet; the man's hair was silver, and a white beard and mustache but partially disguised the thin, emaciated condition of his face. But it was the eyes that above all else commanded attention. They were unnaturally bright, gleaming out from under enormously white, bushy eyebrows; and they were curiously inscrutable eyes. They seemed to hold great depths beneath which might smolder a passion that would leap without warning into flame; or to hold, as they did now, a strange introspective stare, making them like shuttered windows that gave no glimpse of the mind within.

“I am Nicolo Capriano,” said the man abruptly, and in perfect English. “My daughter tells me that you gave your name as Dave Henderson. The name seems familiar. I have heard it somewhere. I remember, it seems to me, a little matter of one hundred thousand dollars some five years ago, for which a man by that name went to the penitentiary.”

Dave Henderson's eyes wandered for a moment around the room again. He found himself wondering at the man's English—as he had at the girl's. Subconsciously he was aware that the furnishings, though plain and simple and lacking in anything ornate, were foreign and unusual, but that the outstanding feature of the room was a sort of refreshing and immaculate cleanliness—like the coverlet. He forced his mind back to what Nicolo Capriano had said.

Were all his cards to go face up on the table for Nicolo Capriano to see?

He had intended to make no more of a confidant of the other than was absolutely necessary; but, equally, he had not expected to find in Nicolo Capriano a physically helpless and bed-ridden man. It made a difference—a very great difference! If Millman, for instance, had been bed-ridden, it—— He caught himself smiling a little mirthlessly.

“That's me—Dave Henderson,” he said calmly.

The old Italian nodded his head.

“And the hundred thousand dollars has never been recovered,” he observed shrewdly. “The police are interested in your movements, eh? It is for that reason you have come to me, is it not so? And Tony Lomazzi foresaw all this—and he sent you here?”

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson—and frowned suddenly. It was bothering him again—the fact that this Italian and his daughter should speak English as though it were their own tongue.

Nicolo Capriano nodded his head again. And then, astutely:

“Something is disturbing you, my young friend,” he said. “What is it?”

Dave Henderson straightened in his chair with a little start—and laughed shortly. Very little, evidently, escaped Nicolo Capriano!

“It's not much,” he said. “Just that you and your daughter speak pretty good English for Italians.”

Nicolo Capriano smiled softly.

“I should speak pretty good English,” he said; “and Teresa should speak it even better. We both learned it as children. I, in a certain part of London, as a boy; and Teresa here in San Francisco, where she was born. Her mother was American, and, though I taught Teresa Italian, we always spoke English while her mother was alive, and afterwards my daughter seemed to think we should continue to do so.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But you came from Lomazzi,” he prompted. “Tell me about Lomazzi. He is well?”

“He is dead,” said Dave Henderson quietly.

The thin hands, outstretched before the other, closed with a quick twitching motion—then opened, and the fingers began to pluck abstractedly at the coverlet. There was no other sign of emotion, or movement from the figure on the bed, except that the keen, black eyes were veiled now by half closed lids.

“He died—fifteen years ago—when he went up there—for life”—the man seemed to be communing with himself. “Yes, yes; he is dead—he has been dead for fifteen years.” He looked up suddenly, and fixed his eyes with a sharp, curiously appraising gaze on Dave Henderson. “You speak of actual death, of course,” he said, in a low tone. “Do you know anything of the circumstances?”

“It was two months ago,” Dave Henderson answered. “He was taken ill one night. His cell was next to mine. He was my friend. He asked for me, and the warden let me go to him. He died in a very few minutes. It was then, while I was in the cell, that he whispered to me that I would need help when I got out, and he told me to come to you, and to say that he sent me.”

“And to the warden, and whoever else was in the cell, he said—nothing?”

“Nothing,” said Dave Henderson.

Nicolo Capriano's eyes were hidden again; the long, slim fingers, with blue-tipped nails, plucked at the coverlet. It was a full minute before he spoke.

“I owe Tony Lomazzi a great debt,” he said slowly; “and I would like to repay it in a little way by helping you since he has asked it; but it is not to-day, young man, as it was in those days so long ago. For fifteen years I have not lifted my hand against the police. And it is obviously for help from the police that you come to me. You have served your term, and the police would not molest you further except for a good reason. Is it not so? And the reason is not far to seek, I think. It is the money which was never recovered that they are after. You have it hidden somewhere. You know where it is, and you wish to outwit the police while you secure it. Am I not right?”

Dave Henderson glanced at the impassive face propped up on the pillows. Old Nicolo Capriano in no way belied his reputation for shrewdness; the man's brain, however physically ill he might be otherwise, had at least not lost its cunning.

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson, with a short, sudden laugh, “you are right—but also you are wrong. It is the police that I want to get away from, and it is on account of that money, which, it is also true, I hid away before I went up; but it is not only the police, it is the gang of crooks who put me in wrong at the trial who are trying to grab it, too—only, as it stands now, I don't know where the money is myself. I trusted a fellow in the jug, who got out two months ahead of me—and he did me.”

The white bushy eyebrows went up.

“So!” ejaculated the old Italian. “Well, then, what is the use!”

“A whole lot!” returned Dave Henderson grimly. “To get the fellow if I can! And I can't do that with the police, and a gang of crooks besides, at my heels, can I?”

Nicolo Capriano shook his head meditatively.

“I have my daughter to think of,” he said. “Listen, young man, it has not been easy to stand square with the police during these years as it is, and that without any initiative act on my part that would stir them up against me again. Old associations and old records are not so easily got rid of. I will give you an example. There was a man here to-night—when you came. His name is Ignace Ferroni. He was one of us in the old days—do you understand? When the trouble came for which Tony Lomazzi suffered, Ignace managed to get away. I had not seen him from that day to this. He came back here to-night for help—for a very strange kind of help. He was one of us, I have said, and he had not forgotten his old ways. He had a bomb, a small bomb in his pocket, whose mechanism had gone wrong. He had already planted it once to-night, and finding it did not explode, he picked it up again, and brought it to me, and asked me to fix it for him. It was an old feud he had with some one, he would not tell me who, that he had been nursing all this time. I think his passion for vengeance had perhaps turned his head a little. I refused to have anything to do with his bomb, of course, and he left here in a rage, and in his condition he is as likely to turn on me as he is to carry out his original intention. But, that apart, what am I to do now? He was one of us, I cannot expose him to the police—he would be sentenced to a long term. And yet, if his bomb explodes, to whom will the police come first? To me!” Nicolo Capriano suddenly raised his hands, and they were clenched—and as suddenly caught his breath, and choked, and a spasm of pain crossed his face. The next instant he was smiling mirthlessly with twitching lips. “Yes, to me—to me, whom some fool amongst them once called the Dago Bomb King, which they will never forget! It is always to me they come! Any crime that seems to have the slightest Italian tinge—and they come to Nicolo Capriano!” He shrugged his shoulders. “You see, young man, it is not easy for me to steer my way unmolested even when I am wholly innocent. But I, too, do not forget! I do not forget Tony Lomazzi! Tell me exactly what you want me to do. You think you can find the man and the money if you can throw the police and the others off your trail?”

“Yes!” said Dave Henderson, with ominous quiet. “That's my job in life now! If I could disappear for three or four days, I guess that's all the start I'd need.” There was a tolerant smile now on the old bomb king's lips.

“Three or four days would be a very easy matter,” he answered. “But after that—what? It might do very well in respect to this gang of crooks; but it would be of very little avail where the police are concerned, for they would simply do what the crooks could not do—see that every plain-clothesman and officer on this continent was on the watch for you. Do you imagine that, believing you know where the money is, the police will forget all about you in three or four days?”

“No,” admitted Dave Henderson, with the same ominous quiet; “but all I ask is a fighting chance.” Nicolo Capriano stared in speculative silence for a moment.

“You have courage, my young friend!” he said softly. “I like that—also I do not like the police. But three or four days!” He shook his head. “You do not know the police as I know them! And this man you trusted, and who, as I understand, got away with the money, do you know where to find him?”

“I think he is in New York,” Dave Henderson answered.

“Ah! New York!” Nicolo Capriano nodded. “But New York is a world in itself. He did not give you his address, and then rob you, I suppose!”

Dave Henderson did not answer for a moment. What Nicolo Capriano said was very true! But the rendezvous that Millman had given was, on the face of it, a fake anyhow. That had been his own opinion from the start; but during the two years Millman and he had been together in prison there had been many little inadvertent remarks in conversation that had, beyond question of doubt, stamped Millman as a New Yorker. Perhaps Millman had remembered that when he had given the rendezvous in New York—to give color to its genuineness—because it was the only natural place he could propose if he was to carry out logically the stories he had told for two long years.

“You do not answer?” suggested Nicolo Capriano patiently.

It was on Dave Henderson's tongue to lay the whole story bare to the date, day and hour of that hotel rendezvous, but instead he shook his head. He was conscious of no distrust of the other. Why should he be distrustful! It was not that. It seemed more an innate caution, that was an absurd caution now because the rendezvous meant nothing anyhow, that had sprung up spontaneously within him. He felt that he was suddenly illogical. Fie found himself answering in a savage, dogged sort of way.

“That's all right!” he said. “I haven't got his address—but New York is good enough. He spilled too much in prison for me not to know that's where he hangs out. I'll get him—if I can only shake the police.”

Nicolo Capriano's blue-tipped fingers went straggling through the long white beard.

“The police!” He was whispering—seemingly to himself. “It is always the police—a lifetime of the cursed police—and I have my daughter to think of—but I do not forget Tony Lomazzi—Teresa would not have me forget.” He spoke abruptly to Dave Henderson. “Tell me about to-night. My daughter says you came here like a hunted thing, and it is very evident that you have been in a fight. I suppose it was with the police, or with this gang you speak of; but, in that case, you have ruined any chance of help from me if you have led them here—if, for instance, they are waiting now for you to come out again.”

“I do not think they are waiting!” said Dave Henderson, with a twisted smile. “And I think that the police end of to-night, and maybe some of the rest of it as well, is in the hospital by now! It's not much of a story—but unless that light in your back porch, which was on for about two seconds, could be seen up the lane, there's no one could know that I am here.”

The old Italian smiled curiously.

“I do not put lights where they act as beacons,” he said whimsically. “It does not show from the lane; it is for the benefit of those inside the house. Tell me your story.”

“It's not much,” said Dave Henderson again. “The police shadowed me from the minute I left the penitentiary to-day. To-night I handed them a little come-on, that's all, so as to make sure that I had side-tracked them before coming here. And then the gang, Baldy Vickers' gang——”

“Vickers—Baldy Vickers! Yes, yes, I know; they hang out at Jake Morrissey's place!” exclaimed the old bomb king suddenly. “Runty Mott, and——”

“It was Runty Mott that butted in to-night,” said Dave Henderson, with a short laugh. “I had the fly-cop going, all right. I let him pick me up in a saloon over the bar. He thought I was pretty drunk even then. We started in to make a night of it—and the fly-cop was going to get a drunken man to spill all the history of his life, and incidentally get him to lead the way to where a certain little sum of money was! Understand? I kept heading in this direction, for I had looked the lay of the land over this afternoon. That saloon up the street was booked as my last stopping place. I was going to shake the fly-cop there, and——” Dave Henderson paused.

Nicolo Capriano was leaning forward in his bed, and there was a new, feverish light in the coal-black eyes—like some long-smoldering flame leaping suddenly into a blaze.

“Go on!” he breathed impatiently. “Go on! Ah! I can see it all!”

“Runty Mott and his crowd must have been trailing me.” Dave Henderson smiled grimly. “They thought both the fly-cop and myself were drunk. But to cover their own game and make their play at me they had to get the fly-cop out of the road first. One of the gang came into the saloon, faked a quarrel with the fly-cop, and knocked him out. I didn't know what was up until then, when I caught sight of Runty Mott and the rest of his crowd pushing in through the door.” Dave Henderson's smile grew a little grimmer. “That's all! They started something—but they didn't finish it! They had it all framed up well enough—the lights switched off, and all that, so as to lay me out and kidnap me, and then stow me away somewhere and make me talk.” He jerked his hand toward his torn garments. “There was a bit of a fight,” he said quietly. “I left them there pawing the air in the dark, and I was down here in your porch before any of them got out to the lane. I fancy there's some little row up there now on account of that fly-cop they put to sleep.”

Nicolo Capriano's hand reached out, and began to pat excitedly at Dave Henderson's sleeve.

“It is like the old days!” he said feverishly. “It is like the young blood warming up an old man's veins again. Yes, yes; it is like the old days back once more! Ah, my young friend, if I had had you on the night that Tony Lomazzi was trapped, instead of—but that is too late, eh? Yes—too late! But you are clever, and you use your head, and you have the courage. That is what I like! Yes, assuredly, I will help you, and not only for Tony Lomazzi's sake, but for your own. You shall have your chance, your fighting chance, my young friend, and you will run down your man”—his voice was rising in excitement—“and the money—eh! Yes, yes! And Nicolo Capriano will help you!” He raised his voice still higher. “Teresa! Here, Teresa!” he shouted.

The door opened; the girl stood on the threshold.

“Father,” she said reprovingly, “you are exciting yourself again.”

The old bomb king's voice was instantly subdued.

“No, I am not! You see—my little one! You see, I am quite calm. And now listen to me. This is Tony Lomazzi's friend, and he is therefore our friend. Is it not so? Well, then, listen! He is in need of help. The police must not get him. So, first, he must have some clothes instead of those torn ones. Get him some of mine. They will not fit very well—but they will do. Then you will telephone Emmanuel that I have a guest for him who does not like the police, a guest by the name of Smith—that is enough for him to know. And tell Emmanuel that he is to come with his car, and wait a block below the lane. And after that again you will go out, Teresa, and let us know if all is safe, and if there is still any police, or any one else, in the lane. Eh? Well, run then!”

“Yes,” she said. She was looking at Dave Henderson now, and there was a friendly smile in the dark, steady eyes, though she still addressed her father. “And what news does he bring us of Tony?”

“You will know by and by, when there is time,” her father answered with sudden brusqueness. “Run, now!”

She was back in a few moments with an armful of clothes; then once more left the room, this time closing the door behind her.

Nicolo Capriano pointed to a second door at the side of the room.

“There is the bathroom, my young friend,” he said crisply. “Go in there and wash the blood off your face, and change your clothes.”

Dave Henderson hesitated.

“Do you think it is safe for her, for your daughter, to go out there?” he demurred. “There was more of a row than perhaps I led you to imagine, and the police——”

“Safe!” The old Italian grinned suddenly in derision. “Listen, my young friend, you need have no fear. My daughter is a Capriano—eh? Yes, and like her father, she is more than a match for all the police in San Francisco. Go now, and change! It will not take Emmanuel long to get here.”

It took Dave Henderson perhaps ten minutes to wash and bathe his bruises, and change into the Italian's clothes. At the expiration of that time, he surveyed the result in a small mirror that hung on the wall. The clothes were ready-made, and far from new; they were ill-fitting, and they bulged badly in places. His appearance was not flattering! He might have passed for an Italian navvy in hard luck and—— He smiled queerly, as he turned from the mirror and transferred the money he had received from Square John Kelly, together with his few belongings, from the pockets of his discarded suit to those of the one he now had on. He stepped out into the bedroom.

Nicolo Capriano in turn surveyed the metamorphosis critically for a moment—and nodded his head in approval.

“Good!” ejaculated the old bomb king. “Excellent!” He rubbed his thin fingers together. “Yes, yes, it is like the old days again! Ha, ha, old Nicolo still plays a hand in the game, and old Nicolo's head is still on his shoulders. Three or four days! That would be easy even for a child! Emmanuel will take care of that. But we must do better than that—eh? And that is not so simple! To hide away from the police is one thing, and to outwit them completely is another! Is it not so? You must give the old man, whose brain has grown rusty because it has been so long idle, time to think, eh? It will do you no good if you always have to hide—eh? But, listen, you will hide while old Nicolo thinks—you understand? You can trust Emmanuel—but tell him nothing. He keeps a little restaurant, and he will give you a room upstairs. You must not leave that room, you must not show yourself, until you hear from me. You quite understand?”

“You need not worry on that score!” said Dave Henderson grimly.

“Good!” cried the old Italian again. “Only my daughter and myself will know that you are there. You can leave it to old Nicolo to find a way. Yes, yes”—excitement was growing upon the man again; he rocked his body to and fro—“old Nicolo and the police—ha, ha! Old Nicolo, who is dying in his bed—eh? And——” His voice was hushed abruptly; he lowered himself back on his pillows. “Here is Teresa!” he whispered. “She will say I am exciting myself again. Bah! I am strong again with the old wine in my veins!” His hands lay suddenly quiet and composed on the coverlet before him, as the door opened, and the girl stood again on the threshold. “Well, my little one?” he purred.

“Emmanuel has come,” she said. “There are some police up in Vinetto's saloon, but there is no one in the lane. It is quite safe.”

Nicolo Capriano nodded.

“And Emmanuel understands?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Go, then!” The old Italian was holding out his hand to Dave Henderson. “Go at once! My daughter will take you to Emmanuel.”

Dave Henderson caught the other's hand.

“Yes, but look here,” he said, a sudden huskiness in his voice, “I——”

“You want to thank me—eh?” said the old bomb king, shaking his head. “Well, my young friend, there will be time enough for that. You will see me again—eh? Yes! When old Nicolo sends for you, you will come. Until then—you will remember! Do not move from your room! Now, go!”

Teresa spoke from the doorway.

“Yes, hurry, please!” she said quietly. “The lane was empty a few minutes ago, but——” She shrugged her shoulders significantly.

Dave Henderson, with a final nod to the propped-up figure in the bed, turned and followed Teresa along the passage, and out into the porch. Here she bade him wait while she went out again into the lane; but in a minute more she called out to him in a whisper to join her.

They passed out of the lane, and into the cross street. A little ahead of them, Dave Henderson could see a small car, its hood up, standing by the curb.

She stopped suddenly.

“Emmanuel has seen me,” she said. “That is all that is necessary to identify you.” She held out her hand. “I—I hope you will get out of your danger safely.”

“If I do,” said Dave Henderson fervently, “I'll have you and your father to thank for it.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “You will have to thank Tony Lomazzi.”

He wanted to say something to detain her there for a moment or two longer, even under those most unauspicious of circumstances—but five years of prison had not made him glib of tongue, or quick of speech. She was very pretty—but it was not her prettiness alone that made her appeal. There was something of winsomeness about the lithe, graceful little figure, and something to admire in the quiet self-reliance, and the cool composure with which, for instance, she had just accepted the danger of possible, and decidedly unpleasant, interference by the police in the lane.

“But I can't thank Tony Lomazzi, since he is dead,” he blurted out—and the next instant cursed himself for a raw-tongued, blundering fool. In the rays of the street lamp a little way off, he saw her face go deathly white. Her hand that was in his closed with a quick, involuntary clutch, and fell away—and there came a little moan of pain.

“Dead!” she said. “Tony—dead!” And then she seemed to draw her little form erect—and smiled—but the great dark eyes were wet and full of tears.

“I——” Her voice broke. “Good-night!” she said hurriedly—and turned abruptly away.

He watched her, gnawing viciously at his lip, cursing at himself again for a blundering fool, until she disappeared in the lane; and then he, too, turned, and walked to the waiting car.

A man in the driver's seat reached out and opened the door of the tonneau.

“Me Emmanuel,” he said complacently, in broken English. “You no give-a da damn tor da police anymore. I gotta da room where you hide—safe. See? Over da restaurant. You eat, you sleep, you give-a da cops da laugh.”

Dave Henderson stepped into the car. His mind was in a chaotic whirl. A thousand diverse things seemed struggling for supremacy—the police and Runty Mott—Millman—Capriano, the queer, sick Capriano—the girl, the girl with the wondrous face, who cried because Tony Lomazzi was dead—a thousand things impinging in lightning flashes that made a vortex of his brain. They found expression in a sort of debonair facetiousness.

“Some boy, Emmanuel!” he said—and flung himself down on the seat. “Go to it!”