need it. It is the only paralyzer."

Seizing a three-ounce flask, he cast aside his blue goggles for
a moment as he measured his ingredients. One by one he carefully
added them, until the small bottle was filled with a colorless
mixture.

He read the innocent-looking scrawl a last time, and then burned
it at a fluttering gas jet. The words seemed burned in upon his
brain. His practiced glance ran over the bottles on the shelves
ranged there like soldiers in their silent ranks. His eye gleamed
vindictively as he murmured: "First, my old friend chloral hydrate--there
you are. Now, your reliable brother, chloroform"--He shook up the
growing mixture with a secret pride. "Just the right amount of
muriate codine"--There was a pause, as the codine dissolved with
the other ingredients. "And now," he gaily murmured, "distilled
water," the last element needed to bind these together as a water
of death. It is a royal secret of the rogue's pharmacy--the best
garment for a flitting soul, tasteless and painless.

"Warranted to fit the largest man or the smallest boy," laughed
the scoundrel, replacing his goggles, as he fitted a ground-glass
stopper tightly to the flask. "I am not particularly anxious to be
caught with this on me. It would mean two to five years of 'voluntary
assistance' to the State at Sing Sing. But one little well-regulated
dose of this soothing charm, and the strongest man drops helpless
at my feet."

Braun slipped it in an inner pocket, and passed out, with a careless
nod to the overjoyed Timmins. "Remember, Lilienthal is your only
adviser. Six months from now, I'll put a new life into things here."

When Braun had disappeared, Ben Timmins drained a brandy and soda
to his eternal discomfiture. "'Ere's 'oping the bloomin' ship
founders with the old beggar," growled the Londoner, who had noted
Braun sweep away the last thirty dollars in the till. "'E might
have left me a few pennies."

It was ten o'clock when Randall Clayton, pacing up and down the
street, nervously eying the darkened front door of 192 Layte Street,
saw a lad nimbly dart up the front steps, touch a bell-push, and
then vanish in a few moments, as the door closed. Ciayton could
only distinguish vaguely the bundles with which the boy had been
loaded down. He lingered there in agony, afraid to approach that
portal.

But, a half-hour later, a portly man, in a light-colored coat,
with easy leisure, strolling up the steps, inserted a latch-ke