.
It is the most useful weapon for the city fire-fighter, enabling him to
climb diagonally across the face of a threatened structure, or even
to swing horizontally from one window to a far one, where ladders and
hose-streams might not reach.

A hundred feet to the West of the Somerset he found the excavations for
a new apartment house. No watchman was in sight, in the mist of falling
flakes, so the criminologist disappeared over the fence which separated
the plot of ground from the sidewalk. Advancing with many a stumble
through the blasted rock and shale, he obtained ingress to an alleyway
in the rear. Following this brought him to the back of the Somerset.
Shirley had an obstinate grandfather, and heredity was strong upon him.
It seemed a foolhardy attempt to scale the big structure, but he raised
the ladder to the window-sill of the second story, climbing cautiously
up to that ledge.

On the second sill he rested, then stretched his scaler diagonally
forward to the left. As he put his feet upon this, he swung like a
pendulum across the space. It was a severe grueling of nerves, but his
judgment of placement was good. When the ladder stopped swinging he
clambered up another story, as he had learned to do on truant afternoons
wasted at the firemen's training school, during the privileged days of
journalistic work.

Floor after floor he ascended, until he reached the eighth, on which was
Shirley's great goal. Here he exerted the utmost prudence, refraining
from the natural impulse to look down at the great crevasse beneath
him. His footing was slippery, but the thickening snowfall was a boon
in white disguise, for it protected him from almost certain observation
from the street below. Slowly he raised his eyes to a level with the
illuminated window, and peered in.

A strange sight greeted him.

Shine Taylor was busily engaged in the 'twisting of coils of wire, about
shiny brass cylinders, with an array of small and large clocks, electric
batteries and mysterious bottles on the carved library table. He was
intent upon the manufacture of another of his diabolical engines of
death!

Even as he watched, the door opened and who should stagger into the room
but Reginald Warren!

"Great Scott, Reg! What hit you?" was Taylor's ejaculation, as the
other stumbled forward, with a hand to his purple face, to sink into an
easy-chair, groaning. The man outside the window could not distinguish
the words, but the current of t