hought was well expressed in pantomime.

"I've been drugged!" moaned Warren. "That devil put something on my
handkerchief which knocked me out. I came to in Bellevue and I had a
time getting away to come back here. What about the Monk? Did you see
him?"

Taylor had run to his side. It seemed as though Warren's eyes would pop
from his head. The veins were swollen on his pallid brow, and he gasped
for air.

"Open the window!" he murmured, and his confederate rushed to the very
portal through which the criminologist was watching this unusual
scene, with bated breath. His heart sank, as he lowered himself with
a suddenness which vibrated the loosely-attached scaler. For the first
time his eyes turned toward the terrifying distance from which he had
ascended.

There was a squeak and he heard the window slide in its frame. He
felt that all was over. It would be impossible for Shine Taylor not to
observe the hooked prong of the ladder, with its curving metal a few
inches from his hands. In this ghastly minute of suspense, Shiley's
thoughts, strangely enough turned back to one thing. He did not
dash through the gamut of his life experiences nor regret all past
peccadilloes, as novelists inform us is generally the ultimate thought
in the supreme moment before a dash into eternity! He felt only a
maddening, itchingly bewitching desire to reach up to his coat pocket
and draw out that scent-laden page of typed note-paper which had been
glorified by its caress of the warm, bare bosom of the wonderful woman
who had so mysteriously drifted into the current of his life.

Then he heard a voice through the open window so close to his ears: it
was Shine Taylor's nasal whine.

"It's snowing, Reg. The air will do you good. What a gorgeous night for
a murder. Tell me now, what was the trouble?"

And Shirley swung, and swung and swung!

CHAPTER XXII. IN THE DOUBLE TRAP

Eternity had passed, the Judgment Day had been overlooked and new aeons
had gone their way, it seemed to the criminologist, when the voice was
audible again.

"Oh, all right. I just drew it down from the top. Tell me about your
doping. Who was the devil?"

He had been unobserved. By the grace of the fates, Warren's sudden
appearance had given him a better chance to hear their secrets, and
Taylor's own abstraction had dissipated any interest in the world beyond
the window. Again he lifted himself to the level of the sill, sure that
the creamy curtains upo