quiet street with all its atmosphere of some old New
England village and eternal peace. It seemed impossible that in the
house behind him there were--

He caught his breath. Somewhere in the house the muffled sound of a
struggle rose. He ran to the door, thinking of Ruth Tolliver at once,
and then he shrank back again, for a door was slammed open, and a
voice shouted--the voice of a man: "Help! Harrison! Lefty! Jerry!"

Other voices answered far away; footfalls began to sound. Ronicky
Doone knew that Harry Morgan, his victim, had at last recovered and
managed to work the cords off his feet or hands, or both.

Ronicky stepped back close to the door of the closet and waited. It
would mean a search, probably, this discovery that Morgan had been
struck down in his own room by an unknown intruder. And a search
certainly would be started at once. First there was confusion, and
then a clear, musical man's voice began to give orders: "Harrison,
take the cellar. Lefty, go up to the roof. The rest of you take the
rooms one by one."

The search was on.

"Don't ask questions," was the last instruction. "When you see someone
you don't know, shoot on sight, and shoot to kill. I'll do the
explaining to the police--you know that. Now scatter, and the man who
brings him down I'll remember. Quick!"

There was a new scurry of footfalls. Ronicky Doone heard them approach
the door of the girl's room, and he slipped into the closet. At once a
cloud of soft, cool silks brushed about him, and he worked back until
his shoulders had touched the wall at the back of the closet. Luckily
the enclosure was deep, and the clothes were hanging thickly from the
racks. It was sufficient to conceal him from any careless searcher,
but it would do no good if any one probed; and certainly these men
were not the ones to search carelessly.

In the meantime it was a position which made Ronicky grind his teeth.
To be found skulking among woman's clothes in a closet--to be dragged
out and stuck in the back, no doubt, like a rat, and thrown into the
river, that was an end for Ronicky Doone indeed!

He was on the verge of slipping out and making a mad break for the
door of the house and trying to escape by taking the men by surprise,
when he heard the door of the girl's room open.

"Some ex-pugilist," he heard a man's voice saying, and he recognized
it at once as belonging to him who had given the orders. He
recognized, also, that it must be the man with