-"

"No, please, Mr. Boyne. Look at the angle of the roof that cuts from
view any one climbing from this window--not from the others."

We were all leaning in the window now, sticking our heads out, looking
down, looking up.

"I can't yet see how you get the rope and hook," I said. "Still seems to
me that an outside man posted on the roof to help in the getaway is more
likely."

"Maybe. I can't deal with things that are merely likely. It has to be a
fact--or nothing--for my use. I know that there wasn't any second man
because of the nicks Clayte's grappling hook has left in the cornice up
there."

"Nicks!" I said, and stood like a bound boy at a husking, without a word
to say for myself. Of course, in this impasse of the locked windows, my
men and I had had some excuse for our superficial examination of the
roof. Yet that she should have seen what we had passed over--seen it out
of the corner of her eye, and be laughing at me--was rather a dose to
swallow. She'd got her hair and her hat and veil to her liking, and she
prompted us,

"So now you want to get right down stairs--don't you--and go up through
that other building to its roof?"

I stared. She had my plan almost before I had made it.

At the St. Dunstan desk where I returned the keys, little Miss Wallace
had a question of her own to put to the clerk.

"How long ago was this building reroofed?" she asked with one of her
dark, softly glowing smiles.

"Reroofed?" repeated the puzzled clerk, much more civil to her than he
had been to me. "I don't know that it ever was. Certainly not in my
time, and I've been here all of four years."

"Not in four years? You're sure?"

"Sure of that, yes, miss. But I can find exactly." The fellow behind the
desk was rising with an eagerness to be of service to her, when she cut
him short with,

"Thank you. Four years would be exact enough for my purpose." And she
followed a puzzled detective and, if I may guess, an equally wondering
Worth Gilbert out into the street.

CHAPTER VII

THE GOLD NUGGET

The neighbor to the south of the St. Dunstan was the Gold Nugget Hotel,
a five story brick building and not at all pretentious as a hostelry. I
knew the place mildly, and my police training, even better than such
acquaintance as I had with this particular dump, told me what it was.
Through the windows we could see guests, Sunday papers littered about
them, half smoked cigars in their faces, and hats which had a