his seemed able to see as well in the dark as in the light. He threw up
his left hand and caught the other's wrist before that deadly blow he
aimed could descend and at the same instant he dashed his own clenched
fist full into the burglar's face.

As it happened, more by good luck than intended aim, the blow took him
on the point of the chin. He dropped instantly, collapsing in on himself
as falls a pole-axed bullock, and lay, unconscious, in a crumpled heap
on the ground.

For a little Dunn waited, crouching above him and listening for the
least sound to show that their brief scuffle had been heard.

But it had all passed nearly as silently as quickly. Within the house
everything remained silent, there was no sound audible, no gleam of
light to show that any of the inmates had been disturbed.

Taking from his pocket a small electric flash-lamp Dunn turned its light
on his victim.

He seemed a man of middle age with a brutal, heavy-jawed face and a low,
receding forehead. His lips, a little apart, showed yellow, irregular
teeth, of which two at the front of the lower jaw had been broken, and
the scar of an old wound, running from the corner of his left eye down
to the centre of his cheek, added to the sinister and forbidding aspect
he bore.

His build was heavy and powerful and near by, where he had dropped it
when he fell, lay the jemmy with which he had struck at Dunn. It was
a heavy, ugly-looking thing, about two feet in length and with one end
nearly as sharp as that of a chisel.

Dunn picked it up and felt it thoughtfully.

"Just as well I got my blow in first," he mused. "If he had landed that
fairly on my skull I don't think anything else in this world would ever
have interested me any more."

Stooping over the unconscious man, he felt in his pockets and found an
ugly-looking revolver, fully loaded, a handful of cartridges, a coil
of thin rope, an electric torch, a tiny dark lantern no bigger than a
match-box, and so arranged that the single drop of light it permitted
to escape fell on one spot only, a bunch of curiously-shaped wires Dunn
rightly guessed to be skeleton keys used for opening locks quietly,
together with some tobacco, a pipe, a little money, and a few other
personal belongings of no special interest or significance.

These Dunn replaced where he had found them, but the revolver, the rope,
the torch, the dark lantern, and the bunch of wires he took possession
of.

He noticed also th