t was an orderly, well-conducted
household. You can ask any of the neighbors. Meals were cooked and,
what's more, they were eaten; there was none of this 'here one day and
gone the next' business."

"Nonsense," I observed. "You're tired, that's all, Mrs. Klopton. And I
wish you would go out; I want to bathe."

"That's not all," she said with dignity, from the doorway. "Women coming
and going here, women whose shoes I am not fit--I mean, women who are
not fit to touch my shoes--coming here as insolent as you please, and
asking for you."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "What did you tell them--her, whichever it
was?"

"Told her you were sick in a hospital and wouldn't be out for a year!"
she said triumphantly. "And when she said she thought she'd come in and
wait for you, I slammed the door on her."

"What time was she here?"

"Late last night. And she had a light-haired man across the street. If
she thought I didn't see him, she don't know me." Then she closed the
door and left me to my bath and my reflections.

At five minutes before eight I was at the Incubator, where I found
Hotchkiss and McKnight. They were bending over a table, on which lay
McKnight's total armament--a pair of pistols, an elephant gun and an old
cavalry saber.

"Draw up a chair and help yourself to pie," he said, pointing to the
arsenal. "This is for the benefit of our friend Hotchkiss here, who says
he is a small man and fond of life."

Hotchkiss, who had been trying to get the wrong end of a cartridge into
the barrel of one of the revolvers, straightened himself and mopped his
face.

"We have desperate people to handle," he said pompously, "and we may
need desperate means."

"Hotchkiss is like the small boy whose one ambition was to have people
grow ashen and tremble at the mention of his name," McKnight jibed. But
they were serious enough, both of them, under it all, and when they had
told me what they planned, I was serious, too.

"You're compounding a felony," I remonstrated, when they had explained.
"I'm not eager to be locked away, but, by Jove, to offer her the stolen
notes in exchange for Sullivan!"

"We haven't got either of them, you know," McKnight remonstrated, "and
we won't have, if we don't start. Come along, Fido," to Hotchkiss.

The plan was simplicity itself. According to Hotchkiss, Sullivan was
to meet Bronson at Mrs. Conway's apartment, at eight-thirty that night,
with the notes. He was to be paid there and the p