ng: "Longer
than I have." He transferred his gaze to the pretty woman. "You two were
her guests, weren't you?" he asked.

The visitors glanced at each other, half amused, half aghast. The tone
and implication of the question had been too significant to be
misunderstood. "Well, of all extraordinary--" began one of them under
her breath; and the other said more loudly, "I really beg--" and then
she, too, broke off.

They went out. "Chatelaine and knightly defender," commented the younger
one in the refuge of the outer office. "Have we been dumped off a train
into the midst of the Middle Ages? Where do you get station-agents like
that?"

"The one at our suburban station chews tobacco and says 'Marm' through
his nose."

Banneker emerged, seeking the conductor of the special with a message.

"He is rather a beautiful young thing, isn't he?" she added.

Returning, he helped them on the train with their hand-luggage. When the
bustle and confusion of dispatching an extra were over, he sat down to
think. But not of Miss Camilla Van Arsdale. That was an old story,
though its chapters were few, and none of them as potentially eventful
as this intrusion of Vanneys and female chatterers.

It was the molasses pie that stuck in his mind. There was no time to
make another. Further, the thought of depredators hanging about
disturbed him. That shack of his was full of Aladdin treasures,
delivered by the summoned genii of the Great Book. Though it was secured
by Little Guardian locks and fortified with the Scarem Buzz alarm, he
did not feel sure of it. He decided to sleep there that night with his
.45-caliber Sure-shot revolver. Let them come again; he'd give 'em a
lesson! On second thought, he rebaited the window-ledge with a can of
Special Juicy Apricot Preserve. At ten o'clock he turned in, determined
to sleep lightly, and immediately plunged into fathomless depths of
unconsciousness, lulled by a singing wind and the drone of the rain.

A light, flashing across his eyes, awakened him. For a moment he lay,
dazed, confused by the gentle and unfamiliar oscillations of his
hammock. Another flicker of light and a rumble of thunder brought him to
his full senses. The rain had degenerated into a casual drizzle and the
wind had withdrawn into the higher areas. He heard some one moving
outside.

Very quietly he reached out to the stand at his elbow, got his revolver
and his flashlight, and slipped to the floor. The malefactor without