e main road, then back again slowly, as though
measuring an angle. Jimmie Dale had no intention of making his escape by
the roundabout way in which he had been forced to come in order to make
certain of locating the right house, the second one from the gates--and
he was getting the bearings of his car and the wagon track now.

"I guess that'll be about right," Jimmie Dale muttered finally. "And now
for--"

He slipped along the side of the house and halted where, almost on a
level with the ground, the French windows of the dining room opened on
the lawn. Jimmie Dale tried them gently. They were locked.

An indulgent smile crept to Jimmie Dale's lips--and his hand crept in
under his vest. It came out again--not empty--and Jimmie Dale leaned
close against the window. There was a faint, almost inaudible,
scratching sound, then a slight, brittle crack--and Jimmie Dale laid a
neat little four-inch square of glass on the ground at his feet. Through
the aperture he reached in his hand, turned the key that was in the
lock, turned the bolt-rod handle, pushed the doors silently open--wide
open--left them open--and stepped into the room.

He could see quite well within, thanks to the moonlight. Jimmie Dale
produced a black silk mask from one of the little leather pockets,
adjusted it carefully over his face, and crossed the room to the hall
door. He opened this--wide open--left it open--and entered the hall.

Here it was dark--a pitch blackness. He stood for a moment,
listening--utter silence. And then--alert, strained, tense in an
instant, Jimmie Dale crouched against the wall--and then he smiled a
little grimly. It was only some one coughing upstairs--Markel--in his
sleep, perhaps, or, perhaps--in wakefulness.

"I'm a fool!" confided Jimmie Dale to himself, as he recognised the
cough that he had heard at the club. "And yet--I don't know. One's
nerves get sort of taut. Pretty stiff business. If I'm ever caught, the
penitentiary sentence I get will be the smallest part of what's to pay."

A round button of light played along the wall from the flashlight in
his hand--just for an instant--and all was blackness again. But in that
instant Jimmie Dale was across the hall, and his fingers were tracing
the telephone connection from the instrument to where the wires
disappeared in the baseboard of the floor. Another instant, and he had
severed the wires with a pair of nippers.

Again the quick, firefly gleam of light to locate the