corridor above; and then Wilbur's voice.

"Don't go--not yet," cried the old man. "I don't understand. How did you
know--who told you about the note?"

Jimmie Dale did not answer--he went on noiselessly down the stairs. His
mask was off now, and his lips curved into a strange little smile.

"I wish I knew," said Jimmie Dale wistfully to himself.

CHAPTER IV

THE COUNTERFEIT FIVE

It was still early in the evening, but a little after nine o'clock.
The Fifth Avenue bus wended its way, jouncing its patrons, particularly
those on the top seats, across town, and turned into Riverside Drive. A
short distance behind the bus, a limousine rolled down the cross street
leisurely, silently.

As the lights of passing craft on the Hudson and a myriad scintillating,
luminous points dotting the west shore came into view, Jimmie Dale rose
impulsively from his seat on the top of the bus, descended the little
circular iron ladder at the rear, and dropped off into the street. It
was only a few blocks farther to his residence on the Drive, and
the night was well worth the walk; besides, restless, disturbed, and
perplexed in mind, the walk appealed to him.

He stepped across to the sidewalk and proceeded slowly along. A month
had gone by and he had not heard a word from--HER. The break on West
Broadway, the murder of Metzer in Moriarty's gambling hell, the theft
of Markel's diamond necklace had followed each other in quick
succession--and then this month of utter silence, with no sign of her,
as though indeed she had never existed.

But it was not this temporary silence on her part that troubled Jimmie
Dale now. In the years that he had worked with this unknown, mysterious
accomplice of his whom he had never seen, there had been longer
intervals than a bare month in which he had heard nothing from her--it
was not that. It was the failure, total, absolute, and complete,
that was the only result for the month of ceaseless, unremitting,
doggedly-expended effort, even as it had been the result many times
before, in an attempt to solve the enigma that was so intimate and vital
a factor in his own life.

If he might lay any claims to cleverness, his resourcefulness, at
least, he was forced to admit, was no match for hers. She came, she went
without being seen--and behind her remained, instead of clews to her
identity, only an amazing, intangible mystery, that left him at times
appalled and dismayed. How did she know about those c