ervants--they evidently had not heard him close
the door behind him. Discipline was relaxed somewhat, it was quite
apparent, with Jason, that peer of butlers, away. Jason, poor chap, was
in the hospital. Typhoid, they had thought it at first, though it had
turned out to be some milder form of infection. He would be back in a
few days now; but meanwhile he missed the old man sorely from the house.

He reached the landing, and, turning, went along the hall to the door of
his own particular den, opened the door, closed it behind him--and in an
instant the keen, agile brain, trained to the little things that never
escaped it, that daily held his life in the balance, was alert. The room
was unusually dark, even for night-time. It was as though the window
shades had been closely drawn--a thing Jason never did. But then Jason
wasn't there! Jimmie Dale, smiling then a little quizzically at himself,
reached up for the electric-light switch beside the door, pressed
it--and, his finger still on the button, whipped his automatic from his
pocket with his other hand. THE ROOM WAS STILL IN DARKNESS.

The smile on Jimmie Dale's lips was gone, for his lips now had closed
together in a tight, drawn line. The lights in the rest of the house, as
witness the reception hall, were in order. This was no ACCIDENT! Silent,
motionless, he stood there, listening. Was he trapped at last--in his
own house! By whom? The police? The thugs of the underworld? It made
little difference--the end would differ only in the method by which it
was attained! What was that! Was there a slight stir, a movement at the
lower end of the room--or was it his imagination? His hand fell from the
electric-light switch to the doorknob behind his back. Slowly, without
a sound, it began to turn under his slim, tapering fingers, whose deft,
sensitive touch had made him known and feared as the master cracksman of
them all; and, as noiselessly, the door began to open.

It was like a duel--a duel of silence. What was the intruder, whoever he
might be, waiting for? The abortive click of the electric-light switch,
to say nothing of the opening of the door when he had entered, was
evidence enough that he was there. Was the other trying to place him
exactly through the darkness to make sure of his attack! The door was
open now. And suddenly Jimmie Dale laughed easily aloud--and on the
instant shifted his position.

"Well?" inquired Jimmie Dale coolly from the other side of the
t