get a
chance to sleep until dinner time to-night."

The hours that followed were hours of sound and much-needed sleep for
Jimmie Dale, and from which he awoke only on Jason's entrance that
evening with the dinner tray.

"I've slept like a log, Jason!" he cried briskly, as he leaped out of
bed. "Anything new--anything happened?"

"No, sir; not a thing," Jason answered. "Only, Master Jim, sir"--the old
man twisted his hands nervously--"I--you'll excuse my saying so, sir--I
do hope you'll be careful to-night, sir. I can't help being afraid that
something'll happen to you, Master Jim."

"Nonsense, Jason!" Jimmie Dale laughed cheerfully. "There's nothing
going to happen--to me! You go ahead now and stay with the servants, and
get them out of the road at the proper time."

He bathed, dressed, ate his dinner, and was slipping cartridges into the
magazine of his automatic when, within a minute or two of eight o'clock,
Jason's whisper came from the doorway.

"It's all clear now, Master Jim, sir."

"Right!" Jimmie Dale responded--and followed Jason down the stairway,
and to the head of the cellar stairs.

Here Jason halted.

"God keep you, Master Jim!" said the old man huskily. "Good-night,
Jason," Jimmie Dale answered softly; and, with a reassuring squeeze on
the other's arm, went on down to the cellar.

Here he moved quickly, noiselessly across to the window--not the
window of the night before, but another of the same description, almost
directly beneath the one in his den above, that faced the garage and lay
in the line of that black shadow path between the two buildings. Deftly,
cautiously without sound, a half inch, an inch at a time he opened it.
He stood listening, then. A minute passed. Then he heard Benson open and
shut the back door; then Benson in the yard; and then Benson's voice in
a muttered and irritable growl, talking to himself, as he stamped around
on the ground.

With a lithe, agile movement, Jimmie Dale pulled himself up and through
the window--and began to creep rapidly on hands and knees toward
the garage. It was dark, intensely dark. He could barely distinguish
Benson's form, though, as he passed the other, the slight sounds he made
drowned out by the chauffeur's angry mumblings, he could have reached
out and touched Benson easily.

He gained the interior of the garage, and, as Benson, came on again,
stepped lightly into the car, lifted the seat, and wriggled his way
inside.

It was close