er. And, at the end, for a little while she was
silent; then in a strained, impulsive way she asked again:

"The chauffeur--you are sure--you are positive that he is dead?"

"Yes," said Jimmie Dale grimly; "I am sure." And then the pent-up flood
of questions burst from his lips. Who was the chauffeur? The package,
the box numbered 428, and John Johansson? And the Crime Club? And
the issue at stake? The danger, the peril that surrounded her? And
she--above all--more than anything else--about herself--her strange
life, its mystery?

She checked him with a strangely wistful touch of her finger upon his
lips, with a queer, pathetic shake of her head.

"No, Jimmie; not that way. You would never understand. I cannot--"

"But I am to know--now! Surely I am to know NOW!" he cried, a sudden
sense of dismay upon him. Three years! Three years--and always the
"next" time! "I must know now, if I am to help you!"

She smiled a little wanly at him, as she drew herself away, and,
dropping into a chair, placed her elbows on the rickety table, cupping
her chin in her hands.

"Yes; you are to know now," she said, almost as though she were talking
to herself; then, with a swift intake of her breath, impulsively:
"Jimmie! Jimmie! I had thought that it would be all so different
when--when you came. That--that I would have nothing to fear--for
you--for me--because--it would be all over. And now you are here,
Jimmie--and, oh, thank God for you!--but I feel to-night almost--almost
as though it were hopeless, that--that we were beaten."

"Beaten!" He stepped quickly to the table, and sat down, and took one
of her hands away from her face to hold it in both his own. "Beaten!"
he laughed out defiantly; then, playfully, soothingly, to reassure her:
"Jimmie Dale and Larry the Bat and the Gray Seal and the Tocsin--BEATEN!
And after we have just scored the last trick!"

"But we do not hold many trumps, Jimmie," she answered gravely. "You
have seen something of this Crime Club's power, its methods, its
merciless, cruel, inhuman cunning, and you, perhaps, think that you
understand--but you have not begun to grasp the extent of either that
power or cunning. This horrible organisation has been in existence for
many years. I do not know how many. I only know that the men of whom
it is composed are not ordinary criminals, that they do not work in
the ordinary way--to-day, they set the machinery of fraud, deception,
robbery, and murder in motion th