"We're against it--HARD!" he said, with a mirthless laugh. Then, his
lips tightening: "But we'll try another tack--the chauffeur--Travers.
Though even here the Crime Club has a day's start of us, even if last
night they knew no more about the whereabouts of that package than we
know now. I'm afraid of it! The chances are more than even that they've
already got it. If they were able to catch Travers as the chauffeur,
they would have had something tangible to work back from"--Jimmie Dale
was talking more to himself than to the Tocsin now, as though he were
muttering his thoughts aloud. "How did they get track of him? When?
Where? What has it led to? And what in Heaven's name," he burst out
suddenly, "is this box number four-two-eight!"

"A safety-deposit vault, perhaps, that he has taken somewhere," she
hazarded.

Jimmie Dale laughed mirthlessly again.

"That is the one definite thing I do know--that it isn't!" he said
positively. "It is nothing of that kind. It was half-past ten o'clock
at night when I met him, and he said that he had intended going back for
the package if it had been safe to do so. Deposit vaults are not open
at that hour. The package is, or was, if they have not already got it,
readily accessible--and at any hour. Now go over everything again, every
detail that passed between you and Travers. He let you know that he was
back in New York by means of a 'personal,' you said. What else was in
that 'personal' besides the telephone number and the hour you were to
call him? Anything?"

"Nothing that will help us any," she replied colourlessly. "There were
simply the words 'northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place,'
and the signature that we had agreed upon, the two first and two last
letters of the alphabet transposed--BAZY."

"I see," said Jimmie Dale quickly. "And over the 'phone he completed his
message. Clever enough!"

"Yes," she said. "In that way, if any one were listening, or overhead
the plan, there could be little harm come of it, for the essential
feature of all, the place of rendezvous, was not mentioned. It has not
been Travers' fault that this happened--and in spite of every precaution
it has cost him his life. He wanted nothing to give them a clew to my
whereabouts; he was trying to guard against the slightest evidence that
would associate us one with the other. He even warned me over the
'phone not to tell him how, where, or the mode of life I was living. And
naturally, he