e. Shake hands with them, Spider--Bob Marvin--Harry Stead."

"Glad to know you, gents," said Spider Jack, with a handgrip apiece.

The chauffeur lowered his voice a little.

"I suppose we're alone here, eh, Spider? Yes? Well, then, you know what
I've come for--that package--Marvin and Stead, here, are the ones that
are in on it with me. Get it for me, will you, Spider?"

"Sure--Mr. Johansson!" Spider grinned. "Sure! Come on into the back room
and make yourselves comfortable. I'll be mabbe five minutes, or so."

Jimmie Dale's brain was whirling. What did it mean? He could not seem
to understand. His mind seemed to refuse its functions. Travers, the
chauffeur--ALIVE! He drew in his breath sharply. That curtain in the
corner! He must see this out now! They were coming! Quick, noiseless,
he stole along the side of the wall, reached the corner, and slipped in
behind the curtain, as Spider Jack, striking a match, entered the room.

Spider Jack lighted the gas, and, as the others followed behind him,
waved them toward the chairs around the table.

"I'll just ask you gents not to leave the room," he said meaningly, over
his shoulder, as he stepped toward the rear door. "It's kind of a fad of
mine to keep some things even from my wife!"

"All right, Spider--I understand," the chauffeur returned readily.

Jimmie Dale's knife cut a tiny slit in the cretonne on a level with his
eyes. The three men had seated themselves at the table, and appeared to
be listening intently. Spider Jack's footsteps echoed back as he crossed
the rear room, sounded dull and muffled descending the stoop outside,
and died away.

"I told you it wasn't in the house!" the man who had been introduced as
Stead laughed shortly. "We wasted the hour we had here."

The third man spoke crisply, incisively, to the chauffeur.

"Turn down that gas jet a little! You've got across with it so far--but
you can't stand a searchlight, Clarke!"

And at the words, in a flash, the meaning of it, all of it, to the last
detail that was spelling death, ruin, and disaster for her, the Tocsin,
for himself as well, burst upon Jimmie Dale. That VOICE! He would have
known it, recognised it, among a thousand--it was the masked man of the
night before, the leader, the head of the Crime Club! And it was not
Travers there at all! He remembered now, too well, that second room they
had showed him in the Crime Club--its multitude of disguises, though
in this case they had the dea