st disturbance in that house before he comes. And,
equally, after he has gone in, whether I have come out or not, at the
first indication of anything unusual you are to get away at once. You
understand--Marie?"

"Yes," she said. "But--but, Jimmie, you--"

"Just one thing more." He smiled at her reassuringly. "Did the Magpie
say anything about how he intended to get in?"

"Yes--by the side away from the corner of the street," she said
tremulously. "You see, there's quite a space between the house and the
one next door; and, besides, the house next door is closed up, there's
nobody there, the family has gone away for the summer. The library
window there is low enough to reach from the ground."

For a moment longer he held her close to him, as though he could not let
her go--then bent and kissed her passionately. And in that moment all
the emotions he had known as he had walked blindly from Spider Jack's
that night surged again upon him; and that voice was whispering,
whispering, whispering: "It is the only way--it is the only way."

And then, not daring to trust his voice, he released her suddenly,
and stepped back out from under the stoop--and the next instant he was
across the deserted avenue. Another, and he had slipped through the
iron gates that opened on the street driveway--and in yet another he was
crouched close up against the front door of the LaSalle mansion.

It was a large house, a very large house, one of the few that, even
amid the wealth and luxury of that quarter, boasted its own grounds, and
those so restricted as scarcely to deserve the name; but it was set far
enough back from the street to escape the radius of the street lamps,
and so guarantee in its shadows security from observation. It was not
the Magpie's way, the front door--the obvious to the Magpie and his ilk
was a thing always to be shunned. Jimmie Dale's lips were set in a
grim smile, as his fingers worked with lightning speed, now taking this
instrument and now that from the leather pockets in the girdle beneath
his shirt--the penitentiaries were full of Magpies who shunned the
obvious!

Very slowly, very cautiously the door opened. He listened breathlessly,
tensely. The door closed again--behind him. He was inside now.
Stillness! Blackness! Not a sound! A minute went by--another. And then,
as he stood there, strained, listening, the silence itself began, it
seemed, to palpitate, and pound, pound, pound, and be full of strange
noise