ttempt to struggle; she nursed no sense of open resentment against her
captors. The battery of her vital forces was depleted and depolarized.
She experienced only a faintly poignant sense of disappointment, of
indeterminate pique, as she realized that she was no longer a free
agent. Leaning back in the cushioned gloom, inert, impassive, with her
eyes half-closed, she seemed to be drifting through an eddying veil of
gray. The voices so close beside her sounded thin and far off. An
impression of unreality clung to her, an impression that she was
floating through an empty and rain-swept world from which all life and
warmth had withered.

"It's not _her_ I want--it's Durkin!" MacNutt was saying, with an oath,
as they swung around the corner into the blinking and serried lights of
Eighth avenue. "It's that damned groundhog I'm goin' to dig out yet!"

"Well, you can't go back _there_ after him!" protested Keenan.

"Can't I? Well, I'm goin' back, and I'm goin' to get that man, and I'm
goin' to fry him in his own juices!"

He pushed the woman's inert weight away from him, and leaned out from
under the cape, with a sharp word or two to Penfield's chauffeur. Then
he suddenly whistled and waved his arm.

"What are you doing that for?" Keenan demanded of him.

Keenan had caught the drooping figure, and was making an effort to
support it. His face, for some unknown reason, was almost as colorless
as the face that lay so passively against his rain-soaked shoulder.

"I'm goin' back!" declared MacNutt.

"Is it worth while--now?" demurred the other.

"I'm goin' to get my hooks on Durkin, even if I have to wade through
every raidin' gang in the precinct!"

"And then what?" deprecated Keenan.

"Then I'll meet you at Penfield's house, uptown, and the show will come
to a finish!"

"And what am I expected to do?" demanded Keenan, impatiently. For the
approaching four-wheeler had come to a standstill beside them, and
MacNutt was already out in the rain.

"You take care o' _that_!" he pointed a contemptuous finger toward the
motionless woman, "and mighty good care!"

"But how's all this going to help us out?"

"I'll show you, when the time comes. Here's the key for Penfield's
house. You'll find it nice and quiet and secluded there, and if I _do_
bring Durkin back with me, by heaven, you'll have the privilege o'
seein' a lurid end to this uncommonly lurid game!"

He tossed the key into the tonneau. Keenan picked i