Durkin's first feeling, as he scrambled to his feet and half-stumbled,
half-groped his way along the narrow, tunnel-like passage, was an
untimely and impotent and almost delirious passion to get out into the
open and fight--fight to the last, if need be, for all that narrowing
life still held for him. This feeling was followed by a quick sense of
frustration as he realized his momentary helplessness and how
comprehensive and relentless seemed the machinery of intrigue opposing
him.

Yet, he told himself with that lightning-like rapidity of thought which
came to him at such moments of peril, however intricate and vast the
machinery, however carefully planned the line of impending campaign,
the human element would be an essential part of it. And his last
forlorn hope, his final fighting chance, lay in the fact that wherever
the human element entered there also entered weakness and passion and
the possibility of accident.

What now remained to him, he warned himself as he hurriedly locked and
barred the two steel doors which shut off the first and second
passageway, was to think quickly and act decisively. Somewhere, at
some unforeseen moment, his chance might still come to him.

As for himself, he felt that he was safe enough, for the time being.
The officer who had detected him in the manhole would be sure to follow
up a case so temptingly suspicious. The police, in turn, could take
open advantage of an intrusion so obviously unauthorized and ominous as
his own, and find in it ample excuse for investigating a quarter which
for many months must have been under suspicion. But, under any
circumstances, well guarded as that poolroom fortress stood, its
resistance could be only a matter of time, and of strictly limited
time, once the reserves were on the scene.

Durkin's first thought, accordingly, was of the roof, for, so far as he
knew, all escape from the ground floor was even then cut off. Yet the
first door leading from the vault chamber he found to be steel-bound
and securely locked. He surmised, with a gasp of consternation, that
the doors above him would be equally well secured. He remembered that
Penfield never did things by halves, and he felt that his only escape
lay in that upward flight.

So he saw that it was to be a grim race in demolition; that while he
was to gnaw and eat his way upward through steel and brick, like a
starving rat boring its passage up through the chambers of a huge
granary, his