eeming puzzle possessed the
same invisible spring which had made the one handled by James Holmes so
dangerous?

Certain as to the place he would be found in next, I made a short cut to
an obscure little saloon in Nassau Street, where I took up my stand in
a spot convenient for seeing without being seen. In ten minutes he was
standing at the bar asking for a drink.

"Whiskey!" he cried, "straight."

It was given him; but as he set the empty glass down on the counter, he
saw lying before him another of the steel springs, and was so
confounded by the sight that the proprietor, who had put it there at my
instigation, thrust out his hand toward him as if half afraid he would
fall.

"Where did that--that _thing_ come from?" stammered John Graham,
ignoring the other's gesture and pointing with a trembling hand at the
seemingly insignificant bit of wire between them.

"Didn't it drop from your coat-pocket?" inquired the proprietor. "It
wasn't lying here before you came in."

With a horrible oath the unhappy man turned and fled from the place. I
lost sight of him after that for three hours, then I suddenly came upon
him again. He was walking up town with a set purpose in his face that
made him look more dangerous than ever. Of course I followed him,
expecting him to turn towards Fifty-ninth Street, but at the corner of
Madison Avenue and Forty-seventh Street he changed his mind and dashed
toward Third Avenue. At Park Avenue he faltered and again turned north,
walking for several blocks as if the fiends were behind him. I began to
think that he was but attempting to walk off his excitement, when, at a
sudden rushing sound in the cut beside us, he stopped and trembled. An
express train was shooting by. As it disappeared in the tunnel beyond,
he looked about him with a blanched face and wandering eye; but his
glance did not turn my way, or if it did, he failed to attach any
meaning to my near presence.

He began to move on again and this time towards the bridge spanning
the cut. I followed him very closely. In the center of it he paused and
looked down at the track beneath him. Another train was approaching. As
it came near he trembled from head to foot, and catching at the railing
against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a
puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping
with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had
taken the form of a spiral and