he heart? Ah! who? It
is true, if you have not heard it, that once upon a time there was bad
blood between Mr. Murdock and him; that Mr. Murdock is a family
connection; but even he, oh, even he---- Tell me--tell me, Mr. Cleek?"

"Mrs. Bawdrey, I can't just yet," he made reply. "In my heart I am as
certain of it as though the criminal had confessed; but I am waiting for
a sign, and, until that comes, absolute proof is not possible. That it
will come, and may, indeed, come at any moment now that it is quite
dark, I am very certain. When it does----"

He stopped and threw up a warning hand. As he spoke a queer thudding
sound struck one dull note through the stillness of the house. He stood,
bent forward, listening, absolutely breathless; then, on the other side
of the wall, there rippled and rolled a something that was like the
sound of a struggle between two voiceless animals, and--the sign that he
awaited had come!

"Follow me quickly, as noiselessly as you can. Let no one hear, let no
one see!" he said in a breath of excitement. Then he sprang cat-like to
the door, whirled it open, scudded round the angle of the passage to the
entrance of the room where the fraudulent collection was kept, and went
in with the silent fleetness of a panther. And a moment later, when
Captain Travers and Mrs. Bawdrey swung in through the door and joined
him, they came upon a horrifying sight.

For there, leaning against the open door of the case where the skeleton
of the nine-fingered man hung, was Dollops, bleeding and faint, and with
a score of toothmarks on his neck and throat. On the floor at his feet
Cleek was kneeling on the writhing figure of a man who bit and tore and
snarled like a cornered wolf and fought with teeth and feet and hands
alike in the wild effort to get free from the grip of destiny. A locked
handcuff clamped one wrist, and from it swung, at the end of the
connecting chain, its unlocked mate; the marks of Dollops's fists were
on his lips and cheeks, and at the foot of the case, where the hanging
skeleton doddered and shook to the vibration of the floor, lay a
shattered phial of deep-blue glass.

"Got you, you hound!" said Cleek through his teeth as he wrenched the
man's two wrists together and snapped the other handcuff into place.
"You beast of ingratitude--you Judas! Kissing and betraying like any
other Iscariot! And a dear old man like that! Look here, Mrs. Bawdrey;
look here, Captain Travers; what do you thin