n door which led to the front of the house. If
only he could break through there, reach a window, and signal the
inspector, but when he tore the curtains back he faced panels of an
exceptional stoutness, unquestionably built to deaden sound as well as
to form a competent barricade. He surrendered to the realization that he
was caught in the heart of this evil house. He wondered if Nora's
strategy retarded his captors.

A stealthy shuffling turned him from the door so that he faced the hall.
He had heard that same sound last night when the diminutive Chinaman had
approached him. Now he saw three of the same mold whose queues appeared
to writhe in the brown and stifling light as they glided along the hall,
their talon-like hands outstretched.

He guessed that the picture was intended to terrify, to impress upon him
the futility of resistance, yet while he had his revolver the success of
such an attack was remote.

"Stay where you are," he said, puzzled, trying to understand. "Come any
closer and I'll shoot."

The yellow mouths grinned. Then, when it was too late, Garth understood
the trick. A rush of colder air on his back informed him that the heavy
door was open. He stood between two fires. In fact, before he could
turn, his wrists were grasped. Two leering faces were close to him, but
as the revolver was wrenched from his hand, he pulled the trigger twice.
With the great door open those explosions might penetrate beyond the
house wall, might carry even to the inspector's men on the sidewalk.

They had at least aroused in the thick brown twilight of the house a
restless, incoherent stirring. Voices muttered. Steps pattered here and
there. A muffled bell commenced to complain. Through the curtains from
the inner room stepped a man--a white man with cruelly intelligent
features. Garth realized that he probably faced the head of this
organization which for so long had outwitted the police.

Garth laughed with an effort at bravado.

"That was a signal," he said. "Block's surrounded. They'll be in here
before you can light a joss stick. Call these things off, or you're as
good as in the chair."

Upstairs the stirrings increased. Someone shrieked.

Nora appeared at the man's elbow. Her face was twisted with an abandoned
terror.

"Men in the yard!" she gasped.

Garth guessed that it was a part of her scheme to turn the hunt from
him, to give him that one moment he needed. And it worked. He felt his
hands released