uctions had been sent to and from their headquarters.
To-night, they declared, the shop had ceased to be useful. No trail
would lead from it to the central force that worked in New York.

As they drove home in a taxicab the inspector bitterly lamented the fact
to Garth and Nora.

"We'll get to it later," Garth said.

"If only things hadn't gone wrong at the last minute!" Nora cried. "If
only I might have taken the bomb and talked to the man who brought it!
Even with the others! For it's clear those fellows will give nothing
away now. We can blame poor Marvin that I never had a chance."

"What do you mean?" Garth asked. "You haven't told us what happened when
I left you by the west door."

"You remember we had got Marvin on a sofa in the hall," Nora answered.
"He must have seen you close the door when you went in the library to
warn Alsop and the others, because from my hiding place I saw him get
up, and, with no appearance of an injured man, sneak along the wall to
the stairs. I followed him up, and, Jim, I found him on the floor in his
room again, but this time he didn't hear me, and he was talking. Then I
saw his whole game. There was a dictaphone hidden beneath the bed with
which he had probably communicated with those outside the house for
days. We had stopped him the first time when he had just learned of my
intended masquerade. Don't you see? He had to tell them that. We caught
him, and he scratched himself to throw us off the track with the details
of another case like Brown's. Now I heard him tell everything--just what
I was to do, and that Alsop and the others were in the library. I ran
downstairs, but when I reached the lower hall I saw him coming after me.
So I said I had changed my mind, that I was afraid, that I wanted only
to leave the house. I went to the kitchen and slipped out, intending to
get to you, Jim, with my information. But I knew these men were in the
grounds, and I had to go carefully. When I crept up to the library
window I thought I saw you. Then the telephone bell rang, and I couldn't
make you hear."

"Of course," Garth said, "Marvin, coming down, had seen that the library
door was open, and that there was no longer a light there. It was too
late to use the dictaphone again, but he knew he must change his
instructions and tell them not to waste the bomb in the library. So he
threw on his disguise and rushed to the west door as he had originally
planned, in too much of a hurry to dream