rning idly.

The stranger went to it, and knelt to peer inside. He pried ripped metal
away to get a clear sight into the crushed interior. He went flat on his
stomach and tried to penetrate the area between the crumpled car-top and
the bruised ground, and he wormed his way in a circle all around the car,
examining the wreck minutely.

The sound of a distant automobile engine became audible, and the
searching man mumbled a curse. With haste he scrambled to his feet and
made a quick inspection of the one wabbly-turning wheel. He stripped a
few shards of rubber away, picked at something in the bent metal rim, and
put whatever he found in his pocket. When his hand came from the pocket
it held a packet of paper matches. With an ear cocked at the road above
and the sound of the approaching car growing louder, the stranger struck
one match and touched it to the deck of matches. Then with a callous
gesture he tossed the flaring pack into a pool of spilled gasoline. The
fuel went up in a blunt _whoosh_!

The dancing flames revealed the face of Jimmy Holden's "Uncle" Paul
Brennan, his features in a mask that Jimmy Holden had never seen before.

With the determined air of one who knows that still another piece lies
hidden, Paul Brennan started to beat back and forth across the trail of
ruin. His light swept the ground like the brush of a painter, missing no
spot. Slowly and deliberately he went, paying no attention to the
creeping tongues of flame that crept along damp trails of spilled
gasoline.

Jimmy Holden felt helplessly alone.

For "Uncle" Paul Brennan was the laughing uncle, the golden uncle; his
godfather; the bringer of delightful gifts and the teller of fabulous
stories. Classmate of his father and admirer of his mother, a friend to
be trusted as he trusted his father and mother, as they trusted Paul
Brennan. Jimmy Holden did not and could not understand, but he could feel
the presence of menace. And so with the instinct of any trapped animal,
he curled inward upon himself and cringed.

Education and information failed. Jimmy Holden had been told and told and
instructed, and the words had been graven deep in his mind by the same
fabulous machine that his father used to teach him his grammar and his
vocabulary and his arithmetic and the horde of other things that made
Jimmy Holden what he was: "If anything happens to us, you must turn to
Paul Brennan!"

But nothing in his wealth of extraordinary knowledge covered