eleton
of the nine-fingered man hung, was Dollops, bleeding and faint, and with
a score of tooth-marks on his neck and throat, and 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' 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 think of a little rat like
this?"

They came forward at his word, and, looking down, saw that the figure he
was bending over was the figure of Philip Bawdrey.

"Oh!" gulped Mrs. Bawdrey, and then shut her two hands over her eyes and
fell away weak and shivering. "Oh, Mr. Cleek, it can't be--it can't! To
do a thing like that?"

"Oh, he'd have done worse, the little reptile, if he hadn't been pulled
up short," said Cleek in reply. "He'd have hanged you for it, if it had
gone the way he planned. You look in your boxes; you, too, Captain
Travers. I'll wager each of you finds a phial of Ayupee hidden among
them somewhere. Came in to put more of the cursed stuff on the ninth
finger of the skeleton, so that it would be ready for the next time,
didn't he, Dollops?"

"Yes, Gov'nor. I waited for him behind the case just as you told me to,
sir, and when he ups and slips the finger of the skilligan into the neck
of the bottle, I nips out and whacks the bracelet on him. But he was too
quick for me, sir, so I only got one on; and then, the hound, he turns
on me like a blessed hyena, sir, and begins a-chawin' of me windpipe. I
say, Gov'nor, take off his silver wristlets, will you, sir, and lemme
have jist ten minutes with him on my own? Five for me, sir, and five for
his poor old dad!"

"Not I," said Cleek. "I wouldn't let you soil those honest lands of
yours on his vile little body, Dollops. Thought you had a noodle to deal
with, didn't you, Mr.