ured so much as a move to leave his perch, Chick would
have been after him like a terrier after a rat.

At the end of five minutes, however, Dalton made a preliminary move. He
hitched the reins around the whipstock, then stared for a second or two
toward Venner's house, fifty yards away through the surrounding park.

Then he suddenly swung round on his seat, and growled ferociously at
Chick, at the same time signifying with gestures the communication he
imagined would not be verbally understood:

"See here, you swarthy-faced snake fiend, I'm bound up yonder, to see
what's going on! You sit where you are, d'ye hear, and I'll be back in a
jiffy, if things are all right! If they're not, ---- you, I'll be back
just the same--with a gun!"

As if moved by a wish to understand him, Chick arose in the body of the
carriage while Dalton was thus declaring himself. He heard and
understood, all right, and it necessitated his getting in his work a
little earlier than was planned. For Chick would take no such chances as
this that Nick's operations in the house would be interfered with.

As the last word left Dalton's lips, the arm of the detective shot out
through the darkness, and closed with the grip of a vise around the
ruffian's neck, throttling him to silence.

"With a gun, eh?" Chick fiercely muttered, yanking Dalton backward into
the body of the carriage. "You open your lips again for so much as a
whisper, and I'll close them with six inches of cold steel."

In the glare of a distant lightning flash, Dalton, though struggling
furiously, caught the gleam of a polished blade at his throat, and a
glimpse of the flaming eyes in the face above him.

He shrank, gasping for breath, as the truth dawned upon him; and then
the voice of another sounded close beside the open carriage.

"Want any help, Chick?"

Nick's youthful assistant, to whom a wire had been sent from the house
of the snake charmer, had appeared like an apparition out of the
roadside gloom.

"Ah! you're here, Patsy!" muttered Chick. "Yes. Clap a gag into this
cur's mouth. We'll choke off his pipes first of all."

Dalton uttered a vicious growl, then felt the point of the knife pierce
the skin at his throat, and he wisely relapsed into silence.

For Patsy to fish out a gag, and bind it securely in the scoundrel's
mouth, was the work of a few moments only.

Then Chick jerked Dalton up from the rear cushion and out into the road,
in far less time than is ta