ut a table, playing cards.

"Who's there?" cried Shalleg. Then, as he saw Joe hurrying away, he
added: "Hold on, Matson. I sent for you. I want to see you!"

"But I don't want to see you!" Joe called back over his shoulder.

"Say, this is straight goods!" cried Shalleg, pushing back his chair
from the table, the legs scraping over the bare boards of the floor.
"It's all right. I've got a chance to do your friend Rad Chase a good
turn, and you can help in it. Wait a minute!"

But Joe fled, unheeding. Then Shalleg, seeing that his plans were about
to miscarry, yelled:

"Stop him, somebody!"

Joe was running along the dim hallway. As he reached the outside steps
the youth who had first accosted him turned, and made a grab for him.

"What's your hurry?" he demanded. "Hold on!"

Joe did not answer, but, eluding the outstretched hands, made the
sidewalk in a jump and ran up the street. He was fleet of foot--his
training gave him that--and soon he was safe from pursuit, though, as a
matter of fact, no one came after him. Shalleg and his tools were hardly
ready for such desperate measures yet, it seemed.

Joe passed a side street, and, looking up it, saw at the other end, a
more brilliantly lighted thoroughfare. Arguing rightly that he would be
safer there, Joe turned up, and soon was in a more decent neighborhood.
His heart was beating rapidly, partly from the run, and partly through
apprehension, for he had an underlying fear that it would not have been
for his good to have gone into the room where Shalleg was.

"Whew! That was a happening," remarked Joe, as he slowed down. "I wonder
what it all meant? Shalleg must be getting desperate. But why does he
keep after me? Unless he thinks I am responsible for his not getting a
place on the Cardinals. It's absurd to think that, but it does seem so.
I wonder what I'd better do?"

Joe tried to reason it out, and then came the recollection of Rad.

"I'll telephone to the hotel, and see if he's come back," he said.
"Then, when I meet him, I'll tell him all that happened. It's a queer
go, sure enough."

A telephone message to the hotel clerk brought the information that Rad
had telephoned in himself, saying that he had been unexpectedly
detained, and would meet Joe at the theatre entrance.

"That's good!" thought our hero. For one moment, after running away from
the gloomy house, he had had a notion that perhaps Rad had also been
lured there. Now he knew his friend was s