ran, and pattered on to the drive. Behind them, a big
car was just spinning past the gate. As it came leaping along the drive
Alden ran up the four stone steps to the door and jammed his thumb hard
against the bell button.

At the same moment, Martin whistled shrilly, three times.

Whereupon affairs began to move in meteoric fashion.

Several people came bundling out of the car. From the gloom all about it
there sounded the scamper of hurrying feet.

The door was thrown open, and a blaze of light swept the steps.

Alden leapt over the threshold, pistol in hand, yelling at the same
time:

"Follow me, boys!"

Like the swoop of heated play to a goal burst a human wave upon the
steps. Oppner and Martin were swept irresistibly upward and inward. They
were surrounded, penned in. Then:

"Break away, you goldarned idiot!" rose Alden's angry voice ahead.

The lights went out. The door slammed.

"Alden!" cried Mr. Oppner. "Alden!"

Someone pinioned him from behind.

"There's a mistake, you blamed ass!" he screamed. "I ain't one of 'em!
Alden! Martin!"

A hand was pressed firmly over his mouth, and with veins swelling up and
eyes starting from his head in impotent fury, Mr. Oppner was hustled
forward through the darkness.

Around him a number of people seemed to be moving, and when he found his
feet upon stairs, several unseen hands were outstretched to thrust him
upward. The darkness was impenetrable.

Apparently the stair was uncarpeted, as likewise was the corridor along
which he presently found himself proceeding. The echo of many footsteps
rang through the house. It sounded shell-like, empty. Then it seemed to
him that not so many were about him. He felt his revolver slide from his
hip-pocket. He was pushed gently forward, and a door closed behind him.
The sound of footsteps died away with that of whispering voices.

Came a sudden angry roar, muffled, distant, he thought in the voice of
Alden. It was stifled, cut off ere it had come to full crescendo, in a
very significant manner. Silence, then, fell about him, the chill
silence of an empty house.

Cautiously he turned and felt for the door, which he knew to be close
behind him. He was obsessed by a childish, though not unnatural, fear of
falling through some trap.

He touched the door-knob, turned it. As he had anticipated, the door was
locked. He wondered if there were any windows to this strangely dark
apartment. With his fingers touching the wall, h