s keen. He'll see our game right off. Now while Sato and
I make a getaway, it'll be up to you to stop Hennessy. I say you,
because you're bigger than I am. Can you use your hands--fight?"

"I have."

"I thought so. Well, I'd suggest your pasting him if you can, before he
pastes you, and then beating it, too."

"How will you leave the hotel?"

"Glad you asked that. When you leave, don't go for the elevators, but
take the stairs. On the third floor you'll find the freight elevator
waiting for you. Now, is there anything else?"

The photographer had a few questions to ask, and Good studied Furniss
while he answered them. The little reporter was like an animal on the
trail of its prey. His thin nostrils contracted and expanded as he
talked, and there was a lithe, nervous tenseness about every feature of
his face. Good thought with half a shudder that he would not care to
have Furniss on his trail. And yet, even as the thought struck him, he
was conscious of the little man's eyes upon him, boring him through, as
if that were precisely what he was about. He tried to rid himself of the
absurd notion, but it persisted. One of the characteristics of Furniss
was his complete impersonality. He might, almost unaided, devote months
of single-handed, implacable effort, as in the famous Varney case, to
tracking down and placing a whole company of men in the penitentiary;
but never with the slightest hint of vindictiveness. He sought out
corruption and punished its authors always for the solitary reason that
thereby he made news. He was like the bloodhound, which pursues its
quarry as long as it has breath in its body--only to overwhelm it with
caresses.

But now, Good fancied, the impersonal note was gone. It seemed to him,
why, he could not say, that Furniss had a purpose other than to unearth
news. There seemed more mastiff than bloodhound in him, more lust for
blood than love of the chase. Again and again he told himself how silly
it was, but he could not rid himself of the suggestion that _he_ was the
goal at which the reporter aimed.

By eight o'clock the three had begun their vigil. At intervals Furniss
fixed his eye to the keyhole, turning to stare, with what Good thought
a very slightly concealed malevolence, at himself. The air was
surcharged with expectancy.

[Illustration: The air was surcharged with expectancy]

Good smoked his pipe and wondered what it all meant. The photographer
lit one cigarette on the end of