"I'd give my hat to be able to locate this serenade," he remarked to
himself; "it sounds most peculiar."

James went slowly along, feeling the wall as he went, and all at once
his fingers came to a slight break in the smooth wood, and the voices
became slightly clearer and Jim was positive that he heard the thrum,
thrum of a guitar. He ran his fingers up and down near the minute break,
until they touched a small wooden button. He hesitated a moment before
pressing it, not knowing what might happen nor what might possibly be on
the other side.

"Nothing venture, nothing have," he said, and standing to one side he
pressed the button and the door came quietly back.

"Well-oiled piece of machinery that," thought Jim; "I wonder who uses
this stage entrance anyhow."

Then there came distinctly and clear the voices of several men singing a
Mexican song and Jim saw several steps leading to a lower level under a
low-arched passageway. He also heard besides the singing the low voices
of men speaking and the occasional moving of a chair. He was soon to
solve this particular mystery.

Moving cautiously along he reached the end of the short passageway and
there he saw that it opened on a balcony that ran across one end of a
high vaulted room, embellished with a beautifully carved ceiling of oak.
As the balcony was quite high up and shut in by big panels of wood about
four feet in height, he could not see the floor below.

Jim dared not raise his head to see who were in the room, which was
evidently intended originally for a banquet hall and not a den of
thieves. However, he was not long in doubt as to what to do, for he
slipped the poniard from its sheath, and began to cut a hole through the
wood in front of him and it did not take him long to have a place large
enough to see perfectly what was going on below. He took one long
earnest look.

"Gosh," he muttered to himself, "what a chance, what a chance; if I only
had my revolver with me, I'd corner that gang in short order." And so he
would.

Now this is what he saw, by the light of a mammoth fireplace filled with
great logs that sent a weird, but beautiful light glowing and then
wavering in shadows across the high arched ceiling. A few feet back from
the wide high fireplace with its roaring flame were four men playing
cards. They sat around a table, and three in appearance were villainous
cutthroats, probably Mexicans by their dark visages, swaggeringly armed
with kniv