desire to be liked."

"Daren, I'll do that little thing, believe me," returned Holt, warmly.

Shaking hands with his friends, Lane left them, and went on his way.
White's place was full as a beehive. As he passed, Lane found himself
looking for Bessy Bell's golden head, though he knew he would not see
it. He wondered if Holt had really met her, veiled and in a hurry.
That had a strange look. But no shadow of distrust of Bessy came to
Lane. In a few moments he reached the dark stairway leading to Colonel
Pepper's apartment. Lane forgot he was weak. But at the top, with his
breast laboring, he remembered well enough. He went into the Colonel's
rooms and through them without making a light. And when he reached the
place where he had spied upon the club he was wet with sweat and
shaking with excitement. Carefully, so as not to make noise, he stole
to the peep-hole and applied his eye.

He saw a gleam of light on shiny waxed floor, and then, moving to get
the limit of his narrow vision, he descried Swann, evidently just
arrived. With him was Gail Williams, a slip of a child not over
fifteen--looking up at him as if excited and pleased. Next Lane
espied his sister Lorna with a tall, well-built man. Although his back
was toward Lane, he could not mistake the soldierly bearing of Captain
Vane Thesel! Lorna looked perturbed and sulky, and once, turning her
face toward Swann, she seemed resentful. Captain Thesel had his hand
at her elbow and appeared to be talking earnestly.

Lane left his post, taking care to make no noise. But once back in the
Colonel's rooms, he hurried. Feeling in the dark corner where he had
kept the axe ready for just such an emergency as this, he grasped it
and rushed out. Tiptoeing down the hall, he found the narrow door,
stole down the black stairway and entered the main hall. Here he
paused, suddenly checked in his hurry.

"This won't do," he thought, and shook his head. "Much as I'd like to
kill those two dogs I can't--I can't.... I'll smash their faces,
though--and if I ever catch...."

Breaking the thought off abruptly, he passed down the dim hallway to
the door of the club-rooms. He raised the axe and was about to smash
the lock when he espied a key in the keyhole. The door was not locked.
Lane set down the axe and noiselessly turned the knob and peeped in.
The first room was dark, but the door on the opposite side was ajar,
and through it Lane saw the larger lighted room and the shiny floor.