s you come through."

A door slammed to behind them and was bolted. Evan was jolted down
many stairs. Someone began to pound violently on the door above.
Other doors on the way were opened. Women exclaimed in astonished
Italian. "Out of the way! Out of the way!" commanded the resolute
voice, and none sought to interfere.

They ran down a long passage and down a few steps to the open street
again. Evan was carried across the pavement and flung into an
automobile. The door slammed. Running feet were heard from another
direction. The resolute voice said:

"Beat it!"

The car jerked into motion. A hoarse voice ordered them to stop. A
pistol was fired. The bold voice said:

"Step on her hard!"

The car roared down the street with wide open exhaust, turned a corner
on two wheels, and another corner, and soon outdistanced all sounds of
pursuit.

The power of movement was coming back to Evan, but he still lay still;
he was at too great a disadvantage to put up a struggle. That which
enveloped him was a thick cotton comforter; it clove to his tongue, and
the stuffy smell of it filled his nostrils. Moreover, he had a lively
recollection of the blackjack or whatever it was that had laid him out
in the beginning. It was useless to cry out; even if he should be
heard above the noise of the engine, who could stop the flying car?

As his wits cleared he set them to work to try to puzzle out the
direction in which he was being carried. He could tell from the lurch
of the car whether they turned to the right or the left. In the
beginning they turned so many corners that all sense of direction was
lost, but after a while they struck a car-line and held to it for a
long time. He knew they were running in car-tracks by the smoothness
of their passage, broken by occasional bumpings as they slipped out of
the rails. It was a street with little traffic, for their progress was
rapid and uninterrupted.

Presently he heard an elevated train roar overhead, and he knew where
he was. "Greenwich street or Ninth avenue," he said to himself. As
they still held to their car-line he knew they were bound up-town;
headed the other way, they would have reached the end of the island
before this. Bye and bye they coasted down a long hill and puffed up
the other side. He guessed this to be the valley between Ninety-third
street and One Hundred and Fourth, and presently knew he was right,
when he heard the wheels of the eleva