ion him. That's all I ask. I'll be waiting to see
that you get out in safety--trust me!"

He wriggled backward and disappeared through the folding doors.

CHAPTER XXXI.

A VISIT TO THE EXILED PHELAN.

But where, oh, where was the exiled Phelan when the bogus Gladwin went
on his backstairs investigation? Puzzled as he was by the fast moving
events of the night, stripped of the uniform of his authority, still
his police instincts should have warned him of this new character in
his dream.

Michael Phelan, however, was busy--busy in a way one little would
suppose.

As the gentlemanly outlaw entered the kitchen, Phelan was standing on
the tubs of the adjoining laundry, his face almost glued to the
window-pane and his eyes uplifted to the fourth story rear window of a
house diagonally opposite, through which he could observe a pantomime
that thrilled him.

It was late, well past bedtime even for the aristocratic precincts of
New York. Yet there was going on behind that brilliantly lighted
window a one-man drama strangely and grotesquely wide-awake.

A first casual glance had conveyed the impression to Phelan that a
tragedy was being enacted before his eyes--that murder was being done
with fiendish brutality, and he--Phelan--powerless to intervene.

The seeming murderer was a man of amazing obesity, a red-faced man
with a bull neck and enormous shoulders, clad in pink striped pajamas
and a tasselled nightcap of flaming red.

Back and forth the rotund giant swayed with something in his arms,
something which he crushed in his fists and brutally shook, something
which he held off at arm's length and hammered with ruthless blows.

"The murtherin' baste!" ejaculated Phelan as he switched off the one
light he had been reading by and darted into the next room to get a
better view from the summit of the kitchen tubs.

Suddenly the mountain of flesh and the debile victim that he was
ruthlessly manhandling disappeared from view. For several long
thundering seconds the petrified Phelan could see nothing save a
dancing crimson tassel, the tassel attached to the nightcap. Surely a
mighty struggle was going on on the floor!

Phelan did not hear the light step upon the kitchen stair or the
stealthy tread of the big man in evening dress as he pussy-footed his
way to the kitchen door leading out into the back yard and found that
it was easily opened.

Every sentient nerve in Michael Phelan's being was concentrated in