it, and
wires that will reach at least four hundred feet. You and the men wait
in the shadow here by this side entrance for five minutes after Jameson
and I go up. Then you must engage the night watchman in some way. While
he is away you will find two wires dangling down the elevator shaft.
Attach them to these wires from the bell and the batteries--these
two--you know how to do that. The wires will be hanging in the third
shaft--only one elevator is running at night, the first. The moment you
hear the bell begin to ring; jump into the elevator and come up to the
twelfth floor--we'll need you."

As Kennedy and I rode up in the elevator I could not help thinking what
an ideal place a down-town office building is for committing a crime,
even at this early hour of the evening. If the streets were deserted,
the office-buildings were positively uncanny in their grim, black
silence with only here and there a light.

The elevator in the first shaft shot down again to the ground floor, and
as it disappeared Kennedy took two spools of wire from his pocket and
hastily shoved them through the lattice work the third elevator shaft.
They quickly unrolled, and I could hear them strike the top of the empty
car below in the basement. That meant that Andrews on the ground floor
could reach the wires and attach them to the bell.

Quickly in the darkness Kennedy attached the ends of the wires to the
curious little coil I had seen him working on in the laboratory, and we
proceeded down the hall to the rooms occupied by Poissan, Kennedy had
allowed for the wire to reach from the elevator-shaft up this hall,
also, and as he walked he paid it out in such a manner that it fell on
the floor close to the wall, where, in the darkness, it would never be
noticed or stumbled over.

Around an "L" in the hall I could see a ground-glass window with a light
shining through it. Kennedy stopped at the window and quickly placed
the little coil on the ledge, close up against the glass, with the wires
running from it down the hall. Then we entered.

"On time to the minute, Professor," exclaimed Poissan, snapping his
watch. "And this, I presume, is the banker who is interested in my
great discovery of making artificial diamonds of any size or colour?" he
added, indicating me.

"Yes," answered Craig, "as I told you, a son of Mr. T. Pierpont
Spencer."

I shook hands with as much dignity as I could assume, for the role of
impersonation was a new one to