but it was too late.
His quick ear caught the sound of approaching footsteps in the outside
hall. Almost at the same instant there was a loud knocking at the door.

Keralio fell back, his face white and tense. Had his plans failed at
the eleventh hour, could anyone have played him false? If the game was
up, they should never take him alive. Leaving Helen, he drew a
revolver, and, going quickly into the inner hall, he waited in grim
silence for the visitors to force an entrance.

"Open the door, or we'll break it in!" shouted a stern voice outside.
"There's no use resisting. The place is surrounded."

Still no answer. Keralio stood grimly in the shadow of the parlor
doorway, revolver in hand, while Helen cowered in the inner room, in
momentary expectation of a tragedy.

Crash! The front door fell in, shattered into a thousand splinters,
and through the breach thus made rushed Wilbur Steell, Dick Reynolds,
and half a score husky Central Office detectives, revolvers in hand.

"There is he!" cried the lawyer, pointing to Keralio.

Quick as a flash, the Italian raised the revolver and fired, the bullet
entering the plastered wall an inch away from the lawyer's head.
Almost simultaneously, another pistol shot rang out, but this time the
aim was truer, for, with a cry of baffled rage, Keralio threw his arms
above his head and fell to the floor dead. Quickly, one of the
detectives stooped down and compared his face with a photograph he had
taken from his pocket.

"Yes----" he exclaimed; "that's the fellow--well known counterfeiter.
Did time in San Quentin and Joliet. Known as Baron Rapp, Richard
Barton and a dozen other aliases. He's one of the slickest rogues in
the country. We've got the valet safe downstairs. I guess he'll get
twenty years."

But Steell had not waited to hear about Keralio. There were others
more important to think about. Rushing into the inner room, he found
Helen prostrate, half fainting from fright.

"Thank God, I'm in time!" he exclaimed.

"Dorothy," she murmured weakly. "Save Dorothy! She's somewhere here."

Going into another room, the lawyer found the little girl fast asleep
on a bed. Bringing her to her mother, he said tenderly:

"Here's your treasure. Now you can be happy."

She shook her head. The nightmare of what Keralio had told her, still
obsessed her.

"No--" she shuddered; "--never again. They have killed him!"

To her surprise, the lawyer, instead of sh