Vaniman to
employ the same caution.

This prisoner in the van was certainly the magnate of Egypt. Vaniman
found that a towel was bound tightly across the bearded mouth; the young
man even ran his hand over the bald pate, now divested of its toupee.

There was no gold in the van. Vaniman made sure of that after he had
satisfied himself as to the identity of Britt.

While the young man was endeavoring to steady his whirling thoughts,
striving to plan some course of action by which he could turn the
situation to his personal benefit, his attention became taken up in
another quarter. Through the trap he heard the voice of the short man.
"Quick! Off the road. Nobody's in sight!"

The van lurched and the front of it dipped with a violence that drove
Vaniman and Britt against the end. Up came the front and the rear
sagged. Then the van went bumping and swaying over uneven ground. The
claw-clash of the branches of trees against the sides informed Vaniman
that the men had driven into the woods.

When the vehicle halted, the young man crawled forward and huddled down
into as compact a ball as he could make of himself.

He heard the three men dismounting. "I'll tell the world that this is a
handy night for us, whatever it is that's going on in this burg!" It was
the voice of that ever-ready spokesman, the short man. "There would have
been a head at every window if we had been obliged to go teaming around
all by ourselves, in the night. But they wouldn't have noticed a couple
of giraffes and a hippopotamus in that procession."

"I couldn't see that they even paid any attention to those women
squalling upstairs when we did the job," was the tall man's opinion.
"Handy night, say you? Why, that man we braced up to and asked where was
Britt's boarding house, he seemed to have so much of his own business
on his mind that he wasn't wondering a mite what our business with Britt
might be."

"Get busy!" said the other convict. "That business is only just
beginning."

There was a stir of feet.

"Hold on!" It was the voice of Wagg, mumbling cautiously. "Tie your
handkerchiefs over your faces like I'm doing."

"Right!" the short man agreed. "Always leave 'em guessing when you say
good-by!"

A few moments later Wagg lifted the flap; Vaniman saw him outlined
against the fog. The convicts reached in and pulled Britt out, and the
flap was dropped.

"Look out!" the short man warned. "Loosen that towel only a little and
hold your