out and
you can hear better than I can. There's some game you're working on me
and if there is, I'll...."

"Can the tragedy, Shepard. Save it for that famous whipping stunt of
yours. Beat this girl up a bit, and tell me where she is."

"I'll do that in an hour, and not a minute sooner, and I've got to have
the other three hundred."

Mary dropped the receiver. She wanted to know where that conversation
could come from. Down the side of the desk she traced a delicate wire.
Under the rug it went, and across to the window. She looked out. A
fire escape passed the window. It was open. She saw the little wire
cross through the woodwork to the outside brick construction and down
the wall. Softly she clambered down the fire-escape until she could
peer through the window on the floor below.

There at a desk, in the private office of the "Mercantile" association,
sat the man who had been hugging her predecessor at Trubus'
switchboard, the man who had exchanged the curious looks with the
philanthropist. Talking to him was the man who had taken her sister
away from the candy store the day before!

Hurriedly she climbed back up the fire escape into the window, out
through the door of the private office, closing it behind her.

She telephoned Bobbie at the station house. Fortunately he was there.
She gave him her address, and before he could express his surprise
begged him to hurry to the doorway of the building and wait for her.

He promised.

Mary kept her nerves as quiet as she could, praying that the man Sawyer
would not leave before she could follow him with Bobbie. In a few
minutes one of the girls from the stenography room came out. Seeing
that she was the new girl the young woman spoke: "Do you want me to
relieve you while you go to lunch. I'm not going out to-day. I'm so
glad to see anyone here but that fresh Miss Emerson that it will be a
pleasure."

"Thank you. I do want to go now," said Mary nervously. She hurriedly
donned her hat and rushed down to the street. Bobbie was waiting for
her, as he had lost not a minute.

They waited behind the big door column for several minutes. Suddenly a
man came swinging through the portal. It was Sawyer.

Bobbie remembered him instantly, while Mary gripped his arm until she
pinched it.

"We'll follow him," said Burke, for the girl had already told of the
dictagraph conversation.

Follow him they did. Up one street and down another. At last the man