freight car like
me."

Scanlon stood in the doorway and watched the angular, stoop-shouldered
figure go down the hall; there was something so slinking, so furtively
deadly in the burglar's motions that Bat felt a prickly sensation run up
and down his spine.

"That's the kind of a fellow that would snuff out your light and never
lose an hour's sleep over it," said the big athlete to himself. "A wolf!
A prowling wolf! But, just as Kirk thought, he's got something inside
that lean head of his that I ought to know about, and I mean to know
it."

Big Slim turned a sharp angle and disappeared from view; but Scanlon
stood looking down the hall, and thinking. The corridor was low
ceilinged and narrow; the lights were dim and the doors ran in an
unbroken line on either side, each with a black number upon it.

"Nice," pronounced Bat, "every thing clean and orderly. The old Swiss is
there with the soap and dust brush. I'll hand it to him for that.
But----"

He paused and a wrinkle appeared between his eyes. Yes, the place was
much better than he had expected--that is, as far as he could see. But
sometimes there were things not to be seen; if you were aware of them at
all, you _felt_ them. And as Bat Scanlon stood looking down the dim hall
with its two rows of expressionless doors, he was aware of a peculiar
something from which his mind drew back. Rising from an invisible
source, much as a miasma arises from a marsh, there came a subtle
quality--an impression of evil; it seemed to creep by and around him;
silently, insidiously, poisonously.

The big man stepped into his room and quietly closed the door. Then,
grimly, he slipped a huge Colt's revolver from a holster hooked under
the left armhole of his vest; with a snap he threw it open, and the
ejector threw the black, oily, murderous looking cartridges upon the
table with a rattle. Bat inspected and tested the working parts of the
weapon; satisfied that all was right, he replaced the cartridges with
practiced fingers.

"I only had that feeling once before in my life," said he, "and that was
the night in Dacy's place at Holdover when the four 'breeds' were
waiting for me in the dark room." He put the Colt back in its holster,
and stood ruminating. "What was it the burglar fellow said about the
skipper of this outfit? 'He's in on more than anybody would think.'
Well, I'd better watch myself," and Bat smiled, though his eyes narrowed
at the same time; "for when a bald-head