fold I stayed in the
shadows till he came out; when he got a little distance away, I was just
going to follow, when the door opened again and she came out."

"And she dogged him," said Bat. "You are sure of that, are you?"

"Sure?" Big Slim chuckled as he looked at Bat, his head nodding
affirmatively. "I should say I am. It was a double shadow. There she
goes, down the street after him; and there I am, after her, just as nice
as you please."

CHAPTER XIII

SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

The food at Joey Loo's lost its savor for Bat Scanlon. He felt cold, and
his mind was sodden; a weight seemed to oppress his chest. The picture
limned by the desperado was as plain to him as though it had been done
in fire.

He saw the callous, ruthless Bounder, all smiles and sneers, strike Nora
and snatch her jewels. He also saw the beautiful, high-strung and
high-spirited creature, her senses drowned in resentment, snatch up a
weapon and rush after him, all the wrong she had ever suffered at his
hands flaming up in her mind.

"And so she followed him; and this hyena followed her," was Scanlon's
thought. "And in the end they all brought up at Stanwick."

Why Nora and Big Slim had gone to the suburb was easy to understand;
they had followed the Bounder. But why had that gentleman gone there?
What had taken him there--a place he had never visited before--and so
late in the night? That he _had_ gone there had been only too tragically
proven; and the footprints found by Ashton-Kirk gave mute testimony as
to the other two. And then there was that shining thing the burglar saw
Nora place in her bosom. With a sickening readiness, this associated
itself with the glittering little weapon which the investigator had
picked up on the lawn.

Bat blundered on with his food, for all these things were huddling up in
his mind in a frantic mass. And, then, as if the tangle were not already
bad enough, there came the remembrance of the scene he had observed
through the windows at Bohlmier's hotel.

"I don't know what that was about any more than the rest," Bat told
himself. "But there was something between it and the things this fellow
has just been telling me. If I knew what they were----"

He looked at Big Slim and found the green eyes of the burglar regarding
him curiously.

"You don't bat very high in the eating league, do you?" said the man.
"Or maybe you ain't crazy about the Chink brand of grub."

"I'm kind of off it," said Bat. "B