replied Scanlon. "How did it happen?"

"Last night," stated Big Slim. "I spotted a fellow in the dark who's
turned a trick on a friend of mine. So I made a try to get him. But,"
with candor, "I didn't. He got me."

"Tough," sympathized Bat. "But wait! Maybe you'll have your chance to
come back. You never can tell."

Big Slim grinned. With his distorted face this was not a pleasant sight,
and the look in his eyes was sly and wicked.

"I'll get back," said he. "Leave it to me for that. I'll lay him out so
stiff that a slab in the morgue'll be bent like a pretzel in
comparison."

Bat looked at the man with all the unrestraint of the practiced
negotiator.

"Who is he?" he asked, carelessly.

Again the sly, wicked look came into the eyes of the burglar.

"Don't be in a hurry," said he. "You'll know when the time comes."

Bat drew in a deep, silent breath at this; and when the burglar threw
open the lid of a trunk, which he dragged from under the bed, and took
from the tray a black, well-oiled automatic pistol, he felt a tightening
of the scalp. But Big Slim put the weapon in his pocket.

"No one's ever tagged me out without me landing on his neck," declared
he. "I do it one way or another, but I always do it."

They went down-stairs and Big Slim led the way into a back room. It was
the same in which Bat had seen the Swiss playing the flute on the night
of Nora's unaccountable visit. But Bohlmier was not at all musically
inclined at this time.

"No, no," he was saying to the thick-necked young man, "I will nothing
to eat have. I am seek! Ach, how I am seek!"

Big Slim looked at Scanlon and grinned; then he whispered behind his
hand:

"He was in on the same lot of treatment. The guy got him before he did
me." Then to Bohlmier he added: "How's the sore throat?"

"Bad," replied the Swiss, in a strained way. "I a doctor haf had. He
said I was lucky that I was not killed."

"Well, you wasn't," said Big Slim. "So forget that part of it."

The eyes of Bohlmier, with a cat-like glare in them, went to Bat; then
he motioned to the burglar, who bent over his chair. The Swiss whispered
croakingly in the other's ear. Bat could get a word here and there, but
not sufficient to make any sense of what was being said. Once or twice
he saw the eyes of the two men turn upon him, and their eager
expression--deadly and cunning--made him uneasy.

"Sure," he heard Big Slim say. "That's right. I didn't miss that trick."

Then