ant sound. It was the trigger of a revolver
being cocked.

"All right--I'm ready," said the man at the door, grimly. Then he
laughed, perhaps a little uneasily. "But why are we all in darkness
this way?"

"The wires have been cut--that is a part of his plan!"

Keenan took a step into the room and addressed the black emptiness
before him.

"Will the gentleman speak up and explain?"

No answer came out of the darkness. Frank knew, by this time, that
Keenan would make no move to desert her.

"Have you a lamp, or a light of any kind, Miss Allen?" was the next
curt, businesslike question.

"Oh, be careful, sir!" she warned him, now in blind and unreasoning
terror.

"Have you a light?" repeated Keenan authoritatively.

"I have only an alcohol lamp; it gives scarcely any light--it is for
boiling a teapot!"

"Then light it, please!"

"Oh, I dare not!" she cried, for now she was possessed of the
unreasoning fear that one step in any direction would bring her in
contact with death itself.

"Light it, please!" commanded Keenan. "Nothing will happen. I have in
my hand here, where I stand, a thirty-eight calibre revolver, loaded
and cocked. If there is one movement from the gentleman you speak of,
I will empty it into him!"

Both Keenan and Frank started, and peered through the blackness. For a
careless and half-derisive, half-contemptuous laugh sounded through the
room. Pobloff, obviously, had never moved from where he stood.

Frank slowly groped to the wall of her room, and felt with blind and
exploring hands until she came to her bureau. Then sounded the clink
of nickel as the lamp was withdrawn from its case and the dry rattle of
German safety-matches. Then the listeners heard the quick scrape and
flash of the match against the side of the little paper box, and the
puff of the wavering blue flame as the match-end came in contact with
the alcohol.

After all, it was good to have a light! Incongruously it flashed
through her mind, as wayward thoughts and ideas would at such moments,
how relieved primitive man amid his primitive night must have been at
the blessed gift of the first fire.

The wavering blue flame widened and heightened. In a moment the inky
room was pallidly suffused with its trembling half-light. Outside,
through the night, sounded muffled street noises, and the boom and hiss
and spurt of fireworks.

The two peering faces turned slowly, until their range of vision had
swept th