e apparatus; for it was plain that this
elevator was one of those automatic lifts not uncommon in city
residences of the more palatial order.

Then, as he quietly but busily speculated on the significance of this
discovery, Durkin suddenly caught sight of a triple crescent carved on
the arm of the chair against which he leaned. And as he made out that
familiar device he knew that he was in Penfield's uptown house once
used as his residence and later as his private clubrooms.

At this discovery his alert but well-veiled glance went back to
MacNutt. He saw his captor fling off his wet and draggled raincoat and
then shake the water from a dripping hat-brim. This he seemed to do
without haste and without emotion.

Durkin next saw his enemy gaze about the entire circle of the room
scrutinizingly, the subdolous green eyes coming to a rest only when
they fell on his own relaxed figure.

"And this is where the music starts!" muttered MacNutt aloud, as he
strode toward Durkin.

Even before he had uttered that half-articulate little sentence his
captive was possessed by a sudden conviction of approaching climax. He
knew, somewhere deep in the tangled roots of consciousness, that either
he or the other must go down that night, that one was destined to win
and that the other was destined to lose, that the ancient fight was
about to be settled, and settled for all time.

In that agonized and hurried and yet lucid-thoughted summing up of
ultimate values Durkin realized that it would be useless to resist what
was immediately before him. He was too shaken and weak for any crude
battle of brute strength against brute strength. With his wounded
hand, which even then sent throbbing spears of pain from finger-tip to
shoulder, and with his bruised and weary and stiffened body, he knew
that any test of strength in the muscular and ape-like arms of MacNutt
was out of the question. So he lay back, weak and unresisting, every
now and then emitting from his half-opened lips a little moan of pain.

But behind the torn and battered ramparts of the seemingly comatose
body his vigilant mind paced and watched and kept keenly awake. As he
felt the great hands pad and feel about his body, and the searching
fingers go through his clothes, pocket after pocket, some sentinel
intelligence seemed to watch and burn and glow like a coal deep within
the ashes of all his outer fatigue. He waited quiescent, as he felt
the heated, animal-like bre