ath on his face, as the ruthlessly exploring
hands tore open his vest, as they ripped away the inner pocket which
had been so carefully sewn together at the top, as they drew out the
tied and carefully sealed packet of papers for which he had been
searching.

More than once Durkin thought that if ever those documents, for which
he had endured and suffered and lost so much, were again wrested from
him, it would be only after some moment of transcendent conflict, after
some momentous battle of life's forlornest last reserves. Yet now,
impassively and ignominiously, he was surrendering them to the
conqueror, supinely, meanly, without even the solace of some supreme if
vain resistance! He listened to MacNutt's gloating little "Ah!" of
triumph without a sign or movement. But, even then, in that moment of
seeming frustration, Durkin's subterranean yet terrible
pertinaciousness, his unparaded bull-dog indefatigability, glowed and
burned at its brightest. They were not yet in their last ditch.

"That's _one_ part of it!" muttered MacNutt, as he stowed away the
packet and rebuttoned his coat.

It was a shadowed and lupine eye which Durkin cautiously opened as he
felt more than heard MacNutt's quick footsteps on the carpeted floor.
Covertly, and without moving, he saw the other man walk to the
elevator, saw the play of his finger on the mother-of-pearl button, saw
the automatic door noiseless slide away, and the descended and waiting
cage locked on a level with the floor. He saw MacNutt step inside, and
the finger again play on one of a row of five pearl buttons set in the
polished wood of the cage-wall, and the elevator noiselessly ascend.

The moment it went up Durkin was on his feet.

He first ran to the two doors at the opposite end of the billiard-room.
They were both securely locked; and they were his only means of escape.
Then he hurriedly circled the two huge tables, in search of some
implement of defense. But the denuded room offered nothing.

Then he dashed to the elevator shaft. As he had surmised, it was an
automatic electric lift, operating from the cellar below to the top of
the house. The cage, so far as he could make out, now stood opposite
the third floor. The controlling apparatus, the motor into which the
power wires led, was, of course, in the cellar beneath him. It would
be easy enough to twist one of the billiard-table covers into a rope,
and drop down to the shaft-bottom, twelve feet below.