afe is, and where your friend, no doubt, is
now depositing his valuables, behind a burglar-proof time-lock!"

"Oh, that's it, is it!" cried Durkin. He turned to the woman sharply.

"Frank, quick! Leave Keenan to me!"

"Yes!" she answered, with coerced attention.

"MacNutt must not get out of this house! We must stop him before he
gets down this shaft. You go down by the stairs, quick, to the lowest
basement. You'll find the motor operating the elevator. What you must
do is to get to the switch, and shut off the power before this car can
get past us! Quick!"

He still faced Keenan, but his eye followed her to the door.

"If he does come, kill him; shoot him down, I say, like a dog--_or
he'll kill you_!"

He could hear, through those silent hallways, the muffled rustling of
her skirts and the sound of her flying feet on the waxed and polished
wood. Then the silence suddenly became oppressive.

It was the unseen foe that he was afraid of, the undiscerned force that
he feared. His uneasy and alert mind struggled to grasp the problem of
how and where MacNutt would strike, if strike he did, out of the
darkness of that silent and deserted house.

Durkin decided that above all things he must render impossible the
descent of the elevator cage. But for a moment he could think of no
bar that might be flung across the path of that complex and almost
irresistible machinery, once awakened into its full power. Then the
solution of the riddle came to him.

Still menacing the silent Keenan with his revolver, he flung over, with
one quick and reckless push of his foot, the heavy mahogany table that
stood in the centre of the room.

Then he turned to Keenan.

"Push that table out into the elevator shaft!" he ordered. The other
man did not move. And time was precious; every second was precious!

Durkin repeated his command.

"Furniture-moving is not my vocation!" answered Keenan, folding his
arms.

As Durkin sprang forward, there was no mistaking his meaning.

"I'll count ten," he said, white-lipped. "Unless the table goes out,
_you_ go out!" And he began counting, silently, numeral by numeral.

"Well, if you insist!" said Keenan, with a shrug.

Even as Keenan, at the menace of his reiterated command to hurry, threw
open the guard door, Durkin was wondering, in his feverish activity of
mind, just how soon MacNutt's next move would come, and just how and
where he would strike.

The answer to that quest