forehead, with a sense of relief. He had
risked too much to go away empty-handed.

He tore at the carefully knotted cord, first with his fingers and then
with his teeth. It was not so heavy as he had hoped it might be. On
more collected second thoughts, indeed, it was woefully light. But the
knot defied his efforts. He took out a second match, and was on the
point of striking it.

Instead of doing so, he stood suddenly erect, and then backed
noiselessly into the remotest corner of the room. For a key had been
thrust into the lock of the anteroom door, and already the handle was
being slowly turned back.

Durkin's breath quickened and shortened, and his hand swung back to his
hip pocket. Then he waited, with his revolver in his hand.

He counted and weighed his chances, quickly, one by one, as he stood
there, in the black silence. He caught the diffused glimmer of the
reflected light from the outer room as the door opened and closed,
sharply. But the momentary half-light did not give him a glimpse of
who or what was before him, for in a second all was blackness again.
His first uneasy thought was that it was a very artful move. He and
that Other were alone there, in the utter darkness. Neither, now,
would have the advantage. He had been a fool to leave one of the doors
without its double lock, of some sort. He had once been told that it
was always through the more trivial contingency that the criminal was
ultimately trapped.

He strained his ears, and listened. He could hear nothing. Yet he was
positive that he could feel some approaching presence. It may have
been a minute vibration of flooring; it may have been through the
operation of some occult sixth sense. But he was sure of that
mysterious Other, coming closer and closer to him.

Suddenly something seemed to stir and move in the darkness. He
crouched, with every nerve and muscle ready, and a moment later he
would have relieved the tension with some sort of cry, had he not
realized that it was the wooden Swiss clock above the cabinet,
beginning to strike the hour.

The sound came to an end, and Durkin was assuring himself that it could
now be neither Pobloff nor the valet, when a second sound sent a tingle
of apprehension through his frame.

It was the blue spurt of a match that suddenly cut the blackness before
him. The fool--he was striking a light!

Durkin crouched lower, and watched the flame as it grew on the
darkness. The direc