u were Donnelley!"

As he uttered the name of the Chief of Police, Mac Alarney involuntarily
stepped backward, and a wave of startled apprehension swept the
amazement from his face, to be succeeded in turn by the primitive
craftiness of the brute instinct on guard.

"And what may you be wanting here, Mr. Blaine?" he demanded, warily.

"To beat the police to it!" Blaine replied in a gruff whisper, adding
as he jerked his thumb in the direction of the waiting Al. "Get rid of
him! We haven't got a minute, I tell you!"

"The police!" repeated the other man, sharply. "Sure, I passed two
cars full of plain-clothes bulls, with an ambulance trailing
them!--You can go now, Al."

Without giving the burly proprietor of the retreat time to discover
him for himself, Blaine pulled the astonished Doctor forward.

"Here's Doctor Alwyn, whom you brought here last night. The police
trailed you, and got his number, but fortunately when they began to
question him, he smelled a rat in the whole business and came to me.
They told him a man named Paddington had double-crossed you, but of
course I knew that was all rot, the minute I'd doped it out. You've
got a fortune under your roof this minute, and you don't know it, Mac!
That's the best joke of all! You're entertaining an angel unawares!"

"Say, what're you gettin' at, Mr. Blaine?" Mac Alarney's brows drew
close together, and he stared levelly from beneath them at the
detective's exultant face.

"That young man with the fractured skull in the corner room
upstairs--the one you brought Doctor Alwyn to attend last night--when
you know who he is you're going up in the air! I don't know who
brought him here, or what flim-flam line of talk they gave you, but
it's a wonder you haven't guessed from the start who he was, with the
papers full of it for days! Of course they must have given you a lot
of money to get him well, and hush it all up, when you were able to
pay the Doctor, here, five thousand dollars, but whatever they paid,
it's a drop in the bucket compared to the reward they expected to get.
Mac, it's Ramon Hamilton you've got upstairs!"

Blaine stepped back himself, as if the better to observe the effect of
what he manifestly seemed to believe would be astounding news, and
clumsily and cautiously the other tried to play up to his lead.

"Ramon Hamilton!" he echoed. "You're crazy, Blaine! You don't know
what you're talking about!"

"You'd better believe I do! See this photogr