aph?" He held the tiny
thumbnail picture before Mac Alarney's amazed eyes. "The Doctor took
it last night, at the bedside of the young man upstairs, when you
thought he was feeling his pulse. That watch of his was in reality a
camera."

With a roar, the burly man turned upon the erect, unshrinking figure
of the gray-haired doctor, but Blaine halted him.

"Not so fast, Mac. If it hadn't been for him, you'd be in the hands of
the police now, remember, and they've only been waiting to get
something on you, as you know. You can't blame Doctor Alwyn for being
suspicious, after all the mysterious fuss you made bringing him here.
I know Ramon Hamilton well, and I recognized his face the instant it
was handed to me! I'm on the case, myself--Miss Lawton, the girl he's
going to marry, engaged me. I might have come and tried to take him
away from you, so as to cop all the reward myself, but as it is, we'll
split fifty-fifty--unless the police get here while we're wasting time
talking! Man, don't you see how you've been done?"

"You can bet your life I do--that is, if the young man I've got
upstairs is the guy you think he is," he added, in an afterthought of
cautious self-protection. The acid of the hint that Paddington had
betrayed him to the police had burned deep, however, as Blaine had
anticipated, and he walked blindly into the snare laid for him. "I'll
tell you all about how he come to be here, later, and I'll fix them
that tried to pull the wool over my eyes! Now, for the love of Heaven,
Mr. Blaine, tell me what to do with him before the bulls come! Thank
God, they can search the rest of the place, and welcome--I've got
nothin' here but a half-dozen souses, and two light-weights,
training."

"That's all right! You're safe if we can get him away without loss of
time. That ambulance you saw don't belong to the police; it's mine. I
saw them first, away back in the outskirts of the city, and I ordered
it to drop behind and take the short cut up through Wheelbarrow Lane.
It's waiting now under the clump of elms by the brook, up the road a
little--you know the spot! Bring him down and we'll take him there in
my car. You come too, of course, and Al, and help load him into the
ambulance. Then Al can come back, if you don't want to trust him, and
you go on with us, back to the city."

"Where you goin' to take him?" asked Mac Alarney, warily. "You can't
hide him from them in town."

"Who's talking about hiding him!" Blaine de