manded, with contemptuous
impatience. "Your brain must be taking a rest cure, Mac! We'll go
straight to Miss Lawton, deliver the goods and get the reward, before
they beat us to it! It'll be easy to explain matters to her; she won't
care much about the story as long as she's got him again alive, and at
that you've only got to stick to the truth, and I'm right there to
back you up in it. Any fool could realize that you'd have produced him
and claimed the reward, if you had known who he actually was. Whoever
brought him here gave you the wrong dope and you fell for it, that's
all--For the Lord's sake, hurry!"

"You're right, Mr. Blaine. It's the only thing to do now. I fell for
their dope, all right, but they'll fall harder before I'm through with
them! Lend me your two men, here. There's no use having any of mine
except Al get wise. You and the Doctor wait in the car, and we'll
bring him out."

Henry Blaine motioned to his operatives, with a curt wave of his hand,
to follow Mac Alarney, and turning, he went out of the door and down
the steps to his car, with the Doctor at his heels.

"You don't suppose that he saw through your story, do you, Mr.
Blaine?" the latter queried in an anxious whisper, as they settled
themselves to wait with what patience they could muster. "Could that
suggestion of his have been merely a ruse to separate your assistants
from you?"

The detective smiled.

"Hardly, Doctor. It's part of my profession to have made a study of
human nature, and Mac Alarney's type is an open book to me. Added to
that, I've known the man himself for years, in an offhand way. I've
got his confidence, and now that he realizes he is in a hole, he's a
child in my hands, even if he thinks for the moment that as a
detective I'm about the poorest specimen in captivity. Steady now,
here they come!"

The large double doors had been thrown wide open and Mac Alarney, the
burly Al, and the two operatives appeared, bearing between them a
limp, unconscious, blanket-swathed form. As they eased it into the
back seat of the limousine, Blaine flashed his electric pocket light
upon the sleeping face.

"I knew I wasn't mistaken!" he whispered exultantly to Mac Alarney and
the Doctor. "It's young Hamilton, all right. Now, let's be off!"

The others crowded in, and they whirled down the drive and out once
more upon the wide State road, in the opposite direction to that in
which they had come. A bare half-mile away, and they came