t David," Aaron Thurnbrein panted. "I have news! Is he behind?"

The woman moved away to let him pass.

"He is behind," she answered, in a dull, lifeless tone. "Since you took
him with you to Bermondsey, he does no work. What does it matter? We
starve a little sooner. Take him to another meeting, if you will. I'd
rather you taught him how to steal. There's rest in the prisons, at
least."

Aaron Thurnbrein brushed past her, inattentive, unlistening. She was
not amongst those who counted. He pushed open an ill-fitting door,
whose broken glass top was stuffed with brown paper. The room within
was almost horrible in its meagreness. The floor was uncarpeted, the
wall unpapered. In a three-legged chair drawn up to the table, with
paper before him and a pencil in his hand, sat David Ross. He looked up
at the panting intruder, only to glower.

"What do you want, boy?" he asked pettishly. "I am at work. I need
these figures. I am to speak to-night at Poplar."

"Put them away!" Aaron Thurnbrein cried. "Soon you and I will be needed
no more. A greater than we have known is here--here in London!"

The older man looked up, for a moment, as though puzzled. Then a light
broke suddenly across his face, a light which seemed somehow to become
reflected in the face of the starveling youth.

"Maraton!" he almost shrieked.

"Maraton!" the other echoed. "He is here in London!"

The face of the older man twitched with excitement.

"But they will arrest him!"

"If they dared," Aaron Thurnbrein declared harshly, "a million of us
would tear him out of prison. But they will not. Maraton is too
clever. America has not even asked for extradition. For our sakes he
keeps within the law. He is here in London! He is stripped for the
fight!"

David Ross rose heavily to his feet. One saw then that he was not
really old. Starvation and ill-health had branded him with premature
age. He was not thin but the flesh hung about him in folds. His cheeks
were puffy; his long, hairy eyebrows drooped down from his massive
forehead. There was the look about him of a strong man gone to seed.

"They will be all around him like flies over a carcass!" he muttered.

"Mr. Foley--Foley--the Prime Minister--sent for him directly he
arrived," Aaron Thurnbrein announced. "He is to see him to-night at his
own house in Downing Street. It makes no difference."

"Who can tell?" the other remarked despondently. "The pages of history
are littered with the bodies o