followers tumbled
helter-skelter into the room.

Cleek, counting on the bolt which kept them from entering the passage
from the corridor of the Chateau Larouge and thus forcing them to take a
long, roundabout journey to "The Twisted Arm," had not counted on their
shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern,
doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he
himself had done. And lo! here they were, howling and crowding about
him, dirks in their hands and devils in their eyes and hearts--and the
paper not his yet!

A clamour rose as they poured in; the dancers ceased to dance; the music
ceased to play; and Margot, shutting a tight clutch on the loosened part
of her half-unfastened bodice, swung away from Cleek's side, and flew in
a panic to Merode.

"Gaston!" she cried, knowing from his wild look and the string of oaths
and curses his followers were blurting out that something had gone
amiss. "Gaston, mon coeur! Name of disaster! what is wrong?"

"Everything is wrong!" he flung back excitedly. "That devil, that
renegade, that fury, Cleek, the Cracksman, is here. He came to the
rescue out of the very skies and all but killed Serpice!"

"Cleek!" Fifty shrill voices joined Margot's in that screaming cry;
fifty more dirks flashed into view. "Cleek in France? Cleek? Where is
he? Which way did he go? Where's the narker--where--where?"

"Here, if anywhere!"

"Here?"

"Yes, unless you've been fooled, and let him get away! He knows about
the paper, and is after it, Margot; and if any one has come up from the
sewers within the past twenty minutes----"

They knew instantly and a roar of excited voices yelled out: "Clodoche!
Clodoche! Clodoche!" as, snarling and howling like a pack of wolves,
they bore down with a rush on the blue-bloused figure that was creeping
toward the door.

But as they sprang it sprang also! It was neck or nothing now. Cleek
realized it, and, throwing himself headlong over the bar, clutched
frantically at the lever which he knew controlled the flow of gas,
jammed it down with all his strength, shut off the light, and, grabbing
up a chair, sent it crashing through the window.

The crowd surged on toward the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from all
directions, and then abruptly stopped. For the sudden darkness within
had made more prominent the moonlighted passage without; and there,
scuttling away in alarm from this sudden uproar and the outward flying
o