rred to the inspector to post his men at the
Harlem River where express trains were seldom detained at night. Yet it
had been only necessary to send some small boat to loiter in the draw at
the proper moment to assure the security of the conspirators.

Immediately Garth lost all sense of direction. The other led a stealthy,
circular course through a lumber yard, across a fence, around darkened
buildings, and finally onto a small wharf. A craft was moored there--a
barge, Garth thought at first. It lay in darkness except for its
navigating lights, and, as Garth looked, even these were extinguished.

The slender man glided across the wharf, and, Garth at his heels,
stepped to the deck. There he reached over the railing, dropping
something from his hand. Garth heard three splashes at regular
intervals. A blade of light flashed sharply athwart the darkness and
became an open doorway, framing a troubled face.

Garth, shoved from behind, stumbled over the sill into the presence of
five men who circled about him, like cats, wary and suspicious. He
would know now. One word from his conductor would deliver him to the
inevitable judgment of that circle.

But the slender man slipped in after him, closing the door.

"The cops are drunk with sleep," he said.

Garth breathed again. But into that moment's respite crept the thought
of Nora, suddenly become unobtainable. Resolutely he fought his
depression back. At a gesture from the slender man he sat on a bench
against the wall.

He saw now that the apparent barge was a rough houseboat, unpainted,
unfinished, with windows closed and heavily barred. The only furniture
was this bench and another opposite with a deal table between. Fumes of
gasoline and cylinder oil came through an open doorway forward and mixed
repellently with an atmosphere already poisoned by tobacco. For all five
smoked, not with enjoyment, Garth noticed--rather in an abandonment to
nerves. It impressed him that these men, who unquestionably were the
cleverest and most indomitable of the Hennion group, should expose this
restlessness, this apparent fear, on the threshold of the night's work.
His conductor, indeed, was the only one immune to the contagion of
suspense.

Garth glanced at these others with a sharp personal curiosity. They
varied amazingly from his anticipation. One, a sallow youth with untidy
yellow hair and large-rimmed eye-glasses, might have been a student of
the most devoted species. Another