unbridled fury had her in its
thrall. And she went on up, step after step, as Danglar spoke again:

"There's nothing to it! The Sparrow there fell for the telephone when
Stevie played the doctor. And old Hayden-Bond of course grants his
prison-bird chauffeur's request to spend the night with his mother, who
the doctor says is taken worse, because the old guy knows there is a
mother who really is sick. Only Mr. Hayden-Bond, and the police with
him, will maybe figure it a little differently in the morning when they
find the safe looted, and that the Sparrow, instead of ever going near
the poor old dame, has flown the coop and can't be found. And in case
there's any lingering doubt in their minds, that piece of paper with the
grease-smudges and the Sparrow's greasy finger-prints on it, that you
remember we copped a few days ago in the garage, will set them straight.
The Cricket slipped it in among the papers he pulled out of the safe
and tossed around on the floor. It looks as though a tool had been wiped
with it while the safe was being cracked, and that it got covered over
by the stuff that was emptied out, and had been forgotten. I guess they
won't be long in comparing the finger-prints with the ones the Sparrow
kindly left with them when they measured him for his striped suit the
time they sent him up the river--eh?"

Rhoda Gray could see now. Her eyes were on a level with the landing, and
diagonally across from the head of the stairs was the open doorway of a
lighted room. She could not see all of the interior, but she could see
quite enough. Two men sat, side face to her, one at each end of a rough,
deal table--Danglar, and an ugly, pock-marked, unshaven man, in a peaked
cap that was drawn down over his eyes, who whittled at a stick with a
huge jack-knife. The latter was Skeeny, obviously; and the jack-knife
and the stick, quite as obviously, explained Danglar's facetious
reference to wood-carving. And then her eyes shifted, and widened as
they rested on a huddled form that she could see by looking under and
beyond the table, and that lay sprawled out against the far wall of the
room.

Skeeny pushed the peak of his cap back with the point of his
knife-blade.

"What's the haul size up at?" he demanded. "Anything in the safe besides
the shiners?"

"A few hundred dollars," Danglar replied. "I don't know exactly how
much. I told the Cricket to divide it up among the boys who did the
rough work. That's good enough,