as not until they had reached the street, and Shluker was
hurrying along as fast as he could walk, that he answered her.

"It's the Pug and Pinkie Bonn!" he jerked out angrily. "They're in the
Pug's room. Pinkie went back there after telephonin'. They've nosed
out something they want to put through. The fools! And after last
night nearly havin' finished everything! I told 'em--you heard me--that
everybody's to keep under cover now. But they think they've got a soft
thing, and they say they're goin' to it. I've got to put a crimp in it,
and you've got to help me. Y'understand, Nan?"

"Yes," she said mechanically.

Her mind was working swiftly. The night, after all, perhaps, was not to
be so much of a failure! To get into intimate touch with all the members
of the clique was equally one of her objects, and, failing Danglar
himself to-night, here was an "open sesame" to the re-treat of two of
the others. She would never have a better chance, or one in which risk
and danger, under the chaperonage, as it were, of Shluker here, were,
if not entirely eliminated, at least reduced to an apparently negligible
minimum. Yes; she would go. To refuse was to turn her back on her own
proposed line of action, and on the decision which she had made herself.

XII. CROOKS Vs. CROOKS

It was not far. Shluker, hastening along, still muttering to himself,
turned into a cross street some two blocks away, and from there again
into a lane; and, a moment later, led the way through a small door
in the fence that hung, battered and half open, on sagging and broken
hinges. Rhoda Gray's eyes traveled sharply around her in all directions.
It was still light enough to see fairly well, and she might at some
future time find the bearings she took now to be of inestimable worth.
Not that there was much to remark! They crossed a diminutive and
disgustingly dirty backyard, whose sole reason for existence seemed to
be that of a receptacle for old tin cans, and were confronted by the
rear of what appeared to be a four-story tenement. There was a back door
here, and, on the right of the door, fronting the yard, a single window
that was some four or five feet from the level of the ground.

Shluker, without hesitation, opened the back door, shut it behind them,
led the way along a black, unlighted hall, and halting before a door
well toward the front of the building, knocked softly upon it--giving
two raps, a single rap, and then two more in quick suc