f the organization; she understood now
how it was, and why, the Adventurer had a room so close to that other
room across the hall. That dangling thing on an elastic cord was a
smeared and dirty celluloid eye-patch that had once been flesh-colored!
The Adventurer and the Pug were one!

Her wits! Quick! He must not know! In a frenzy of haste she ran for the
bed, and slipped the eye-patch in under the mattress again; and then,
still with frenzied speed, she climbed to the window sill, drew the
roller shade down again behind her, and dropped to the ground.

Through the back yard and lane she gained the street, and sped on
along the street--but her thoughts outpaced her hurrying footsteps.
How minutely every detail of the night now seemed to explain itself
and dovetail with every other one! At the time, when Shluker had been
present, it had struck her as a little forced and unnecessary that the
Pug should have volunteered to seek out Danglar with explanations after
the money had been secured. But she understood now the craft and guile
that lay behind his apparently innocent plan. The Adventurer needed both
time and an alibi, and also he required an excuse for making Pinkie Bonn
the custodian of the stolen money, and of getting Pinkie alone with
that money in the Pug's room. Going to Danglar supplied all this. He had
hurried back, changed in that room from the Pug to the Adventurer, and
proposed in the latter character to relieve Pinkie of the money, to
return then across the hall, become the Pug again, and then go back,
as though he had just come from Danglar, to find his friend and ally,
Pinkie Bonn, robbed by their mutual arch-enemy--the Adventurer!

The Pug-the Adventurer! She did not quite seem to grasp its significance
as applied to her in a personal way. It seemed to branch out into
endless ramifications. She could not somehow think logically, coolly
enough now, to decide what this meant in a concrete way to her, and her
to-morrow, and the days after the to-morrow.

She hurried on. To-night, as she would lay awake through the hours that
were to come, for sleep was a thing denied, perhaps a clearer
vision would be given her. For the moment there--there was something
else--wasn't there? The money that belonged to the old couple.

She hurried on. She came again to the street where the old couple lived.
It was a dirty street, and from the curb she stooped and picked up a
dirty piece of old newspaper. She wrapped the