nough,
hadn't it? And she would have tried every corner before she was through
if she had had the opportunity.

She moved now slightly, without a sound, parting the clothing away from
in front of her, and moving the cretonne hanging by the fraction of an
inch where it touched the side wall of the room. And now she could see
the Pug, with his dirty and discolored celluloid eye-patch, and his
ingeniously contorted face; and she could see Pinkie Bonn's pasty-white,
drug-stamped countenance.

It was not a large room. The two men in the opposite corner along the
wall from her were scarcely more than ten feet away. They swung the
washstand out from the wall, and the Pug, going in behind it, began
to work on one of the wall boards. Pinkie Bonn, an unlighted cigarette
dangling from his lip, leaned over the washstand watching his companion.

A minute passed--another. It was still in the room, except only for
the distant sounds of the world outside--a clatter of wheels upon the
pavement, the muffled roar of the elevated, the clang of a trolley bell.
And then the Pug began to mutter to himself. Rhoda Gray smiled a little
grimly. She was not the only one, it would appear, who experienced
difficulty with old Jake Luertz's crafty hiding place!

"Say, dis is de limit!" the Pug growled out suddenly. "Dere's more
damned knots in dis board dan I ever save in any piece of wood in me
life before, an'--" He drew back abruptly from the wall, twisting his
head sharply around. "D'ye hear dat, Pinkie!" he whispered tensely.
"Quick! Put out de light! Quick! Dere's some one down at de front door!"

Rhoda Gray felt the blood ebb from her face. She had heard nothing save
the rattle and bump of a wagon along the street below; but she had had
reason to appreciate on a certain occasion before that the Pug, alias
the Adventurer, was possessed of a sense of hearing that was abnormally
acute. If it was some one else--who was it? What would it mean to her?
What complication here in this room would result? What...

The light was out. Pinkie Bonn had stepped silently across the room to
the gas jet near the door. Her eyes, strained, she could just make out
the Adventurer's form kneeling by the wall, and then--was she mad!
Was the faint night-light of the city filtering in through the window
mocking her? The Adventurer, hidden from his companion by the washstand,
was working swiftly and without a sound--or else it was a phantasm of
shadows that tricked