s of the furnace in the cellar being
big enough to hold a man, and then him and Mr. Narkom went below to have
a look at it."

She gave a sharp and sudden cry, and her face went as pale as a dead
face.

"Sir Horace came down?" she repeated, moving back a step and leaning
heavily against the bannister. "Sir Horace came down to look at the
furnace? We have no furnace!"

"What!"

"We have no furnace, I tell you, and Sir Horace did not come down. He is
up there still. I know--I know, I tell you--because I feared for his
safety, and when he went to his room I locked him in!"

"Superintendent!" The word was voiced by every man present, and six
pairs of eyes turned toward Narkom with a look of despairing
comprehension.

"Get to the cellar. Head the man off! It's he--the Cracksman!" he
shouted out. "Find him! Get him! Nab him, if you have to turn the house
upside down!"

They needed no second bidding, for each man grasped the situation
instantly, and in a twinkling there was a veritable pandemonium.
Shouting and scrambling like a band of madmen, they lurched to the door,
whirled it open, and went flying down the staircase to the kitchen and
so to a discovery which none might have foreseen. For, almost as they
entered they saw lying on the floor a suit of striped pyjamas, and close
to it, gagged, bound, helpless, trussed up like a goose that was ready
for the oven, gyves on his wrists, gyves on his ankles, their chief,
their superintendent, Mr. Maverick Narkom, in a state of collapse, and
with all his outer clothing gone!

"After him! After that devil, and a thousand pounds to the man that gets
him!" he managed to gasp as they rushed to him and ripped loose the gag.
"He was here when we came! He has been in the house for hours. Get him!
get him! get him!"

They surged from the room and up the stairs like a pack of stampeded
animals; they raced through the hall and bore down on the
picture-gallery in a body, and, whirling open the now closed door, went
tumbling headlong in.

The light was still burning. At the far end of the room a window was
wide open, and the curtains of it fluttered in the wind. A collection of
empty cases and caskets lay on the middle table, but man and jewels were
alike gone! Once again the Vanishing Cracksman had lived up to his
promise, up to his reputation, up to the very letter of his name, and
for all Mr. Maverick Narkom's care and shrewdness, "Forty Faces" had
"turned the trick" and Scotl