after the giving of the alarm and before he ran to the club. Yet he
might not have done so. She might be fainting, or even dead. The most
terrible, melodramatic things happened every day in New York. One saw
them in the papers and felt they could never come into one's own life.
Supposing there were some hiding-place?

The fishlike flopping of Peter's heart slowed down as if the fish were
losing strength. The thought was too hideous to finish. Yet he would
not dismiss it until he had played his hand in the game.

So far he had hardly spoken since the sight of the blue smoke wreath
on the chair had set his brain whirling. But when Logan suddenly
challenged him to drink a health to the New York police, he took the
glass of champagne Sims offered.

"Here's to you!" he said. "I never had such a good chance to
appreciate the thoroughness of your methods! By Jove! think of looking
even under the table! Now that would never have occurred to me."

"I guess it would," one of the men encouraged him, "if you had our
experience. It gets to be second nature to be thorough. We never, so
to speak, leave a stone unturned"

"Well, it's mighty smart of you, that's all I can say!" young Mr.
Rolls went on. "What do you call being thorough--not 'leaving a stone
unturned?' Here, for instance how can you be sure you've looked in
every hole and cranny where Mr. Logan might have stowed a young woman
in a dead faint, if he wanted to fool you?"

Both men laughed. "You ought to bin with us when we went on our trip
around the house!"

"I wish I had! It would have been a sort of experience," said Peter.
"I sometimes read detective stories and wonder if they're like the
real thing. When you were out of the room I was thinking if we'd had a
girl hidden in here--behind the curtains, for instance--we might have
sneaked her away when you were upstairs or down in the basement."

They laughed again, patronizing the amateur. "You must take us for
Uncle Ezras from Wayback!" genially sneered he who claimed leadership.
"We didn't 'both' go upstairs--or in the basement. While I waited in
the hall my mate slipped down and locked the door that lets into the
area and brought away the key on him. What's more, he did something to
the keyhole--a little secret we know--that would have told us if any
one had used another key while we were gone. But no one did. Good
guard was kept, and if a mouse had tried to slip by we'd 'a' caught
it."

"But what if a mouse