up!"

With a jerk, up went his hands high above his head. Blinking furiously
in the glare, he comprehended his plight.

The lights he found so dazzling blazed from sconces round the walls of
a bedroom more handsome than any he had thought ever to see--unless
perhaps upon a stage. The voice belonged to a young woman sitting up
in bed and coolly covering him with the yawning muzzle of a peculiarly
poisonous-looking automatic pistol.

It was astonishingly evident that she wasn't at all frightened. The
arm that levelled the weapon (a round and shapely arm, bare to the
shoulder) was admirably steady; the rich colouring of her distinctly
handsome face showed not a trace of pallor; and the fire that
flickered in her large and darkly beautiful eyes was of indignation
rather than of fear.

Abruptly she dropped her weapon and sat up yet straighter in her
huddled bed-clothing, mouth and eyes widening with astonishment.

"Well!" she said quite simply--"I'll be damned if it ain't a cop!"

P. Sybarite immediately took occasion to lower his hands to a more
comfortable position.

Fright inspired his latent histrionic genius; momentarily he became
almost a good actor.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently. "You're the one woman in a
thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots! _Phwew!_"

[Illustration: "You're the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to
look before she shoots!"]

Quite naturally he drew a braided blue cuff across a beaded forehead.

"That's all very well," the woman took him up sharply--"but be careful
I don't shoot after looking. Cop or no cop, you--what the devil do you
want in my bedroom at this hour of the night?"

"Madam," P. Sybarite expostulated, aggrieved yet with an air of the
utmost candour--"my duty, of course!"

"Duty!" she echoed. "What do you think you mean by that?"

"Perhaps," he countered blandly, "you're not aware a burglar has
passed through this room?"

"A burglar? What rot!"

"Pardon me, madam," P. Sybarite lied nonchalantly, "but five minutes
ago I was called in by the people in Two-thirty-three Forty-fifth
Street, to nab a burglar who'd broken in there. They thought they had
him locked up safe enough in one of the rooms, but when they came to
open the door and let _me_ at him--the bird had flown! He'd taken a
long chance--swung himself from the window-ledge to a fire-escape five
feet away--don't ask _me_ how he did it! I got to the window just in
time to see him go