ed his hands as he stared into the muzzle of
a revolver. Beyond the revolver he saw the grinning face of Mike
Duffy, erstwhile lumberjack, then bootlegger, and now policeman; under
the Hicks regime.

"Shaved her off, eh?" taunted the man. "Well, mebbe you'd 'a' fooled
most folks, but you hain't fooled me none, special' as I be'n layin' in
the brush watchin' you fer half an hour. You'd of got away from the
rest of 'em too."

XI

Old John McNabb had not been long at his desk when the telephone bell
rang and he picked up the receiver.

"Hello--who? Hicks? He--what? Where is he now? Got away! Well, you
get him! Get him, or I'll get you! If he ain't back in jail to-day,
off comes your buttons to-morrow--do you get that?" Old John banged
the receiver onto the hook, and launched what would undoubtedly have
been a classic of denunciatory profanity, had it not been interrupted
in its inception by Jean, who had slipped into the office unnoticed at
the beginning of the telephone conversation.

"Why, Dad!" exclaimed the girl laughing, as the red-faced man whirled
upon her in surprise. "What a beastly temper you are in this morning!
Who got away, and why are you so anxious to have him caught?"

"Oskar got away," he growled, apparently somewhat mollified by his
daughter's tone. "Hicks started for jail with him an' Oskar knocked
him down in the alley an' got away."

"Oskar! Jail! What do you mean?"

"I mean just what I say," answered McNabb, meeting the girl's startled
gaze squarely. "A thirty thousand dollar sable coat is missing from
the store, and no one except Oskar and I had access to the fur safe.
He made up a cock-an'-bull story about letting you wear it Saturday to
show up Mrs. Orcutt. He claims he went to the theatre to enjoy the
effect on Mrs. Orcutt, when he discovered that you were wearing, not
the Russian sable that you had worn from the store, but a baum marten
coat. He hurried to the store to find that both the sable and the
marten coats were gone----"

Old John noticed that as he talked the color receded slowly from the
girl's face, leaving it almost chalk white, and then suddenly the color
returned with a rush that flamed red to her hair roots. But he was
totally unprepared for the sudden fury with which she faced him.

"And you had him arrested! Oskar arrested like a common thief! Are
you crazy? You know as well as I do that he never stole a pin----"

"No, he never stole a pi