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146 glass." Porter hesitated. "I suppose I was a fool, but I never suspected he had a chance in the world to make a break for it then; so I turned to do as he asked, when the lights went out like a flash, and I heard the door of the store-room slam. I groped my way to it but it was fastened by a spring lock and by the time I found the switch in the wall and turned on the lights again Shaw blew his whistle outside.

"There must have been a second light-switch in the store-room and a second door leading up into the yard; and the kid had evidently planned his getaway ahead, for he's wearing a cloth cap, which I guess he had been carrying folded up in an inside pocket since before I came on the job. I ran out of the house, found Blake on guard at the corner, and he told me young Chalmers had come out of the tradesmen's entrance on the side street and started due east, with Shaw trailing him.

"I borrowed Blake's hat and hot-footed it after them, picking them up at Third Avenue in time to relieve Shaw just as Gene was boarding a surface car. By sheer luck a drunk happened to be getting out of a taxi in front of Bud Westley's old poolroom, and I grabbed it and trailed the car. The kid couldn't have had a suspicion that he was being shadowed; for he got out at this corner and made straight for that shop over there without even looking around."

"You were an ass to be taken in like that, Porter, but perhaps it is just as well," Odell commented. "Our young friend must have been pretty desperate to risk such a move when he knew that the house was guarded inside and out.