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Rh mine crosses Third Avenue. Get behind the tubs quick! They're coming out!"

From their hiding-place they saw Sims emerge cautiously from the door, peer up and down the alley, and dart off to the side street. A long five minutes passed and then Gene appeared, closing the door behind him. He looked neither to right nor left, but hugging the wall of the houses he crept slowly to the street, hesitated a moment, and then headed west.

"Go on. Porter," Odell ordered. "If he goes back to the house 'phone Headquarters at once."

Without a word the operative glided away into the shadows, reappeared at the lighted mouth of the alley, and vanished again in the wake of his subject.

Five more minutes passed, then ten, and still there came no sign of the departure of the third man from the lighted room. Odell began to feel a vague sense of uneasiness. What if Drew had gone out the front way, overcome or blackjacked Miller, and made his escape? No direct mention had been made by any of the three of the investigation going on at the Meade house nor of the sequence of strange events which had taken place there; but Gene Chalmers had had plenty of time to discuss that with Drew before the arrival of Sims. How completely the latter was in his master's confidence Odell could not be sure. If Drew had indeed a guilty knowledge of the sinister problem it was evident that his servant was ignorant of it. The latter's cry that he would rather "do a stretch than go to the chair" had been too spontaneous and too frankly panic-stricken to brand him as capable of potential murder.

The ten minutes doubled in length, and just as Odell