Page:McCulley--Black Star's camapign.djvu/228

228 nature, such as I possess. Violence merely destroys itself, my dear Muggs."

"Yeh, and I'll probably destroy you before we make an end of this!" Muggs declared. "I tell you that you can't get away with it! You're about due to strangle on what you've bitten off!"

The Black Star did not reply to that; he merely chuckled and went back to the end of the table to consult his memorandum book again. It appeared to Muggs that the master crook consulted that book to a great extent this day, acting as if he felt that there was some minor detail he had forgotten.

After a time, the little bell on the wall tinkled, and a robed and masked figure entered the room and went to the blackboard. Muggs glanced at him in disgust. The Black Star's men had been reporting continually during the day.

"Number Five," the man wrote.

"Countersign?" wrote the Black Star on his blackboard.

"Everglades."

"Report."

"There appears to be no suspicion as to what we really intend to do to-night. The police reserves are being held in waiting, and the sheriff has his deputies ready for action, but those seem to be all the arrangements that have been made."

"How about Verbeck?" the Black Star wrote.

"He is at police headquarters now, waiting for the alarm so he can take the trail."

"Good. That is all," the Black Star wrote.

The member of the band bowed and backed through the door. The Black Star wrote something in the