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Rh now. She glanced around continually. Once she stood for several minutes in front of a store window.

"On the right track!" Sheriff Kowen told himself. "She's going to that crook's headquarters, all right, and she wants to make sure she isn't being followed."

He made a sign to his deputy, and they began to approach each other. Mamie Blanchard had walked on down the street. Suddenly she darted through a little gate, and walked swiftly toward one of the smaller houses that sat back from the street.

Kowen and his deputy saw her go into the cottage.

"Go telephone for half a dozen of the men," Kowen ordered the other. "When they come, scatter them around the block, and then come back here to me. Either that house is the Black Star's headquarters, or the people there have something to do with him. I'll watch."

The deputy hurried away, and Kowen kept his eyes on the house. He supposed there was a rear door, but behind the house was a high, blank wall, and he knew that nobody could leave the place without walking directly toward him.

Kowen's heart began pounding at his ribs. If he could capture the Black Star so soon after his escape, he would be the man of the hour. He would show charity by calling in the police and Roger Verbeck, but theirs would be reflected glory, and Kowen knew it well.

The deputy returned at the end of half an hour. Men were posted behind the alley wall, he explained, and were watching the house from the buildings on