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190 he received this response from the Knickerbocker switchboard: "Wait a min'te, can't you? Here's your party."

Lanyard was surprised at the eagerness with which he cried: "Hello!"

A click answered, and a bland voice which was not the voice he had expected to hear: "Hello? That you, Jack?"

He said wearily: "I am waiting to speak with Miss Cecelia Brooke."

"Oh, then there must be some mistake. This is Miss Crooke speaking."

Lanyard uttered a strangled "Sorry!" and hung up, abandoning further effort as hopeless.

That matter would have to stand over till morning.

Time now pressed: it was nearly eleven; he had a rendezvous with Destiny to keep at midnight, and meant to be more than punctual.

Walking to his apartment house, he proceeded to establish an alibi by entering through the public hallway and registering with the telephone attendant a call for seven o'clock the next morning.

In the course of the next half hour Lanyard let himself quietly out of the private door, slipped around the block and boarded a Riverside Drive bus.

Alighting at Ninety-third Street, he walked two blocks north on the Drive, turned east, and without misadventure admitted himself a second time to the Stanistreet garden.