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220 only an outpost for this affair. Through a dictaphone and the telegraphy of the pipe, instructions had been sent to and from their headquarters. To-night, they declared, the shop had ceased to be useful. No trail would lead from it to the central force that worked in New York.

As they drove home in a taxicab the inspector bitterly lamented the fact to Garth and Nora.

"We'll get to it later," Garth said.

"If only things hadn't gone wrong at the last minute!" Nora cried. "If only I might have taken the bomb and talked to the man who brought it! Even with the others! For it's clear those fellows will give nothing away now. We can blame poor Marvin that I never had a chance."

"What do you mean?" Garth asked. "You haven't told us what happened when I left you by the west door."

"You remember we had got Marvin on a sofa in the hall," Nora answered. "He must have seen you close the door when you went in the library to warn Alsop and the others, because from my hiding place I saw him get up, and, with no appearance of an injured man, sneak along the wall to the stairs. I followed him up, and, Jim, I found him on the floor in his room again, but this time he didn't hear me, and he was talking. Then I saw his whole game. There was a dictaphone hidden beneath the bed with which he had probably communicated with those outside the house for days. We had stopped him the first time when he had just learned of my