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152 which the detective had seen reflected in Olga's piercing eyes and heard in her studied but crisp and stinging words, had spread its skinny wings and flown. Olga was laughing in such sincere, or well-feigned, mockery at his alarm that the dignified detective momentarily felt abashed.

He put his weapon away, nevertheless, only after a searching glance about the very ordinary little room in which the extraordinary woman had received him. He recalled that the last victim of Olga's brother, mutilated, headless and repellant, had been found in this same neighborhood, if not in this same house.

"Please—please forgive me," the strange girl was pleading. "You see, I forgot that you are not like—like Brandon. For him there is no forgiveness. He must perish. But we—you and I—why must we be enemies?"

"There's but one reason, Olga," replied Seagraves seriously, "and that is a strong one. It is simply the nature of our respective callings."

"Then I can only be sorry," she said in a low voice. "Still, my principles are more—what word?—more sacred than your friendship."

As the woman paused, Seagraves could have taken an oath that he caught the sound of whispering voices through a door standing slightly ajar not three paces from his elbow. Of a sudden, he stepped forward and flung the door wide with a resounding bang.

A gray-walled room, quite empty, was all that rewarded his examination. He turned and found Olga smiling again.

"Did you surprise them?" she inquired sweetly.

"Surprise whom?" demanded the detective.

"The rats," she said ingenuously, still smiling.

"I've seen but one rat here," murmured Seagraves in an impersonal tone; "I see it now. It has wings that fold up like an umbrella. It is called a vampire."

Olga smiled on placidly, even after Joe Seagraves had closed the door on her and was gone.

N THE language of the man who knotted the noose, Olga, as her kind are certain to do, came at last to the end of her rope.

Conspiracy, blackmail and extortion were at last brought home to her; and it chanced that the same eminent crime expert who had hurried the career of her brother to an inglorious finish was likewise destined to be the instrument of fate in the undoing of Olga.

In time the pursuit narrowed down to the end of a most imperfect day for both quarry and hunters. Then all night, as Brandon and Seagraves gradually drew their web closer and ever closer about the elusive Terrorist, she tricked them at every angle and turn with the cunning of a fox, and it was not until three sleepless days and nights that the two renowned sleuths effected her capture more than five hundred miles distant from the field of her long-continued operations.

"She'll be as slippery as an eel," Brandon warned Seagraves, when they were ready to start back with their prisoner. "I'll never consent to any Pullman for her, even though we ignore the law and handcuff her to the seat. One of us is going to have to keep his eyes on her constantly."

"Only one of us could sleep at a time, anyhow," said Seagraves; "and surely we can stand it one more night, don't you think? Suppose we both sit it out with her."

They at length did decide to "sit it out" with their prisoner, and with that understanding they took her aboard the train.

At the moment of entering the train, a telegram was handed to Brandon, and as soon as the three were comfortably seated in their section the inspector read it with lips compressed and eyes oddly squinted. Then he handed the message to Seagraves, who read: