LITMIR.BIZ

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last wire joined, he looked about the room, then noiselessly moved to the window and raised the shade.

      Quickly he raised his hand and brought the fingers slowly together. It was the sign.

      Off in the alley, the express driver and his helper were still gazing up through the opera glass.

      “What d’ye see, Bill?” he asked, handing over the glass.

      The other took it and looked. “It’s him—the Hand, Jack,” whispered the helper, handing the glasses back.

      They jumped into the wagon and away it rattled.

      Jensen was smoking placidly as the wagon pulled up the second time.

      “Sorry,” said the driver sheepishly, “but we delivered the cabinet to the wrong Mr. Kennedy.”

      He pulled out the inevitable book to prove it.

      “Wall, you bane fine fallers,” growled Jensen, puffing like a furnace, in his fury. “You cannot go up agane.”

      “We’ll get fired for the mistake,” pleaded the helper.

      “Just this once,” urged the driver, as he rattled some loose change in his pocket. “Here—there goes a whole day’s tips.”

      He handed Jens a dollar in small change.

      Still grumpy but mollified by the silver Jens let them go up and opened the door to our rooms again. There stood the cabinet, as outwardly innocent as when it came in.

      Lugging and tugging they managed to get the heavy piece of furniture out and downstairs again, loading it on the wagon. Then they drove off with it, accompanied by a parting volley from Jensen.

      In an unfrequented street, perhaps half a mile away, the wagon stopped. With a keen glance around, the driver and his helper made sure that no one was about.

      “Such a shaking up as you’ve given me!” growled a voice as the cabinet door opened. “But I’ve got him this time!”

      It was the Clutching Hand.

      “There, men, you can leave me here,” he ordered.

      He motioned to them to drive off and, as they did so, pulled off his masking handkerchief and dived into a narrow street leading up to a thoroughfare.

      Craig gazed into our living room cautiously.

      “I can’t see anything wrong,” he said to me as I stood just beside him. “Miss Dodge,” he added, “will you and the rest excuse me if I ask you to wait just a moment longer?”

      Elaine watched him, fascinated. He crossed the room, then went into each of our other rooms. Apparently nothing was wrong and a minute later he reappeared at the doorway.

      “I guess it’s all right,” he said. “Perhaps it was only Jensen, the janitor.”

      Elaine, Aunt Josephine and Susie Martin entered. Craig placed chairs for them, but still I could see that he was uneasy. From time to time, while they were admiring one of our treasures after another, he glanced about suspiciously. Finally he moved over to a closet and flung the door open, ready for anything. No one was in the closet and he closed it hastily.

      “What is the trouble, do you think?” asked Elaine wonderingly, noticing his manner.

      “I—I can’t just say,” answered Craig, trying to appear easy.

      She had risen and with keen interest was looking at the books, the pictures, the queer collection of weapons and odds and ends from the underworld that Craig had amassed in his adventures.

      At last her eye wandered across the room. She caught sight of her own picture, occupying a place of honor—but hanging askew.

      “Isn’t that just like a man!” she exclaimed laughingly. “Such housekeepers as you are—such carelessness!”

      She had taken a step or two across the room to straighten the picture.

      “Miss Dodge!” almost shouted Kennedy, his face fairly blanched, “Stop!”

      She turned, her stunning eyes filled with amazement at his suddenness. Nevertheless she moved quickly to one side, as he waved his arms, unable to speak quickly enough.

      Kennedy stood quite still, gazing at the picture, askew, with suspicion.

      “That wasn’t that way when we left, was it, Walter?” he asked.

      “It certainly was not,” I answered positively, “There was more time spent in getting that picture just right than I ever saw you spend on all the rest of the room.”

      Craig frowned.

      As for myself, I did not know what to make of it.

      “I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to step into this back room,” said Craig at length to the ladies. “I’m sorry—but we can’t be too careful with this intruder, whoever he was.”

      They rose, surprised, but, as he continued to urge them, they moved into my room.

      Elaine, however, stopped at the door.

      For a moment Kennedy appeared to be considering. Then his eye fell on a fishing rod that stood in a corner. He took it and moved toward the picture.

      On his hands and knees, to one side, down as close as he could get to the floor, with the rod extended at arm’s length, he motioned to me to do the same, behind him.

      Elaine, unable to repress her interest took a half step forward, breathless, from the doorway, while Susie Martin and Aunt Josephine stood close behind her.

      Carefully Kennedy reached out with the pole and straightened the picture.

      As he did so there was a flash, a loud, deafening report, and a great puff of smoke from the fireplace.

      The fire screen was riddled and overturned. A charge of buckshot shattered the precious photograph of Elaine.

      We had dropped flat on the floor at the report. I looked about. Kennedy was unharmed, and so were the rest.

      With a bound he was at the fireplace, followed by Elaine and the rest of us. There, in what remained of a package done up roughly in newspaper, was a shot gun with its barrel sawed off about six inches from the lock, fastened to a block of wood, and connected to a series of springs on the trigger, released by a little electromagnetic arrangement actuated by two batteries and leading by wires up along the moulding to the picture where the slightest touch would complete the circuit.

      The newspapers which were wrapped about the deadly thing were burning, and Kennedy quickly tore them off, throwing them into the fireplace.

      A startled cry from Elaine caused us to turn.

      She was standing directly before her shattered picture where it hung awry on the wall. The heavy charges of buckshot had knocked away large pieces of paper and plaster under it.

      “Craig!” she gasped.

      He was at her side in a second.

      She laid one hand on his arm, as she faced him. With the other she traced an imaginary line in the air from the level of the buckshot to his head and then straight to the infernal thing that had lain in the fireplace.

      “And to think,” she shuddered, “that it was through me that he tried to kill you!”

      “Never mind,” laughed Craig easily, as they gazed into each other’s eyes, drawn together by their mutual peril, “Clutching Hand will have to be cleverer than this to get either of us— Elaine!”

      Chapter V

      The Poisoned Room

       Table of Contents

      Elaine and Craig were much together during

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