light played along the wall from the flashlight in his hand--just for an instant--and all was blackness again. But in that instant Jimmie Dale was across the hall, and his fingers were tracing the telephone connection from the instrument to where the wires disappeared in the baseboard of the floor. Another instant, and he had severed the wires with a pair of nippers. Again the quick, firefly gleam of light to locate the stair case and the library door opposite to it--and, moving without the slightest noise, Jimmie Dale's hand was on the door itself. Again he paused to listen. All was silence now. The door swung under his hand, and, left open behind him, he was in the room. The flashlight winked once--suspiciously. Then he snapped its little switch, keeping the current on, and the ray dodged impudently here and there all over the apartment.The safe was set in a sort of clothes closet behind the desk, she had said. Yes, there it was--the door, at least. Jimmie Dale moved toward it--and paused as his light swept the top of the intervening desk. A mass of papers, books, and correspondence littered it untidily. The yellow sheet of a telegram caught Jimmie Dale's eye. He picked it up and glanced at it. It read:

"Vein uncovered to-day. Undoubtedly mother lode. Enormously rich. Put the screws on at once. THURL."

Under the mask, Jimmie Dale's lips twitched. "I think, Markel, you miserable hound," said he softly, "that God will forgive me for depriving you of a share of the profits. Two hundred and ten thousand, I think it was, you said the sparklers cost." A curious little sound came from Jimmie Dale's lips--like a chuckle.

Jimmie Dale tossed the telegram back on the desk, moved on behind the desk, opened the door of the closet that had been metamorphosed into a vault--and the white light travelled slowly, searchingly, critically over the shining black-enamelled steel, the nickelled knobs, and dials of a safe that confronted him. Jimmie Dale nodded at it--familiarly, grimly. "It's number one-four-three-two-one, all right," he murmured. "And one of the best we ever made. Pretty tough. But I've done it before. Say, half an hour of gentle persuasion. It would be too bad to crack it with 'soup'--besides, that's crude--Carruthers would never forgive the Gray Seal for that!"

The light went out--blackness fell. Jimmie Dale's slim, sensitive fingers closed on the dial's knob, his head touched the steel front of the safe as he pressed his ear against it for the tumblers' fall. And then silence. It seemed to grow heavier, that silence, with each second--to palpitate through the quiet house--to grow 

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