the building, was endowed with an instinctive sense of location of things, or could see in the dark, would have been a question too difficult for a casual thinker to answer. An observer, had there been one, might have said that the room had a strange way of flashing crimson for a fraction of a second, then becoming inky black again.

After moving about for a time, Pant doubled himself up and, creeping into the broad lower part of a dilapidated cupboard, closed the door behind him.

Ten minutes elapsed. A rat scurried over the uneven floor. Another creeping through a hole in the base of the cupboard, began rattling a loose bit of board about. Pant kicked at it. Then all was silent again.

Five minutes more passed. Three rats had ventured out upon the floor when, of a sudden, there sounded the rattle of a key in the outer door. The rats scurried away. Pant caught a quick breath, as he whispered:

“They return!”

A match was struck. A broad, fat face appeared at the door. The man’s small, beady eyes peered about the place for a moment, then he whispered back over his shoulder:

“All right. C’m’on.”

“Safe?”

“Sure!”

Two other men followed him. One was slim, the other broad shouldered. Pant almost let fall an exclamation, as he saw that the broad-shouldered one had a ragged ear.

“Perhaps Johnny’s right,” was his mental comment.

Through a hole left by what had once been a lock on the cupboard door, he could catch every move of the mysterious three.

Gathering around the table they proceeded at once to what appeared to be the task of the night. A flat tin affair was placed on the table. A tin cup from which the handle of a brush protruded was set down close to the pan. A roll of paper was produced. It was while this was being rolled backward and then drawn across the smooth edge of the table to make it straight that Pant felt something touch his hand. Barely checking a start, he held himself rigidly motionless. In an instant he realized that it was only a hungry rat. But in a minute he knew that this was quite bad enough, for the rat began to gnaw at his finger.

In the meantime, in the room 

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