heard nothing. What had happened?--the child had paused. Had she heard? Lucile's first impulse was to snap on a light. She hesitated and in hesitating lost. 

There came a sudden glare of light. A child's face was framed in it, a puzzled, frightened face. A slender hand went out and up. A book came down. The light went out. And all this happened with such incredible speed that Lucile stood glued to her tracks through it all. 

She leaped toward the dummy elevator, only to hear the faint click which told that it was descending. She could not stop it. The child was gone. She dashed to a window which was on the elevated station side. A few seconds of waiting and the lightning rewarded her. In the midst of a blinding flash, she caught sight of a tiny figure crossing a broad stretch of rain-soaked green. 

The next instant, with rubbers in one hand and ulster in the other, she dashed down the stairs. "I'll get her yet," she breathed. "She belongs down town. She'll take the elevated. There is a car in seven minutes. I'll make it, too. Then we shall see." 

CHAPTER III THE GARGOYLE Down a long stretch of sidewalk, across a sunken patch of green where the water was to her ankles, down a rain-drenched street, through pools of black water where sewers were choked, Lucile dashed. With no thought for health or safety she exposed herself to the blinding tempest and dashed before skidding autos, to arrive at last panting at the foot of the rusted iron stairs that led to the elevated railway platform. 

Pausing only long enough to catch her breath and arrange her garments that the child might not be frightened away by her appearance, she hurried up the stairs. The train came thundering in. There was just time to thrust a dime through the wicker window and to bound for the door.Catching a fleeting glimpse of the dripping figure of the child, she made a dash for that car and made it. A moment later, with her ulster thrown over on the seat beside her, she found herself facing the child.

Sitting there curled up in a corner, as she now was, hugging a bulky package wrapped in oilcloth, the child seemed older and tinier than ever. "How could she do it?" was Lucile's unspoken question as she watched the water oozing from her shoes to drip-drip to the floor below. With the question came a blind resolve to see the thing through to the end. This child was not the real culprit. Cost what it might, she would find who was behind her strange actions.

There 

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