THE EMPTY HOUSE

“Don’t spare them now. Get the truth at all costs.”

With the last instructions of his chief ringing in his ears, the following morning Guy Morrow set out for Brooklyn, to interview his erstwhile friends, the Pennolds, in his true colors.

Mame Pennold, who was cleaning the dingy front room, heard the click of the gate, and peered with habitual caution from behind the frayed curtains of the window. The unexpected reappearance of their young banking acquaintance sent her scurrying as fast as her palsied legs could carry her back to the kitchen, where her husband sat luxuriously smoking and toasting his feet at the roaring little stove.

“Wally, who d’you think’s comin’ up the walk? That young feller, Alfred Hicks, who skipped from the Brooklyn and Queens Bank!”

“Good Lord!” Walter Pennold took his pipe from his lips and stared at her. “What d’you s’pose brought him back? Think he’s broke, an’ wants a touch?”

“No-o,” his wife responded, somewhat doubtfully. “He looked prosperous, all right, by the flash I got at him, an’ he’s walkin’ real brisk and businesslike. Maybe he’s back on the job.”

“’Tain’t likely, not after the way he left his boarding place, if that Lindsay woman didn’t lie.” Pennold laid aside his pipe and frowned thoughtfully, as steps echoed from the rickety porch and a knock sounded upon the door. “He’s a lightweight, every way you take him he’d never stick anywhere.”

“Maybe he’s come to try an’ get you into somethin’,” Mame suggested. “Don’t you go takin’ up with a bad penny at your time o’ life, Wally. He might know somethin’ an’ try blackmail, if he’s real up against it.”

“Well, go ahead an’ open the door!” ordered Walter impatiently. “We’re straight with the bank. If he’s workin’ there again we ain’t got nothin’ to worry about, an’ if he ain’t, we got nothin’ against him. Let him in.”

With obvious reluctance, Mame shuffled through the hall and obeyed.

“Hello, Mrs. Pennold!” Guy greeted her heartily, but without offering his hand. He brushed past her half-defensive figure with scant ceremony, and entered the kitchen. “Hello, Pennold. Thought I might find you home this cold morning. How goes it?”

“Same as usual.” Pennold rose slowly and looked at his visitor with swiftly narrowed eyes. There was a new note in the young man’s voice which the other vaguely recognized; it was as if a lantern had suddenly flashed into his face from the darkness, or an authoritative hand been laid upon his shoulder. He motioned mechanically toward a chair on the other side of the stove, and added slowly: “S’prised to see you, Al. Didn’t expect you’d be around here again after your get-away. Workin’ once more?”

“Oh, I’m right on the job!” responded Guy briskly. He drew the chair close to the square deal table, so close that he could have reached out, had he pleased, and touched his host’s sleeve. Pennold seated himself again in his old position, significantly half-turned, so that when he glanced slyly at his visitor it was over his shoulder, in the furtive fashion of one on guard.

“Ain’t back with the Brooklyn and Queens, are you?” he asked.

“No. It got too slow for me there. I found something bigger to do.”

Mame Pennold, who had been hovering in the background, came forward now and faced him across the table, her shrewd eyes fastened upon him.

“Must have easy hours, when you can get off in the morning like this?” she observed. “Didn’t forget your old friends, did you?”

“No, of course not. I hadn’t anything more important to do this morning, so I thought I’d drop in and see you both.”

His hand traveled to his breast pocket, and at the gesture, Mame’s gaunt body stiffened suddenly.

“Didn’t come to inquire about our health, did you?” she shot at him, acrimoniously.

“I came to see you about another matter

“Not on the trail of old Jimmy Brunell still, on that business of the bonds found at the bank?” Walter’s voice was suddenly shrill with simulated mirth. “Nothin’ in that for you, Al; not a nickel, if that’s what you’re here for.”

“I’m not on Brunell’s trail. I’ve found him,” Morrow returned quietly; and in the tense pause which ensued he added dryly: “You led me to him.”

“So that’s what it was, a plant!” Walter started from his chair, but Mame laid a trembling, sinewy hand upon his shoulder and forced him back.

“What d’you mean, young man?” she demanded. “What do we know about old Brunell?”

“You wrote him a letter you knew where to find him.”

“I only wish we did!” she ejaculated. “We didn’t write him! You must be crazy!”

“’Big money coming to you from old score left unpaid. What is my share for collecting for you?’” quoted Morrow, adding: “I have a friend who is very much interested in ciphers, and he wanted me to ask you about the one you use, Pennold. His name is Blaine. Ever hear of him?”

“Blaine!” Mame’s voice shrank to a mere whisper, and her sallow face whitened.

“Blaine! Henry Blaine? The guy they call the Master Mind?” Pennold’s shaking voice rose to a breaking cry, but again his wife silenced him.

“Suppose we did write such a letter an’ we ain’t admittin’ we did, for a minute what’s Blaine got on us?” demanded Mame, coolly. “It’s no crime, as I ever heard, to write a letter any way you want to. Who are you, young man? You’re no bank clerk!”

“He’s a ‘tec, of course! Shut up your fool mouth, Mame. An’ as for you, d n you, get out of this house, an’ get out quick, or I’ll call the police myself! We’ve been leadin’ straight, clean, respectable lives for years, Mame an’ me, an’ nobody’s got nothin’ on us! I ain’t goin’ to have no private ‘tecs snoopin’ in an’ tryin’ to put me through the third degree. Beat it, now!”

He rose blusteringly and advanced toward Morrow with upraised fist, but the other, with the table between them, drew from his pocket a folded paper.

“Not so fast, Pennold. I have a warrant here for your arrest!”

“Don’t you believe him, Wally!” shrilled Mame. “It’s a fake! Don’t you talk to him! Put him out.”

“The warrant was issued this morning, and I am empowered to arrest you. You can look at it for yourselves; you’ve both seen them before.” He opened the paper and spread it out for them to read. “Walter Pennold, alias William Perry, alias Wally the Scribbler, number 09203 in the Rogues’ Gallery. First term at Joliet, for forgery; second at Sing Sing for shoving the queer. This warrant only holds you as a suspicious character, Pennold, but we can dig up plenty of other things, if it’s necessary; there’s a forger named Griswold in the Tombs now awaiting trial, who will snitch about that Rochester check, for one thing.”

“Don’t let him bluff you, Wally.” Mame faced Morrow from her husband’s side. “They can’t rake up a thing that ain’t outlawed by time. You’ve lived clean more’n seven years, an’ you’re free from the bulls. They can’t hold you.”

“I haven’t any warrant yet for you, Mrs. Pennold,” observed Morrow, imperturbably. “I admit that it’s more than seven years since every department-store detective was on the look-out for Left-handed Mame. I believe you specialized in furs and laces, didn’t you?”

“What’s it to you? You can’t lay a finger on me now!” the woman stormed, defiantly.

“Not for shop-lifting or forgery but how about receiving stolen goods?”

The shot found an instant target. Walter Pennold slumped and crumpled down into his chair, his arms outspread upon the table. He laid his head upon them, and a single dry, shuddering sob tore its way from his throat. The woman backed slowly away, and for the first time a shadow as of approaching terror crossed her hard, challenging face.

“Stolen goods!” she repeated. “What are you tryin’ to put over? Do you think we’re so green at the game that you can plant the goods here an’ get us put away on the strength of a past record? You’re a

“Nothing like it!” Morrow leaned forward impressively. “We don’t have to do any planting, Mame. It’s a good deal less than seven years since the Mortimer Chase’s silver plate lay in your cellar.”

“Silver plate in our cellar!” echoed Mame in genuine amazement.

She stepped forward again, her shrewish chin out-thrust, but Walter Pennold raised his face, and at sight of it she stopped as if turned to stone.

“It’s no use!” he cried, brokenly. “They’ve got me, Mame!”

“Got you? They’ll never get you!” her startled scream rang out. “Wally, d’you know what the next term means? It’s a lifer, on any count! I don’t know what he means about any silver plate, but it’s a bluff! Don’t let him get your nerve!”

“Is it a bluff, Pennold?” asked Morrow, with dominant insistence.

The broken figure huddled in the chair shuddered uncontrollably.

“No, it ain’t,” he muttered. “I I held out on you, Mame! I knew you wouldn’t risk it, so I didn’t say nothin’ to you about it, but the money was too easy to let get by. The old gang offered me five hundred bucks just to keep it ten days, and pass it on to Jennings. He came here with a rag-picker’s cart, you remember? You wondered what I was givin’ him, an’ I told you it was some rolls of old carpet I got from that place I was night watchman at, in Vandewater Street. I hid the stuff under the coal

“Shut up!” cried Mame, fiercely. “You don’t know what you’re sayin’. Wally, hold your tongue for God’s sake! Where’s your spirit? Are you goin’ to break down now like a reformatory brat, you that had ’em all guessin’ for twenty years!”

The gaunt woman had recovered from the sudden shock of her husband’s unexpected revelation and now towered protectingly over his collapsed form, her palsied hands for once steady and firm upon his shoulders, while her keen eyes glittered shrewdly at the young operative confronting them.

“Look here!” she said, shortly. “If you wanted us for receiving stolen goods, you wouldn’t come around here with a warrant for Wally’s arrest as a suspicious character, an’ you wouldn’t have worked that Brunell plant. What’s your lay?”

“Information,” responded Morrow, frankly. “The police don’t know where the plate was, for those ten days, and there’s no immediate need that they should. Blaine cleaned up that case eventually, you know recovered the plate and caught the butler in Southampton, under the noses of the Scotland Yard men. I want to know what you can tell me about Brunell and about your nephew, Charley Pennold.”

Walter opened his lips, but closed them without speech, and his wife replied for him.

“We’re no snitchers,” she said coldly. “There’s nothin’ we can tell. Jimmy Brunell’s run straight for near twenty years, so far as we know.”

“And Charley?” persisted Morrow.

“It’s no use, Mame,” Walter Pennold repeated, dully. “If I go up again, it means the end for me. Charley’s got to take his chance, same as the rest of us. God knows I tried to do the right thing by the boy, same as Jimmy did by his daughter, but Charley’s got the blood in him. It’s hell to peach on your own, but it’s worse to hear that iron door clank behind you, and to know it’s for the last time! After all, there ain’t nothin’ in what we can tell about Charley that a lot of other people wouldn’t spill, an’ nothin’ that could land him behind the bars. I ain’t the man I was, or I’d take my medicine without squealin’, but I can’t face it again, Mame, I can’t! I’m an old man now, old before my time, perhaps, but it’s been so long since I smelled the prison taint, so long since I had a number instead of a name, that I’d die now, quick, before I’d rot in a cell!”

The terrible, droning monotone ceased, and for a moment there was silence in the squalid little room. The woman’s face was as impassive as Morrow’s, as she waited. Only the tightening of her hands upon her husband’s shoulders, until her bony knuckles showed white through the drawn skin, betrayed the storm of emotion which swept over her, at the memories evoked by the broken words.

“I’m not asking you to snitch, Pennold,” Morrow said, not unkindly. “We know all we want to about Brunell’s life at present his home in the Bronx, and his little map-making shop and we’re not trying to rake up anything from the past to hold over him now; it is only some general information I want. As to your nephew, you’ve got to tell me all you know about him, or it’s all up with you. Blaine won’t give you away, if you’ll answer my questions frankly and make a clean breast of it, and this is your only chance.”

Pennold licked his dry lips.

“What do you want to know?” he asked, at last.

“When did Jimmy Brunell turn his last trick?”

“Years ago; I’ve forgotten how many. It’s no harm speakin’ of it now, for he did his seven years up the river for it his first and only conviction. That was the time old Cowperthwaite’s name was forged to five checks amounting to thirty thousand, all told, and Jimmy was caught on the last.”

“Where was his plant?”

“In a basement on Dye Street. The bulls never found it. He was running a little printer’s shop in front, as a blind oh, he was clever, old Jimmy, the sharpest in his line!”

“What became of his outfit, when he was sent up?”

“Dunno. It just disappeared. Some of his old pals cribbed it, I guess, or Jimmy may have fixed it with them to remove it. He was always close-mouthed, and he never would tell me. I knew where his plant was, of course, and I went there myself, after he was sent up and the coast was clear, to get the outfit, to to take care of it for him until he came out. Oh, I ain’t afraid to tell now; it’s so long ago! I could take you to the place to-day, but the outfit’s gone.”

“And when he had served his term, what happened?”

“He came out to find that his wife was dead, and Emily, the little girl that was born just after he went up, was none too well treated by the people her mother’d had to leave her with. He’d learned in the pen’ to make maps, an’ he opened a little shop an’ made up his mind to live straight, an’ an’ so far as I know, he has.” Pennold faltered, as if from weakness, and for a moment his voice ceased. Then he went on: “I ain’t seen him for a long time, but we kept track of each other, an’ when you come with that cock-an’-bull story about the bonds, and the bank backed you up in it, why I I went to see him.”

“You wrote him first. Why did you send a cipher letter?”

“Because I suspicioned the whole thing was a plant, just like it turned out to be, an’ I didn’t want to get an old pal into no trouble. The cipher’s an old one we used years ago, in the gang, an’ I know he wouldn’t forget it. I never thought he’d squeal on me to Blaine!”

“He didn’t. The letter er came into Blaine’s possession, and he read it for himself.”

“He did?” Pennold looked up quickly, with a flash of interest on his sullen face. “He’s a wonder, that Blaine! If he’d only got started the other way, the way we did, what a crook he would have made! As it is, I guess we ain’t afraid of all the organized police on earth combined, as much as we are of him. It’s a queer thing he ain’t been shot up or blown into eternity long ago, an’ yet they say he’s never guarded. He must be a cool one! Anyhow, I’m glad Jimmy didn’t squeal on me; I’d hate to think it of him. When I went to see him about the bonds, he wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with them. Swore they was a plant, he did, an’ warned me off. He seemed real excited, considerin’ he had nothin’ to worry about, but I took his word for it, an’ beat it. That’s the last I seen of him.”

“Did you send your nephew to him?”

“Me?” Pennold’s tones quickened in surprise. “I ain’t seen him in a long while, an’ I don’t believe he even remembers old Jimmy; he was only a kid when Jimmy went up the river. What would I send Charley for, when I’d gone myself an’ it hadn’t worked?”

It was evident to Morrow that the man he was interrogating was ignorant of Brunell’s connection with the Lawton case, and he changed his tactics.

“Tell me about Charley. You say you tried to do right by him.”

“Of course I did! Wasn’t he my brother’s boy?” Pennold hunched over the table, and continued eagerly: “Mame kept him clean an’ fed, an’ we sent him to public school, just like any other kid. But it wasn’t no use. He had it in him to go wrong, without the wit to get away with it. He was caught pinchin’ lead piping when he was sixteen, an’ sent to Elmira for three years. Them three years was his finish. When he came out he’d had what you’d call a graduate course in every form of crookedness under the sun, from fellers harder an’ cleverer than he’d ever thought of bein’, an’ he was bitter besides, an’ desperate. There wasn’t no chance for him then, an’ he just drifted on down the line. I never heard of him turnin’ a real trick himself, an’ he never got caught at nothin’ again, but he chummed in with the gang, an’ he always seemed to have coin enough. I ain’t seen him in more’n a year. The last I heard of him, he was workin’ as a stool-pigeon an’ snitcher for the worst scoundrel of the lot.”

“Who was that?” asked Morrow.

Pennold hesitated and then replied with dogged reluctance.

“I dunno what that’s got to do with it, but the feller’s name is Paddington, an’ he’s the worst kind of a crook a ’tec gone wrong. At least, that’s what they say about him, but I ain’t got nothin’ on him; I don’t believe I ever seen the man, that I know of. He’s worked on a lot of shady cases; I know that much, an’ he’s clever. More’n a dozen crooks are floatin’ around town that would be up the river if he told what he knew about ’em; so naturally, he owns ’em, body an’ soul. Not that Charley’s one that’d go up he’s only in it for the coin but I’d rather see him get pinched an’ do time for pullin’ off somethin’ on his own account, than runnin’ around doin’ dirty work for a man who ain’t in his father’s class, or mine. He’s a disgrace; that’s what Charley is a plain disgrace.”

Pennold’s voice rang out in highly virtuous indignation. Morrow forbore to smile at the oblique moral viewpoint of the old crook.

“What does he look like?” he asked. “Short and slim, isn’t he, with a small dark mustache?”

“That’s him!” ejaculated Pennold disgustedly. “Dresses like a dude, an’ chases after a bunch of skirts! Spreads himself like a ward politician when he gets a chance! He’s my nephew, all right, but as long as he won’t run straight, same as I’m doin’ now, I’d rather he’d crack a crib than play errand boy for a man I wouldn’t trust on look-out!”

“Where does Charley live?” asked Morrow.

“How should I know? He hangs out at Lafferty’s saloon, down on Sand Street, when he ain’t off on some steer or other leastways he used to.”

Morrow folded the warrant slowly, in the pause which ensued, and returned it to his pocket while the couple watched him tensely.

“All right, Pennold,” he said, at last. “I guess I won’t have to use this now. If you’ve been square, an’ told me all you know, you won’t be bothered about that matter of the Mortimer Chase silver plate. If you’ve kept anything back, Blaine will find it out, and then it’s good-night to you.”

“I ain’t!” returned Pennold, with tremendous eagerness. “I’ve told you everything you asked, an’ I don’t savvy what you’re gettin’ at, anyway. If you’re tryin’ to mix Jimmy Brunell up in any new case you’re dead wrong; he’s out of the game for good. As for Charley, he wouldn’t know enough to pick up a pocket-book if he saw one lyin’ on the sidewalk, unless he was told to!”

“Well, I may as well warn both of you that you’re watched, and if you try to make a get-away, you’ll be taken up and it won’t be on suspicion, either. Play fair with Blaine, and he’ll be square with you, but don’t try to put anything over on him, or it’ll be the worse for you. It can’t be done.”

Morrow closed the door behind him, leaving the couple as they had been almost throughout the interview the woman erect and stony of face, the man miserable and shaken, crouched dejectedly over the table. But scarcely had he descended the steps of the ramshackle little porch when the voice of Mame Pennold reached him, pitched in a shrill key of emotional exultation.

“Oh, Wally, Wally! Thank God you ain’t a snitcher! Thank God you didn’t tell!”

The voice ceased suddenly, as if a hand had been laid across her lips, and after a moment’s hesitation, Morrow swung off down the path, conscious of at least one pair of eyes watching him from behind the soiled curtains of the front room.

What had the woman meant? Pennold obviously had kept something back, but was it of sufficient importance to warrant his returning and forcing a confession? Whether it concerned Brunell or their nephew Charley mattered little, at the moment. He had achieved the object of his visit; he knew that Pennold himself had no connection with the Lawton forgeries, nor knowledge of them, and at the same time he had learned of Charley’s affiliation with Paddington. The couple back there in the little house could tell him scarcely more which would aid him in his investigation, but the dapper, viciously weak young stool-pigeon, if he could be located at once, might be made to disclose enough to place Paddington definitely within the grasp of the law.

Guy Morrow boarded a Sand Street car, and behind the sporting page of a newspaper he kept a sharp look-out for Lafferty’s saloon. He came to it at last a dingy, down-at-heel resort, with much faded gilt-work over the door, and fly-specked posters of the latest social function of the district’s political club showing dimly behind its unwashed windows.

He rode a block beyond then, alighting, turned back and entered the bar. It was deserted at that hour of the morning, save for a disconsolate-looking individual who leaned upon one ragged elbow, gazing mournfully into his empty whisky glass at the end of the narrow, varnished counter. The bartender emerged from a door leading into the back room, with a tall, empty glass in his hand, and Morrow asked for a beer. As he stood sipping it, he watched the bartender replenish the empty unwashed glass he had carried with a generous drink of doubtful looking absinthe and a squirt from a syphon.

“Bum drink on a cold morning,” he observed tentatively. “Have a whisky straight, on me?”

“I will that!” the bartender returned heartily. “This green-eyed fairy stuff ain’t for me; it’s for a dame in the back room one of the regulars. She’s been hittin’ it up all the morning, but it don’t seem to affect her funny, too, for she ain’t a boozer, as a general thing. Her guy’s gone back on her, an’ she’s sore. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

He vanished into the back room with the glass, and before he returned, the disconsolate individual had slunk out, leaving Morrow in sole possession. If this place was indeed the rendezvous of the gang of minor criminals with which Charley Pennold had allied himself, he had obviously come at the wrong time to obtain any information concerning him, unless the voluble bartender could be made to talk, and that would be a difficult matter.

“Look here!” Morrow decided on a bold move, as the bartender reappeared and placed a bottle of whisky between them. He leaned forward, after a quick, furtive glance about him, and spoke rapidly, with a disarming air of confidential frankness. “I’m in an awful hole. I’m new at this game, and I’ve got to find a fellow I never saw, and find him quick. He hangs out here, and the big guy sent me for him.”

“What big guy?” The cordiality faded from the bartender’s ruddy countenance and he stepped back significantly.

“You know Pad!” Morrow shot back on a desperate bluff. “The fellow’s name’s Charley Pennold, and Pad wants him right away. He didn’t tell me to ask you about him, but he made it pretty plain to me that he’d got to get him.”

“Say!” The bartender approached cautiously. He rested one hand upon the counter, keeping the other well below it, but Morrow did not flinch. “What’s your lay?”

“Anything there’s coin in,” returned the operative, with a knowing leer. “Anything from planting divorce evidence to shoving the queer. I’ve been working for a pal of Pad’s in St. Louis for three or four years that’s why I’m strange around here. Pad’s up in the air about something, and wants this Charley-boy right away, and he tells me to look here for him and not come back without him, see? This is on the level. If you know where he is, be a good fellow and come across, will you?”

The bartender felt under the counter for the shelf, and then raised his hand, empty, toward the bottle.

“I guess you’re all right,” he remarked. “Anyway, I’ll take a chance. What’s your moniker?”

“Guy the Blinker,” returned Morrow promptly. “Guess you’ve heard of me, all right. I pulled off but I haven’t got time to chin now. I got to find this boy if I want to keep in with Pad, and there’s coin in it.”

“Sure there is,” the bartender affirmed. “But he’s a queer one the big guy, as you call him. What’s his game? Why, only this morning, he tipped Charley off to beat it, and Charley did. Maybe he thinks the kid’s double-crossed him.”

Morrow’s heart leaped in sudden excitement at this astounding news, but he controlled himself, and replied nonchalantly:

“Search me. He told me I’d find this Charley-boy here; that’s all I know. He isn’t talking for publication not Pad.”

“You bet not!” The bartender nodded. Then he jerked a grimy thumb in the direction of the back room. “Why, the dame in there, cryin’ into her absinthe, is Charley’s girl. She’s a queen straight as they make ‘em, if she does work the shops now and then and Charley was fixin’ to hook up with her next month, preacher-fashion, and settle down. Now he gets the office and skips without a word to her, and she’s all broke up over it!”

The door at the rear opened suddenly, and a girl stood upon the threshold. She was tall and slender, and her face showed traces of positive beauty, although it was bloated and distorted with weeping and dissipation, and her big black eyes glittered feverishly.

“What’s that you’re sayin’ about Charley?” she demanded half-hysterically. “He’s gone! He’s left me! I don’t believe Pad gave him the office, and if he did, Charley’s a fool to beat it! They’ve got nothin’ on him it’s Pad who’s got to save his own skin!”

“Shut up, Annie!” advised the bartender, not unkindly. “Pad’s sent this here feller for him, now!”

“Then it was a lie a lie! Pad didn’t tell him to beat it he’s gone on his own account, gone for good! But I’ll find him; I’ll

The girl suddenly burst into a storm of sobs, and, turning, reeled back into the inner room.

“You see!” the bartender observed, confidentially, as the door swung shut behind her. “She thinks he’s gone off with another skirt; that’s the way with women! I knew Pad had given him the office, though. I got it straight. You’re right about Pad bein’ up in the air. He must have bitten off more than he can chew, this time. I heard Reddy Thursby talkin’ to Gil Hennessey about it, right where you’re standin’, not two hours ago. They’re both Pad’s men met ’em yet?”

Morrow shook his head, not trusting himself to speak, and the loquacious bartender went on.

“It was Reddy brought the word for Charley to skip, and he dropped somethin’ about a raid on some plant up in the Bronx. Know anything about it?”

For a moment the rows of bottles on their shelves seemed to reel before Morrow’s eyes, and his heart stood still, but he forced himself to reply:

“Oh, that? I know all about it, of course. Wasn’t I in on the ground floor? But that’s only a fake steer; this Charley-boy hasn’t got anything to do with it, that I know of. Maybe the big guy thought he hadn’t got out of the way, and sent me to find out. No use my hanging round here any longer, anyhow. I’ll amble back and tell Pad he’s gone. Swell dame, that Annie some queen, eh? Let’s have one more drink and I’ll blow!”

With assurances of an early return, Morrow contrived to beat a retreat without arousing the suspicions of the bartender, but he went out into the pale, wintry, sunlight with his brain awhirl. To his apprehensive mind a raid on a plant in the Bronx could mean only one place the little map-making shop of Jimmy Brunell. Something had happened in his absence; some one had betrayed the old forger. And Emily what of her?

Morrow sped as fast as elevated and subway could carry him to the Bronx. Anxious as he was about the girl he loved, he did not go directly to the house on Meadow Lane, but made a detour to the little shop a few blocks away.

Morrow’s instinct had not misled him. Before he had approached within a hundred feet of the shop he knew that his fears had been justified.

The door swung idly open on its hinges, and the single window gave forth a vacant stare. Within everything was in the wildest disorder. The table which served as a counter, the racks of maps, the high stool, the printing apparatus, all were overturned. The trap door leading into the cellar was open, and Morrow flung himself wildly down the sanded steps. The forger’s outfit had disappeared.

What had become of Jimmy Brunell? His purpose served, had Paddington betrayed him to the police, or had some warning reached him to flee before it was too late?

With mingled emotions of fear and dread, Morrow emerged from the little dismantled shop and made the best of his way to Meadow Lane. The Brunell cottage appeared much as usual as he neared it, and for an instant hope surged up within him. Emily would be at the club, of course. If her father had been arrested, or had succeeded in getting away safely alone, she would not know of it until she came back in the evening. He would wait for her, intercept her, and tell her the whole truth.

Instead of entering his own lodgings, he crossed the road, and paused at the Brunells’ gate. Something forlorn and desolate in the atmosphere of the little home seemed to clutch at his heart, and on a swift impulse he strode up the path, ascended the steps of the porch and peered in the window of the living-room. Everything in the usually orderly room was topsy-turvy, and everywhere there was evidence of hurried flight. From where he stood the desk her desk was plainly visible, its ransacked drawers pulled open, the floor before it strewn with torn and scattered papers. Its top was bare, amid the surrounding litter, and even his photograph which he had recently given her, and which usually stood there in the little frame she had made for it with her own hands, was gone.

A chill settled about his heart. Had Brunell been captured, and police detectives searched the house, his picture could hold no interest for them. Had the old forger fled alone, he would not have taken so insignificant an object from among all his household goods and chattels. Emily alone would have paused to save the photograph of the man she loved from the wreckage of her home; Emily, too, had gone!

Scarcely knowing what he was doing, and caring less, Morrow rushed across the street, and descended upon Mrs. Quinlan, his landlady, at her post in the kitchen.

“What’s happened to the Brunells?” he demanded breathlessly.

“Land’s sakes, but you scared me, Mr. Morrow!” Mrs. Quinlan turned from the stove with a hurried start, and wiped her plump, steaming face on her apron. “I should like to know what’s happened myself. All I do know is that they’ve gone bag and baggage or as much of it as they could carry with them and never; a word to a soul except what Emily ran across to say to me.”

“What was it?” he fairly shouted at her. But there were few interests in Mrs. Quinlan’s humdrum existence, and seldom did she have an exciting incident to relate and an eager audience to hang upon her words. She sat down ponderously and prepared to make the most of the present occasion.

“I thought it was funny to see a man goin’ into their yard at five o’clock this mornin’, but my tooth was so bad I forgot all about him and it never come into my mind again until I seen them goin’ away. I sleep in the room just over yours, you know, Mr. Morrow, an’ my tooth ached so bad I couldn’t sleep. It was five by my clock when I got up to come down here an’ get some hot vinegar, an’ I don’t know what made me look out my winder, but I did. I seen a man come running down the lane, keepin’ well in the shaders, an’ looking back as if he was afraid he was bein’ chased, for all the world like a thief. While I looked, he turned in the Brunells’ yard an’ instead of knocking on the door, he began throwin’ pebbles up at the old man’s bedroom winder. Pretty soon it opened and Mr. Brunell looked out. Then he come down quick an’ met the man at the front door. They talked a minute, an’ the feller handed over somethin’ that showed white in the light of the street lamp, like a piece of paper. Mr. Brunell shut the door an’ the man ran off the way he had come. I come down an’ got my hot vinegar an’ when I got back to my room I seen there were lights in Mr. Brunell’s room an’ Emily’s, an’ one in the livin’-room, too, but my tooth was jumpin’ so I went straight to bed. About half an hour after you’d left for business I was shakin’ a rug out of the front sittin’-room winder, when Emily come runnin’ across the street.

“‘Oh, Mrs. Quinlan!’ she calls to me, an’ I see she’d been cryin’. ‘Mrs. Quinlan, we’re goin’ away!’

“‘For good?’ I asked.

“‘Forever!’ she says. ’Will you give a message to Mr. Morrow for me, please? Tell him I’m sorry I was mistaken. I’m sorry to have found him out!’

“She burst out cryin’ again an’ ran back as her father called her from the porch. He was bringin’ out a pile of suit-cases and roll-ups, and pretty soon a taxicab drove up with a man inside. I couldn’t see his face only his coat-sleeve. They got in an’ went off kitin’ an’ that’s every last thing I know. What d’you s’pose she meant about findin’ you out, Mr. Morrow?”

He turned away without reply, and went to his room, where he sat for long sunk in a stupor of misery. She had found out the truth, before he could tell her. She knew him for what he was, knew his despicable errand in ingratiating himself into her friendship and that of her father. She believed that the real love he had professed for her had been all a mere part of the game he was playing, and now she had gone away forever! He would never see her again!

“By God, no!” he cried aloud to himself, in the bitterness of his sorrow. “I will find her again, if I search the ends of the earth. She shall know the truth!”