"You lose, Holt," replied Lane, shortly. "Bessy Bell is one Middleville kid who has come clean through this mess."

"Say Dare, I like to hear you talk," responded Blair, half in jest and half in earnest. "But aren't you getting a trifle unbalanced? That's how my mother apologizes for me."

"Cut the joshing, boys. Listen," returned Lane. "And don't ever tell this to a soul. I interested myself in Bessy Bell. I've met her more times than I can count. I wanted to see if it was possible to turn one of these girls around. I failed on my sister Lorna. But Bessy Bell is true blue. She had all this modern tommyrot. She had everything else too. Brains, sweetness, common sense, romance. All I tried to do was to make her forget the tommyrot. And I think I did."

"Well, I'll be darned!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Blair. "Dare, that was ripping fine of you.... What'll you do next, I wonder."

"Come on with your favor," added Holt, with a keen bright smile.

"Would you be willing to see Bessy occasionally--and sort of be nice to her--you know?" asked Lane, earnestly. "I can't keep up my attention to her much longer. She might miss me. Take it from me, Holt, back of all this modern stuff--deep in Bessy, and in every girl who has not been debased--is the simple and good desire to be liked."

"Daren, I'll do that little thing, believe me," returned Holt, warmly.

Shaking hands with his friends, Lane left them, and went on his way.

White's place was full as a beehive. As he pa.s.sed, Lane found himself looking for Bessy Bell's golden head, though he knew he would not see it. He wondered if Holt had really met her, veiled and in a hurry.

That had a strange look. But no shadow of distrust of Bessy came to Lane. In a few moments he reached the dark stairway leading to Colonel Pepper's apartment. Lane forgot he was weak. But at the top, with his breast laboring, he remembered well enough. He went into the Colonel's rooms and through them without making a light. And when he reached the place where he had spied upon the club he was wet with sweat and shaking with excitement. Carefully, so as not to make noise, he stole to the peep-hole and applied his eye.

He saw a gleam of light on shiny waxed floor, and then, moving to get the limit of his narrow vision, he descried Swann, evidently just arrived. With him was Gail Williams, a slip of a child not over fifteen--looking up at him as if excited and pleased. Next Lane espied his sister Lorna with a tall, well-built man. Although his back was toward Lane, he could not mistake the soldierly bearing of Captain Vane Thesel! Lorna looked perturbed and sulky, and once, turning her face toward Swann, she seemed resentful. Captain Thesel had his hand at her elbow and appeared to be talking earnestly.

Lane left his post, taking care to make no noise. But once back in the Colonel's rooms, he hurried. Feeling in the dark corner where he had kept the axe ready for just such an emergency as this, he grasped it and rushed out. Tiptoeing down the hall, he found the narrow door, stole down the black stairway and entered the main hall. Here he paused, suddenly checked in his hurry.

"This won't do," he thought, and shook his head. "Much as I'd like to kill those two dogs I can't--I can't.... I'll smash their faces, though--and if I ever catch...."

Breaking the thought off abruptly, he pa.s.sed down the dim hallway to the door of the club-rooms. He raised the axe and was about to smash the lock when he espied a key in the keyhole. The door was not locked.

Lane set down the axe and noiselessly turned the k.n.o.b and peeped in.

The first room was dark, but the door on the opposite side was ajar, and through it Lane saw the larger lighted room and the shiny floor.

Moving figures crossed the s.p.a.ce. Removing the key, Lane slipped inside the room and locked the door. Then he tip-toed to the opposite door.

Thesel and Lorna were now so close that Lane could hear them.

"But I thought I had a date with d.i.c.k," protested Lorna. Her face was red and she stamped her foot.

"See here, kiddo. If you're as thick as that I'll have to put you wise," answered Thesel, good-humoredly, as he tilted back his cigarette to blow smoke at the ceiling. "d.i.c.k is through with you."

"Oh, _is_ he?" choked Lorna.

"Say, Cap, I heard a noise," suddenly called out Swann, rather nervously.

There was a moment's silence. Lane, too, had heard a noise, but could not be sure whether it was inside the building or not.

Swann hurried over to join Thesel. They looked blankly at each other.

The air might have been charged. Both girls showed alarm.

Then Lane, with his hand on the gun in his pocket, strode out to confront them.

"Oh--h!" gasped Lorna, as if appalled at sight of her brother's face.

"Fellows, I'll have to break up your little party," said Lane, coolly.

Thesel turned ghastly white, while Swann grew livid with rage. He seemed to expand. His hand went back to his right hip.

When Lane got within six feet of them, Swann drew a small automatic pistol. But before he could raise it, Lane had leaped into startling activity. With terrific swing he brought his gun down on Swann's face.

Then as swiftly he turned on Thesel. Swann had hardly hit the floor, a sodden heap, when Thesel, with b.l.o.o.d.y visage, reeled and fell like a log. Lane bent over them, ready to beat either back. But both were unconscious.

"Daren--for G.o.d's sake--don't murder them!" whispered Lorna, hoa.r.s.ely.

Lane's humanity was in abeyance then, but his self-control did not desert him.

"You girls must hurry out of here," he ordered.

"Oh, Gail is fainting," cried Lorna.

The little Williams girl was indeed swaying and sinking down. Lane grasped her and shook her. "Brace up. If you keel over now, you'll be found out sure.... It's all right. You'll not be hurt. There----"

A heavy thumping on the door by which Lane had entered and a loud authoritative voice from the hall silenced him.

"Open up here! You're pinched!"

That voice Lane recognized as belonging to Chief of Police Bell. For a moment, fraught with suspense, Lane was at a loss to know what to do.

"Open up! We've got the place surrounded.... Open up, or we'll smash the door in!"

Lane whispered to the girls: "Is there a place to hide you?"

The Williams girl was beyond answering, but Lorna, despite her terror, had not lost her wits.

"Yes--there's a closet--hid by a curtain--here," she whispered, pointing.

Lane half carried Gail. Lorna brushed aside a heavy curtain and opened a door. Lane pushed both girls into the black void and closed the door after them.

"Once more--open up!" bellowed the officer in the hall, accompanying his demand with a thump on the door. Lane made sure some one had found his axe. He did not care how much smashing the policemen did. All that concerned Lane then was how to avert discovery from the girls. It looked hopeless. Then, as there came sudden splintering blows on the door, Lane espied Swann's cigarettes and matches on the music box.

Lane seldom smoked. But while the officers were breaking in the door, Lane leisurely lighted a cigarette; and when two of them came in he faced them coolly.

The first was Chief Bell, a large handsome man, in blue uniform. The second one was a patrolman. Neither carried a weapon in sight. Bell swept the big room in one flashing blue glance--took in Lane and the p.r.o.ne figures on the floor.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "What am I up against?"

"h.e.l.lo, Chief," replied Lane, coolly. "Don't get fussed up now. This is no murder case."

"Lane, what's this mean?" burst out Bell.

Lane was rather well acquainted with Chief Bell, and in a way there was friendship between them. Bell, for one, had always been st.u.r.dily loyal to the soldiers.

"Well, Chief, I was having a little friendly game with Mr. Swann and Captain Thesel," drawled Lane. "We got into an argument. And as both were such ferocious fighters I grew afraid they'd hurt me bad--so I had to soak them."

"Don't kid me," spoke up Bell, derisively. "Little game--h.e.l.l! Where's the cards, chips, table?"

"Chief, I didn't say we played the game to-night."