Part 59 (2/2)

Then I lay down on the bed with my clothes on and picked up a book, determined to keep awake to see if anything happened. It was a good book, but I was tired and in spite of myself I nodded over it, and then dropped it.

In his bungalow, now that Smith had gone back again to New York and Was.h.i.+ngton, Del Mar was preparing to keep the important engagement he had told us about, another of his nefarious nocturnal expeditions.

He drew a cap on his head, well over his ears and forehead. His eyes and face he concealed as well as he could with a mask to be put on later. To his equipment he added a gun. Then with a hasty word or two to his valet, he went out.

By back ways so that even in the glare of automobile headlights he would not be recognized, he made his way to Dodge Hall. As he saw the house looming up in the moonlight he put on his mask and approached cautiously. Gaining the house, he opened a window, noiselessly turning the catch as deftly as a house-breaker, and climbed into the living-room.

A moment he looked around, then tiptoed over to the table. He looked at it to be sure that it was the right one and the right drawer. Then he bent down to force the drawer open.

”Pouf!” a blinding flash came and a little metallic click of the shutter, followed by a cloud of smoke.

As quick as it happened, there went through Del Mar's head, the explanation. It was a concealed camera. He sprang back, clapping his hands over his face. Out of range for a moment, he stood gazing about the room, trying to locate the thing.

Suddenly he heard footsteps. He dived through the window that he had opened, just as some one ran in and switched on the lights.

Half asleep, I heard a m.u.f.fled explosion, as if of a flash-light. I started up and listened. Surely some one was moving about down-stairs.

I pulled my gun from my pocket and ran out of the room. Down the steps I flung myself, two at a time.

In the living-room, I switched on the lights in time to see some one disappear through an open window. I ran to the window and looked out.

There was a man, half doubled up, running around the side of the house and into a clump of bushes, then apparently lost. I shot out of the window and called.

My only answer was an imprecation and return volley that shattered the gla.s.s above my head. I ducked hastily and fell flat on the floor, for in the light streaming out, I must have been a good mark.

I was not the only one who heard the noise. The shots quickly awakened Elaine and she leaped out of bed and put on her kimono. Then she lighted the lights and ran down-stairs.

The intruder had disappeared by this time and I had got up and was peering out of the window as she came breathlessly into the living-room.

”What's the matter, Walter?” she asked.

”Some one broke into the house after those plans,” I replied. ”He escaped, but I got his picture, I think, by this device of Kennedy's.

Let's go into a dark room and develop it.”

There was no use trying to follow the man further. To Elaine's inquiry of what I meant, I replied by merely going over to the spot where I had hidden the camera and disconnecting it.

We went up-stairs where I had rigged up an impromptu dark room for my amateur photographic work some days before. Elaine watched me closely.

At last I found that I had developed something. As I drew the film through the hypo tray and picked it up, I held it to the red light.

Elaine leaned over and looked at the film with me. There was a picture of a masked man, his cap down, in a startled att.i.tude, his hands clapped to his face, completely hiding what the mask and cap did not hide.

”Well, I'll be blowed!” I cried in chagrin at the outcome of what I thought had been my cleverest coup.

A little exclamation of astonishment escaped Elaine. I turned to her.

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