He found himself in a small room, not more than eight feet square, with a ceiling so low that he could barely stand erect.  As for the furnishings and the arrangement, it was more like the inside of a safe than anything else.  There were, to be sure, three little stools, but nothing else that one would expect to find in an apartment.  For the rest there was nothing but a series of steel drawers and strong chests, lining the walls of the room and leaving in the center very little room in which one might move about.

He had only a moment to see all of this.  Ruth Tolliver, hooded in an evening cloak, but with the light gleaming in her coppery hair, was shaking him by the arm and leaning a white face close to him.

“Hurry!” she was saying.  “There isn’t a minute to lose.  You must start now, at once.  They will find out—­they will guess—­and then—­”

“John Mark?” he asked.

“Yes,” she exclaimed, realizing that she had said too much, and she pressed her hand over her mouth, looking at Ronicky Doone in a sort of horror.

Jerry Smith had come to his feet at last, but he remained in the background, staring with a befuddled mind at the lovely vision of the girl.  Fear and excitement and pleasure had transformed her face, but she seemed trembling in an agony of desire to be gone.  She seemed invincibly drawn to remain there longer still.  Ronicky Doone stared at her, with a strange blending of pity and admiration.  He knew that the danger was not over by any means, but he began to forget that.

“This way!” called the girl and led toward an opposite door, very low in the wall.

“Lady,” said Ronicky gently, “will you hold on one minute?  They won’t start to go through the smoke for a while.  They’ll think they’ve choked us, when we don’t come out on the rush, shooting.  But they’ll wait quite a time to make sure.  They don’t like my style so well that they’ll hurry me.”  He smiled sourly at the thought.  “And we got time to learn a lot of things that we’ll never find out, unless we know right now, pronto!”

He stepped before the girl, as he spoke.  “How come you knew we were in there?  How come you to get down here?  How come you to risk everything you got to let us out through the treasure room of Mark’s gang?”

He had guessed as shrewdly as he could, and he saw, by her immediate wincing, that the shot had told.

“You strange, mad, wild Westerner!” she exclaimed.  “Do you mean to tell me you want to stay here and talk?  Even if you have a moment to spare you must use it.  If you knew the men with whom you are dealing you would never dream of—­”

In her pause he said, smiling:  “Lady, it’s tolerable clear that you don’t know me.  But the way I figure it is this:  a gent may die any time, but, when he finds a minute for good living, he’d better make the most of it.”

He knew by her eyes that she half guessed his meaning, but she wished to be certain.  “What do you intend by that?” she asked.