But Brice’s shout of command had been a fraction of a second too late.  Swiftly as had the collie obeyed, Rodney Hade had already reached and silently unbarred the door, by the time the dog got under way.  And, as Bobby Burns sprang, the door slammed shut in his face, leaving the collie growling and tearing at the unyielding panels.

Then it was that Claire found the electric switch, with her groping hands, and pressed the button.  The hall and its adjoining rooms were flooded with light, revealing the redoubtable Bobby Burns hurling himself again and again at the closed door.

Gavin shoved the angry dog aside, and opened the portal.  He sprang out, the dog beside him.  And as they did so, both of them crashed into a veranda couch which Hade, in escaping, had thrust across the closed doorway in anticipation of just such a move.

Over went the couch, under the double impetus.  By catching at the doorway frame, Gavin barely managed to save himself from a nasty fall.  The dog disentangled himself from an avalanche of couch cushions and made furiously for the veranda steps.

But Brice summoned him back.  He was not minded to let Bobby risk life from knife-cut or from strong, strangling hands, out there in the perilous shadows beyond the lawn.  And he knew the futility of following Hade, himself, among merciless men and through labyrinths with whose’ windings Rodney was far more familiar than was he.  So, reluctantly, he turned back into the house.  A glance over the moonlit lawn revealed no sign of the fugitive.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Standish, as he shut the door behind him and patted the fidgetingly excited Bobby Burns on the head.  “I may never have such a good chance at him again.  And your promise of a confession was the thing that made me arrest him.  Your evidence would have been enough to convict him.  And that’s the only thing that could have convicted him or made it worth while to arrest him.  He’s worked too skillfully to give us any other hold on him ....  I was a thick-witted idiot not to think, sooner, of calling to Bobby.  I’d stopped him, once, when he went for Hade, and of course he wouldn’t attack again, right away, without leave.  A dog sees in the dark, ten times as well as any man does.  Bobby was the solution.  And I forgot to use him till it was too late.  With a collie raging at his throat, Hade would have had plenty of trouble in getting away, or even in using his gun.  Lord, but I’m a dunce!”

“You’re—­you’re,—­splendid!” denied Claire, her eyes soft and shining and her cheeks aglow.  “You faced that pistol without one atom of fear.  And I could see your muscles tensing for a spring, right at him, before the light went out.”

Gavin Brice’s heart hammered mightily against his ribs, at her eager praise.  The look in her eyes went to his brain.  Through his mind throbbed the exultant thought: 

“She saw my muscles tense as he aimed at me.  That means she was looking at me!  Not at him.  Not even at the pistol.  She couldn’t have done that, unless—­unless—­”