“One of the few animals that show no fear of gun-fire,” muttered Kennedy, in undisguised admiration.

“G-r-r-r,” we heard from the police dog.

“She has made a leap at the hand that holds the gun,” cried Kennedy, now rising and moving rapidly in the same direction.  “She has been taught that a man once badly bitten in the hand is nearly out of the fight.”

We followed also.  As we approached we were just in time to see Searchlight running in and out between the legs of a man who had heard us approach and was hastily making tracks away.  As he tripped, the officer who brought her blew shrilly on a police whistle just in time to stop a fierce lunge at his back.

Reluctantly, Searchlight let go.  One could see that with all her canine instinct she wanted to “get” that man.  Her jaws were open, as, with longing eyes, she stood over the prostrate form in the grass.  The whistle was a signal, and she had been taught to obey unquestioningly.

“Don’t move until we get to you, or you are a dead man,” shouted Kennedy, pulling an automatic as he ran.  “Are you hurt?”

There was no answer, but, as we approached, the man moved, ever so little, through curiosity to see his pursuers.

Searchlight shot forward.  Again the whistle sounded and she dropped back.  We bent over to seize him, as Kennedy secured the dog.

“She’s a devil,” ground out the prone figure on the grass.

“Lockwood!” exclaimed Kennedy.

XXV

THE GOLD OF THE GODS

“What are you doing here?” demanded Craig, astonished.

“I couldn’t wait for you to get back.  I thought I’d do a little detective work on my own account.  I kept getting further and further away, knew you’d find me, anyhow.  But I didn’t think you’d have a brute like that,” he added, binding up his hand ruefully.  “Is there any trace of Inez?”

“Not yet.  Why did you pick out this house?” asked Kennedy, still suspicious.

“I saw a light here, I thought,” answered Lockwood frankly.  “But as I approached, it went out.  Maybe I imagined it.”

“Let us see.”

Kennedy spoke a few words to the man with the dog.  He slipped the leash, with a word that we did not catch, and the dog bounded off, around the house, as she was accustomed to do when out on duty with an officer in the city suburbs, circling about the backs of houses as the man on the beat walked the street.  She made noise enough about it, too, tumbling over a tin pail that had been standing on the back porch steps.

“Bang!”

Some one was in the house and was armed.  In the darkness he had not been able to tell whether an attack was being made or not, but had taken no chances.  At any rate, now we knew that he was desperate.

I thought of all the methods Kennedy had adopted to get into houses in which the inmates were desperate.  But always they had been about the city where he could call upon the seemingly exhaustless store of apparatus in his laboratory.  Here we were faced by the proposition with nothing to rely on but our native wit and a couple of guns.