There was nothing more that we could do that night and we waited impatiently until Clare Kendall came to make her daily report in the morning.

“The question is, whom are we going to get whom we can trust to go to that dope joint and explore it?” remarked Kennedy, after we had finished telling Miss Kendall about our experiences of the night before.

“Carton must have someone who can take a course in beauty and dope,” I replied.  “Or perhaps Miss Kendall has one of her investigators whom she can trust.”

“If the thing gets too rough,” added Craig, “whoever is in there can telephone to us, if she will only be careful first to get that back room in the ‘dormitory,’ as they call it.  Then all we’ll have to do will be to jump in there and—–­”

“I’ll do it,” interrupted Clare.

“No, Miss Kendall,” denied Kennedy firmly.

“Let me do it.  There is no one whom I can trust more than myself.  Besides, I know the places now.”

She said it with an air of quiet determination, as if she had been thinking it over ever since she returned from her visit of the day before.

Kennedy and Miss Kendall faced each other for a moment.  It was evident that it was against just this that he had been trying to provide.  On her part it was equally evident that she had made up her mind.

“Miss Kendall,” said Kennedy, meeting her calm eye, “you are the most nervy detective, barring none, that it has ever been my pleasure to meet.  I yield under protest.”

I must say that it was with a great deal of misgiving that I saw Clare enter Margot’s.  We had gone as far as the corner with her, had watched her go in, and then hurried into the unfurnished apartment which Craig had rented on the Avenue.

As we sat on the rickety chairs which we had borrowed from the janitor under pretence of wanting to reach something, the minutes that passed seemed like hours.

I wondered what had happened to the plucky girl in her devotion to the cause in which she had enlisted, and several times I could see from the expression of Craig’s face that he more and more regretted that he had given in to her and had allowed her to go, instead of adhering to his original plan.  From what she had told us about the two places, I tried to imagine what she was doing, but each time I ended by having an increased feeling of apprehension.

Kennedy sat grimly silent with the receiver of the telephone glued to his ear, straining his hearing to catch even the faintest sound.

At last his face brightened.

“She’s there all right,” he exclaimed to me.  “Managed to make them think in the beauty parlour that she was a dope fiend and pretty far gone.  Insisted that she must have the back room on the first floor because she was afraid of fire.  She kept the door open so that she would not miss anything, but it was a long time before she got a chance to reach out of the window and get the wires and connect them with the instruments I gave her.  But it’s all right now.