Laughing and breathing hard, they helped me to my feet.  It was no joke to me.  I was sore in every bone.

“Well, where did he go?” insisted Bennett.

“I don’t know—­perhaps back there,” I cried.

Bennett and I argued a moment, then started and stopped short.  Aunt Josephine had run downstairs and now was shoving the letter into Craig’s hands.

We gathered about him, curiously.  He opened it.  On it was that awesome Clutching Hand again.

Kennedy read it.  For a moment he stood and studied it, then slowly crushed it in his hand.

Just then Elaine, pale and shaken from the ordeal she had voluntarily gone through, burst in upon us from upstairs.  Without a word she advanced to Craig and took the letter from him.

Inside, as on the envelope, was that same signature of the Clutching Hand.

Elaine gazed at it wild-eyed, then at Craig.  Craig smilingly reached for the note, took it, folded it and unconcernedly thrust it into his pocket.

“My God!” she cried, clasping her hands convulsively and repeating the words of the letter.  “Your last warning!”

CHAPTER III

THE VANISHING JEWELS

Banging away at my typewriter, the next day, in Kennedy’s laboratory, I was startled by the sudden, insistent ringing of the telephone near me.

“Hello,” I answered, for Craig was at work at his table, trying still to extract some clue from the slender evidence thus far elicited in the Dodge mystery.

“Oh, Mr. Kennedy,” I heard an excited voice over the wire reply, “my friend, Susie Martin is here.  Her father has just received a message from that Clutching Hand and—­”

“Just a moment, Miss Dodge,” I interrupted.  “This is Mr. Jameson.”

“Oh!” came back the voice, breathless and disappointed.  “Let me have Mr. Kennedy—­quick.”

I had already passed the telephone to Craig and was watching him keenly as he listened over it.  The anticipation of a message from Elaine did not fade, yet his face grew grave as he listened.

He motioned to me for a pad and pencil that lay near me.

“Please read the letter again, slower, Miss Dodge,” he asked, adding, “There isn’t time for me to see it—­just yet.  But I want it exactly.  You say it is made up of separate words and type cut from newspapers and pasted on note paper?”

I handed him paper and pencil.

“All right now, Miss Dodge, go ahead.”

As he wrote, he indicated to me by his eyes that he wanted me to read.  I did so: 

“Sturtevant Martin, Jeweler, “739 1/2 Fifth Ave., “New York City.

“Sir: 

“As you have failed to deliver the $10,000, I shall rob your main diamond case at exactly noon today.”

“Thank you, Miss Dodge,” continued Kennedy, laying down the pencil.  “Yes, I understand perfectly—­signed by that same Clutching Hand.  Let me see,” he pondered, looking at his watch.  “It is now just about half past eleven.  Very well.  I shall meet you and Miss Martin at Mr. Martin’s store directly.”