“What’s all this?” he growled.  “I am known as the Clutching Hand.  I allow no interferences with my affairs.  Tell me what you are doing here with Elaine Dodge.”

Their beady almond eyes flashed fear.  Clutching Hand moved menacingly.  There was nothing for the astute Long Sin to do but to submit.  Cowed by the well-known power of the master criminal, he took Clutching Hand into his confidence.

With a low bow, Long Sin spread out his hands in surrender and submission.

“I will tell you, honorable sir,” he said at length.

“Go on!” growled the criminal.

Quickly Long rehearsed what had happened, from the moment the idea of blackmail had entered his head.

“How about Mary Carson?” asked Clutching Hand.  “I saw her here.”

Long gave a glance of almost superstitious dread at the man, as if he had an evil eye.

“She will be back—­is here now,” he added, opening the door at a knock and admitting her.

Adventuress Mary had hurried back to see that all was right.  This time Mary was genuinely scared at the forbidding figure of which she had heard.

“It is all right,” pacified Long.  “Henceforth we work with the honorable Clutching Hand.”

Clutching Hand continued to emphasize his demands on them, punctuating his sentences by flourishes of the gun as he gave them the signs and passwords which would enable them to work with his own emissaries.

It was a strange initiation.

At home at last, Elaine sank down into a deep library chair and stared straight ahead.  She saw visions of arrest and trial, of the terrible electric chair with herself in it, bound, and of the giving of the fatal signal for turning on the current.

Were such things as these going to happen to her, without Kennedy’s help?  Why had they quarreled?  She buried her face in her hands and wept.

Then she could stand it no longer.  She had not taken off her street clothes.  She rose and almost fled from the house.

Kennedy and I were still in the laboratory when a knock sounded at the door.  I went to the door and opened it.  There stood Elaine Dodge.

It was a complete surprise to Craig.  There was silence between them for a moment and they merely looked at each other.  Elaine was pale and woebegone.

At last Kennedy took a quick step toward her and led her to a chair.  Still he felt a sort of constraint.

“What is the matter?” he asked at length.

She hesitated, then suddenly burst out, “Craig—­I—­I am—­a murderess!”

I have never seen such a look on Craig’s face.  I know he wanted to laugh and say, “You—­a murderess?” yet he would not have offended even her self accusation for the world.  He managed to do the right thing and say nothing.

Then she poured forth the story substantially as I have set it down, but without the explanation which at that time was not known to any of us.