Aunt Josephine nodded acquiescence, and a moment later we all entered the building.

“You—­you are very careful since that last warning?” asked Elaine as we approached our door.

“More than ever—­now,” replied Craig.  “I have made up my mind to win.”

She seemed to catch at the words as though they had a hidden meaning, looking first at him and then away, not displeased.

Kennedy had started to unlock the door, when he stopped short.

“See,” he said, “this is a precaution I have just installed.  I almost forgot in the excitement.”

He pressed a panel and disclosed the box-like apparatus.

“This is my seismograph which tells me whether I have had any visitors in my absence.  If the pen traces a straight line, it is, all right; but if—­hello—­Walter, the line is wavy.”

We exchanged a significant glance.

“Would you mind—­er—­standing down the hall just a bit while I enter?” asked Craig.

“Be careful,” cautioned Elaine.

He unlocked the door, standing off to one side.  Then he extended his hand across the doorway.  Still nothing happened.  There was not a sound.  He looked cautiously into the room.  Apparently there was nothing.

. . . . . . . .

It had been about the middle of the morning that an express wagon had pulled up sharply before our apartment.

“Mr. Kennedy live here?” asked one of the expressmen, descending with his helper and approaching our janitor, Jens Jensen, a typical Swede, who was coming up out of the basement.

Jens growled a surly, “Yes—­but Mr. Kannady, he bane out.”

“Too bad—­we’ve got this large cabinet he ordered from Grand Rapids.  We can’t cart it around all day.  Can’t you let us in so we can leave it?”

Jensen muttered.  “Wall—­I guess it bane all right.”

They took the cabinet off the wagon and carried it upstairs.  Jensen opened our door, still grumbling, and they placed the heavy cabinet in the living room.

“Sign here.”

“You fallers bane a nuisance,” protested Jens, signing nevertheless.

Scarcely had the sound ox their footfalls died away in the outside hallway when the door of the cabinet slowly opened and a masked face protruded, gazing about the room.

It was the Clutching Hand!

From the cabinet he took a large package wrapped in newspapers.  As he held it, looking keenly about, his eye rested on Elaine’s picture.  A moment he looked at it, then quickly at the fireplace opposite.

An idea seemed to occur to him.  He took the package to the fireplace, removed the screen, and laid the package over the andirons with one end pointing out into the room.

Next he took from the cabinet a couple of storage batteries and a coil of wire.  Deftly and quickly he fixed them on the package.

Meanwhile, before an alleyway across the street and further down the long block the express wagon had stopped.  The driver and his helper clambered out and for a moment stood talking in low tones, with covert glances at our apartment.  They moved into the alley and the driver drew out a battered pair of opera glasses, levelling them at our windows.