Suppose she should really be gone on only a short shopping trip and should return to find that she had been fooled over the wire?  Quickly, he went to the telephone again.

“Hello, Dan,” he called when he got his number.

“Miss Dodge is going shopping.  I want you and the other Falsers to follow her—­delay her all you can.  Use your own judgment.”

It was what had come to be known in his organization as the “Brotherhood of Falsers.”  There, in the back room of a low dive, were Dan the Dude, the emissary who had been loitering about the laboratory, a gunman, Dago Mike, a couple of women, slatterns, one known as Kitty the Hawk, and a boy of eight or ten, whom they called Billy.  Before them stood large schooners of beer, while the precocious youngster grumbled over milk.

“All right, Chief,” shouted back Dan, their leader as he hung up the telephone after noting carefully the hasty instructions.  “We’ll do it—­trust us.”

The others, knowing that a job was to lighten the monotony of existence, gathered about him.

They listened intently as he detailed to them the orders of the Clutching Hand, hastily planning out the campaign like a division commander disposing his forces in battle and assigning each his part.

With alacrity the Brotherhood went their separate ways.

. . . . . . . .

Elaine had not been gone long from the house when Craig and I arrived there.  She had followed the telephone instructions of the Clutching Hand and had told no one.

“Too bad,” greeted Jennings, “but Miss Elaine has just gone shopping and I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

Shopping being an uncertain element as far as time was concerned, Kennedy asked if anyone else was at home.

“Mrs. Dodge is in the library reading, sir,” replied Jennings, taking it for granted that we would see her.

Aunt Josephine greeted us cordially and Craig set down the vocaphone package he was carrying.

She nodded to Jennings to leave us and he withdrew.

“I’m not going to let anything happen here to Miss Elaine again if I can help it,” remarked Craig in a low tone, a moment later, gazing about the library.

“What are you thinking of doing?” asked Aunt Josephine keenly.

“I’m going to put in a vocaphone,” he returned unwrapping it.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A loud speaking telephone—­connected with my laboratory,” he explained, repeating what he had already told me, while she listened almost awe-struck at the latest scientific wonder.

He was looking about, trying to figure out just where it could be placed to best advantage, when he approached the suit of armor.

“I see you have brought it back and had it repaired,” he remarked to Aunt Josephine.  Suddenly his face lighted up.  “Ah—­an idea!” he exclaimed.  “No one will ever think to look inside that.”