The voice of Dillon recalled me from a train of pure speculation to the more practical work in hand before us.

“Well, at any rate, we’ve got evidence enough to protect ourselves and close the place, even if we didn’t make any captures,” congratulated Dillon, as he rejoined us, after a momentary excursion from which he returned still blinking from the effects of the flashlight powders which his photographer had been using freely.  “After we get all the pictures of the place, I’ll have the stuff here removed to headquarters—­and it won’t be handed back on any order of the courts, either, if I can help it!”

Garrick had shoved the markers into his pocket and now was leading the way downstairs.

“Still, Dillon,” he remarked, as we followed, “that doesn’t shed any light on the one remaining problem.  How did they all manage to get out so quickly?”

We had reached the basement which contained the kitchens for the buffet and quarters for the servants.  A hasty excursion into the littered back yard under the guidance of Dillon’s men who had been sent around that way netted us nothing in the way of information.  They had not made their escape over the back fences.  Such a number of people would certainly have left some trail, and there was none.

We looked at Garrick, perplexed, and he remarked, with sudden energy, “Let’s take a look at the cellar.”

As we groped down the final stairway into the cellar, it was only too evident that at last he had guessed right.  Down in the subterranean depths we quickly discovered, at the rear, a sheet-iron door.  Battering it down was the work of but a moment for the little ram.  Beyond it, where we expected to see a yawning tunnel, we found nothing but a pile of bricks and earth and timbers that had been used for shoring.

There had been a tunnel, but the last man who had gone through had evidently exploded a small dynamite cartridge, and the walls had been caved in.  It was impossible to follow it until its course could be carefully excavated with proper tools in the daylight.

We had captured the stronghold of gambling in New York, but the gamblers had managed to slip out of our grasp, at least for the present.

CHAPTER XI

THE GANGSTER’S GARAGE

“I have it,” exclaimed Garrick, as we were retracing our steps upstairs from the dank darkness of the cellar.  “I would be willing to wager that that tunnel runs back from this house to that pool-room for women which we visited on Forty-seventh Street, Marshall.  That must be the secret exit.  Don’t you see, it could be used in either direction.”

We climbed the stairs and stood again in the wreck of things, taking a hasty inventory of what was left, in hope of uncovering some new clew, even by chance.

Garrick shook his head mournfully.

“They had just time enough,” he remarked, “to destroy about everything they wanted to and carry off the rest.”