“It ain’t my fault, Chief!  There are only six of the boys left.  I tried me best but this little Chinyman he soaks me one on the lamp, with a gun butt.  Me pal was nabbed in the room when I sneaks out on the rope.  I finds out afterward that Jimmie’s watch must-a been about twenty minutes slow.  That’s how we misses.”

“But you didn’t get him, and I’m going to break you for this!”

“But gov’nor, listen—­we leaves the machine all right.  That’ll git ’im anyway.  What’ll I do?”

“I have the addresses of the other men here in my pocket.  You tell them to stick right in their rooms for the next twenty-four hours.  If they don’t hear anything from me, tell them to go to Frisco by roundabout ways and I’ll forward their money, care of Kelso.  Now get out.”

The man disappeared and there was a double click as the door to the front compartment closed.  Warren turned toward Taylor, While Shirley flattened himself against the rear wall, and crouched down slowly, without a betraying sound.

“I don’t understand that girl not being there.  Some one’s closing in on us.  I’m going to break that girl’s spirit before I’m through.  She’ll be on the yacht tonight, for everything’s ready now.  What sort of a machine did you arrange for his room?”

“The old telephone one we worked in Oakland.  It is under his bed.  I told the men to do that first before they went through his things.  Then it would look like plain robbery, and when he goes to take the receiver off the hook it’s ‘good-night, nursey!’ That little popper will blow the roof off that club house!”

Shirley’s blood might have run cold at the calm pride of this degenerate fiend, had it not been boiling at the reference to Helene.  He crept nearer to them, along the wall.  He lay down on the floor, below the level of the first bullet paths.  Then he drew his automatic and the bulb light, ready for his surprise.

“I’ll call up Kick Brown at the telephone company.  He’s on duty until twelve.  That’s an hour yet.”

He placed the plug in position but there came no answer over his private wire.  Warren cursed:  this time in a dialect unknown to Shirley.  The man was asserting his most primitive nature now.

“What does that mean?  He knows that it’s important to-night.  I wonder if some one has squealed.  You know what I said upstairs, Shine?” Warren’s voice was ominous.  “I don’t like the looks of things.  And you’re the only one who has ever known the inside working of my system.  I’ve even told you the key to my code—­Phil knows it in part, but there is nothing I’ve kept from you.”

Here Shirley’s dramatic instinct asserted itself.  In a sepulchral voice, he spoke:  “One key to the right, in writing.  One to the left to read.  Hands up, Warren, you’re wanted in Paris, and we have the goods on you!”

Placing the bulb light far to his left, he twisted the little catch which kept it glowing permanently.  The light fell full on the face of Warren and Taylor as they sprang up back to back!