Suddenly to Shirley’s straining ears came the tick-ticking of an alarm clock, from the corner of the room to his right.  He dare not look at it.  Warren’s eyes grew black with the Great Fear!

“You fool, you’ve locked all the entrances, and sent the men away.  That clock will ring in exactly five minutes.  When it does, this place will go up from a load of lyddite.  You’ve dug your own grave!”

Warren’s voice was hoarse, and his bright eyes radiated venomously, as he kept his weapon pointed, like Shirley’s, at the face opposite.  They were both prisoners in the death cellar, with the advantage in favor of neither!

And the ticking clock, with its maddening, mechanical death chant seemed to Shirley to cry, with each beat, like the reminiscence of some nightmare barbershop:  “Next!  Next!  Next!”

CHAPTER XXIII

CAPTURED AND THEN

Warren’s white lips were moving in perfect synchronism, as he counted the seconds and ticks of the clock.  Shirley, never so acute, cudgeled his mind for some devise by which he might overcame the other.  It was hopeless.  At last, just as he knew the inevitable second was almost completed, a faint rustling came from the other side of the iron door.  Warren’s face brightened with hope.  With a nerve-racking rasp, the iron bar on the other side was raised:  it was a torturing delay as the two waited!

The door slowly opened.  After a harrowing pause a revolver muzzle slid gently through the crack, and a woman’s voice murmured softly:  “Drop the gun!”

It was Helene Marigold!

Warren’s ashen face changed to purple hue, his hand trembled just enough to incite Shirley to a desperate chance.  As the criminal drew the trigger with a spasmodic jerk, Shirley was dropping to the floor, whence he pushed himself forward with a froglike leap, as he straightened out the great muscles.

Together they rolled in a frenzied struggle.

“Run back, Helene.  The clock will explode!” cried Shirley, desperately.  Instead, she sprang into the bright room, espied the diabolical arrangement in the corner, and ran to pick it up.  She saw the wire, and her deft fingers reached behind the clock to turn back its hands.  Had she torn the wire, as a man would have done, the dreaded explosion would have ended it all.

“We’re coming!”

It was the voice of Pat Cleary from the passageway.  He rushed through the subterranean passage, followed by several men, with Dick Holloway excitedly in their train.  After a titanic struggle, with the man baffled in this maddening moment of ruined triumph, they handcuffed him.

Shirley led Helene into the front compartment before she could observe the horror stamped upon the face of the murdered rogue.

The girl turned her glorious eyes to his, reached forth her hands, and then the eternal feminine conquered as she trembled unsteadily and sank into his arms.