“Break down the doors, Cleary.  Out here, to the street.  Pull off the hands of that clock—­it’s a lyddite bomb!” cried Shirley, excitedly.

One of the men used the table with clattering effect.  The iron door of the front room gave way, and Shirley carried Helene up the ladder, to the main floor of the old garage.  She seemed a sleeping lily—­so pale, so fragile, so fragrant in her colorless beauty.  He had never seen her so before!  For an instant a great terror pierced him:  she seemed not to breathe.  But as he placed his face close to her mouth, her eyes opened for one divine look, then drooped again.  A white hand and arm curled, with childish confidence, about his shoulder.  He bore her thus to the big car from the Agency, which stood outside.

“Quick, down to the Hotel California,” he called to the chauffeur, “Pat Cleary can handle matters there.”

As they sped toward her apartment the roses took their wonted place in her cheeks.  She sat up to smile in his face.  Then she lowered her glance, with carmine mounting hotly to her brow.  Helene said no word—­nor did Shirley.  She simply leaned toward him, to bury her face upon the broad shoulder, as neither heeded the possible curiosity of the driver on the seat in front.

At least, they understood completely.  There was nothing else to say!

* * *

As Shirley left her at the door of the apartment, he turned into the elevator, his mind whirling with the strange imprisonment into which he had let his unwilling heart drift.  The clerk stopped him at the lower floor.

“There’s a call for you, sir.  It’s rush, the gentleman said!”

“Great Scott!  What now?” he ran to the instrument, and he heard Captain Cronin’s excited voice.

“Shirley.  The man’s escaped again!  They just came into the place.  He threw some sort of bottle at the front of the patrol wagon which blew it all to pieces.  He got away in the mix-up —­three policemen were injured!”

“I’ll get him, Captain, if it’s the last act of my life.”

To the surprise of the blase clerk, the well-known club man ran out of the hotel, dropping his hat in his excitement.  He shouted to the driver who still waited in the agency machine.

“The sky’s the limit, now, son.  Race for Twenty-first Street and the East River.  Let me off at the end of the dock.  Then go back to get some men from the agency, as I’ll have a prisoner, then, or they’ll get my body!”

The machine raced down the street, regardless of the warnings of policemen.  Shirley was confident that his was not the only car on such a mission.  He reached the dock of Manby, where was waiting the expert engineer of the hydroplane.  He had not planned in vain.

“Have you seen an auto go past here before mine?”

“Yes, sir, I was smoking me pipe, and settin’ on the rail of the dock, when one shoots up toward the Twenty-third Street Ferry, with a cop on a motor-cycle chasin’ it behind.”