Floor after floor he ascended, until he reached the eighth, on which was Shirley’s great goal.  Here he exerted the utmost prudence, refraining from the natural impulse to look down at the great crevasse beneath him.  His footing was slippery, but the thickening snowfall was a boon in white disguise, for it protected him from almost certain observation from the street below.  Slowly he raised his eyes to a level with the illuminated window, and peered in.

A strange sight greeted him.

Shine Taylor was busily engaged in the ’twisting of coils of wire, about shiny brass cylinders, with an array of small and large clocks, electric batteries and mysterious bottles on the carved library table.  He was intent upon the manufacture of another of his diabolical engines of death!

Even as he watched, the door opened and who should stagger into the room but Reginald Warren!

“Great Scott, Reg!  What hit you?” was Taylor’s ejaculation, as the other stumbled forward, with a hand to his purple face, to sink into an easy-chair, groaning.  The man outside the window could not distinguish the words, but the current of thought was well expressed in pantomime.

“I’ve been drugged!” moaned Warren.  “That devil put something on my handkerchief which knocked me out.  I came to in Bellevue and I had a time getting away to come back here.  What about the Monk?  Did you see him?”

Taylor had run to his side.  It seemed as though Warren’s eyes would pop from his head.  The veins were swollen on his pallid brow, and he gasped for air.

“Open the window!” he murmured, and his confederate rushed to the very portal through which the criminologist was watching this unusual scene, with bated breath.  His heart sank, as he lowered himself with a suddenness which vibrated the loosely-attached scaler.  For the first time his eyes turned toward the terrifying distance from which he had ascended.

There was a squeak and he heard the window slide in its frame.  He felt that all was over.  It would be impossible for Shine Taylor not to observe the hooked prong of the ladder, with its curving metal a few inches from his hands.  In this ghastly minute of suspense, Shiley’s thoughts, strangely enough turned back to one thing.  He did not dash through the gamut of his life experiences nor regret all past peccadilloes, as novelists inform us is generally the ultimate thought in the supreme moment before a dash into eternity!  He felt only a maddening, itchingly bewitching desire to reach up to his coat pocket and draw out that scent-laden page of typed note-paper which had been glorified by its caress of the warm, bare bosom of the wonderful woman who had so mysteriously drifted into the current of his life.

Then he heard a voice through the open window so close to his ears:  it was Shine Taylor’s nasal whine.

“It’s snowing, Reg.  The air will do you good.  What a gorgeous night for a murder.  Tell me now, what was the trouble?”