"And so it's fixed for the day after to-morrow. We are to meet at Cagney's at eleven o'clock, where I shall await your return from the bank with a bigger haul, unless I'm greatly mistaken, than we ever made before." A look of triumph overspread the face of Caleb Hook as those words, spoken in the voice of the stock-broker, fell upon his ear. "Jerry!" he whispered, softly. "Well, boss?" "Run around to the Oak street station and tell Captain McGinty to send me five of his best men without an instant's delay. Quiet now! Not a particle of noise as you value your life." "I'm fly, boss," whispered the boy, drawing himself cautiously into an upright position. As he did so his legs swept over the hole. Crash! Bang! A heavy body had fallen through the stove-pipe hole, into the room below. It was the iron stove-lifter, which a moment before had rested quietly upon the floor by Jerry's side. In his movement to rise the legs of the boy had come in contact with it, sweeping it across the hole. The intervening covering of thin paper was broken on the instant. With a loud crash the stove-lifter, sweeping down through the opening, had fallen like a bomb-shell into the midst of the men assembled in the room below. There was a sudden exclamation in the voice of Callister. Then all was as silent as the grave. Like a flash Caleb Hook was upon his feet. "Take care of her, Jerry," he whispered. "Lock the door after me and open to no one. I shall head them off at the front entrance. Great Cæsar! how unfortunate! But I'll clap the bracelets on that villain Callister even if the rest escape." He flung open the door and darted toward the stairs, Jerry Buck locking it behind him as he passed. Scarce had he descended half the flight connecting with the floor below, when a door was suddenly flung open and four men sprang out into the passage dimly illuminated by a single hanging lamp. "There he is!" exclaimed one of the men--the smallest, in whom the detective instantly recognized his companion on the force, Mr. Billy Cutts--"there's the fellow who dropped us his card. Gentlemen, this is my friend, Detective Hook. He has come to pay us an evening call!" CHAPTER XXIII. A DETECTIVE IN A BAD FIX. Detective Hook flung his hand behind him. Instantly a revolver, grasped firmly between his fingers, glittered in the rays of the hanging lamp which shed its feeble light through the hall of the Cherry street tenement in which he now stood at bay. "Stand off, there, you fellows!" he shouted, sternly. "One step forward and some one bites the dust!" Crack! The warning was unheeded. In the wild western towns the rule is, "Shoot first and explanations afterward." With fatal result Caleb Hook had chosen the course in direct reverse of this.