He stopped, backed toward the bar, and, glaring at his companion, leaned heavily against it. Unseen by either Slattery or Tisdale, his hand stole behind him like a flash, grasping a large cheese-knife which lay upon the bar of the "Donegal Shades," carelessly left there by the proprietor himself after cutting up the free lunch which it was his custom each night to spread. "Is your mind made up, Reuben Tisdale? Will no argument bring you to reason? Speak--you had best be quick." "No--I am resolved to do it, Lije, no matter what you say. I tell you still again I can't help it; I'm doomed to be the Jonah of the gang." He stood dejectedly by the stove, his eyes fixed upon the sanded floor. With measured step the man at the bar advanced toward him, one hand still held behind his back. "And do you know what the men on the ship did to Jonah?" he hissed. "No? Then I'll tell you--they threw him overboard, as I now throw you, Reuben Tisdale, and the pit beneath this house, which already numbers its victims by the score, is the whale, and will swallow up the Jonah of the gang to which you and I belong, and you can bet your sweet life that from out of the depths of that whale's belly you'll never come forth to give my secrets away!" The words had not fully left his lips when with a sudden spring, his now upraised hand descended, and Reuben Tisdale fell to the floor with a groan. * * * * * And while these events are transpiring how fares it with our old friend, Mr. Detective Hook. "Why, he is dead!" did we hear some one exclaim? Not at all. Detectives, as a race, are hard to kill, and Caleb Hook offers no exception to his class! Beneath the cellar of the Donegal Shades lies that brave man, neither dead nor helpless, but able to stand erect and move about, eagerly longing to escape. And no wonder. The foul pit in which he found himself confined was damp and slimy--filled with a thousand noisome smells. For an hour and more after the body of the unconscious detective had been dropped through the trap-door by Callister and Cutts he remained lying unconscious upon the muddy floor of the place into which he had fallen, an old sub-cellar, used in former days by the occupants of the building, but long since abandoned on account of its dampness and from the fact that it was filled to the brim with the water of the East River at every tide rising above the usual height. But Caleb Hook was not dead. No. By a merciful Providence the ball from the burglar's pistol, missing by a hair's breadth a vital part, touched a certain nerve, well understood by the medical profession, glanced from the accompanying muscle and buried itself in a fleshy spot, leaving its victim in a state of suspended animation, practically unharmed. Its action upon that nerve spent, and the eyes of Caleb Hook opened to life once more. Where he was or how he came there were two questions which he was unable to decide.