After having seen the photograph Lillian had shown him, he knew he could not be mistaken. The girl stood for half a minute in direct focus from his place of observation, and the gas-light fell full upon her face and figure. Darrell drew in a long breath. “That settles it,” he muttered, “I’ll try—unless this other affair takes the heart out of me.” He had lived between thirty-five and forty years without ever having a serious love scrape; but an inward monitor told him his time had come at last. The little god plays all manner of pranks with his victims, and although Eric Darrell had eluded his sway so long, it would all be made up to him presently. As Marian stood there she was joined by a second figure. This was Joe. Eric scanned his face eagerly, as best he could under the circumstances. “Thank heaven! Joe is calm. He has aroused his energies. No danger of his giving out when the crucial test comes,” he muttered. Joe Leslie did appear self-possessed, but it was easy to be seen that he was not himself this evening. His wife accounted for it to the friends about her by stating that Joe had been overworking himself lately, and that morning he complained of a severe headache. She did not seem to suspect that she had given him cause for his breakdown. None are so blind as those who refuse to see. It might be this or innocence that caused her to ignore the truth. Eric, with a sigh, passed on. He had seen Lillian join the others, and the trio gave him a strange feeling. “So fair, and yet so false. How can a man trust a woman when he has such a terrible example before his eyes—and her sister too.” He soon forgot all this. Something else attracted his attention, and he found that there was need of his care. A couple of sinister-looking men passed the house and looked in. He saw them conversing eagerly together a minute or two later just beyond. At first an idea sprang into his head that they might be men hired by Prescott to create a disturbance and delay pursuit after the latter had succeeded in reaching his carriage with Lillian. If this were so, he must take them into his calculations and watch them closely. That their conversation concerned the house where the little gathering was taking place was beyond all doubt, for their motions attested this. Then they moved off. Eric did not believe they had gone, and he followed them with his eyes. They slipped into a vacant lot near by, and the detective began to get a new idea. Perhaps these fellows were not in the employ of the artist after all, but skirmishing around on their own hook. That meant knavery. He was aroused. To follow them was his first thought. Stealing down to the vacant lot he too vanished amid its blackness. At first he could see and hear nothing, but in a few minutes he caught a clew, and found that the two men had gone to the fence separating the vacant lot from Joe’s back yard.