Noiselessly, Clifford crossed to the stairway beside the elevator and ran up flight after flight, until he came breathlessly to the twelfth floor, the floor above Loveman’s studio apartment. He let himself through a door with a latch-key, and the next moment, sitting in the darkness, he had on the headpiece of a dictagraph whose wires ran down into the lofty studio which Loveman used as his library. Two or three minutes passed--then he heard some one enter below--then he heard a deep, gruff, unmistakable voice:-- “God, Loveman--thought you were never going to show up.” His conjecture had been correct. There had been planned a prompt conference to follow that night’s all-important undertaking. “Been held up, Bradley,--everything’s gone wrong!” Loveman’s usual smooth voice was now more like a snarl. “Gone wrong!” exclaimed Bradley. “Yes, the whole dam’ works!” “But how the hell, Loveman--” “I can’t explain here,” Loveman snappily interrupted. “It’s not safe. Clifford’s got a dictagraph planted somewhere in this room.” “The hell you say! But how do you know?” “He quoted something to-night which you and I had said--something which we said when alone in this room.” “Damn him!” growled Bradley. “Why didn’t I go ahead, instead of minding you, and have him bumped off when I wanted to!” And then: “Let’s look around and rip out his damned machine.” “There’s no telling where his wires run. Besides, there’s not time. There’s a chance that he may be trailing me here--” “Come on, then,” snapped the brusque voice of Bradley. “If he comes up, let’s croak him. Leave your door open and we can pull him in here and do the job. Then you can say he got into your flat and you shot him in self-defense, thinking he was a burglar.” Voices ceased; footsteps crossed the room below. Removing the annunciator, Clifford slipped out into the hallway and cautiously peered down the well of the stairway. On Loveman’s landing he saw two shadowy, crouching figures, and in the hand of the lawyer he saw a dim something which he knew to be a pistol. Instinctively he drew his automatic and waited. Five minutes passed--ten minutes. The figures below still maintained their moveless ambuscade. Every moment Clifford expected them to turn their suspicion and their search upwards; in that event, with that pair in their present mood, it would mean bullets to the finish. Clifford did not wish such a turn to the situation, even were he to come out the victor; he wanted to carry this case much further, to have much more direct evidence of the practices of the pair, before the end should come. But he held himself tensely ready. But his foresight and quick action had saved him an encounter: the pair thought only of the possibility that Clifford might have followed Loveman, and never that he might have preceded Loveman here. Presently, a low voice ascended to him--Bradley’s.