“Shut up, you booze pup!” Bradley snapped at him. “What we’re doing, we’re doing as much for you as anybody else. She’s always played you rotten, ain’t she? Well, we’re just fixing her so she’ll be showed up in public for what she really is--and so she can’t squeeze any dough out of you, and so’s you have it easy getting a divorce. So back up, you boob!” He glanced at the group at the table. “Get your things on, Burdette and Hilton,” he ordered. He turned again to Mary and her keeper: “All ready, Slim,” he announced sharply. His slow taunting of his prisoner now changed to swiftest action. He drew from a pocket a heavy strap which he threw in a loop over Mary’s head and with his huge strength buckled tightly at her elbows. In the same instant Slim seized her head from behind, and with a fierce, practiced grip forced a gag into her mouth, which the next instant he tied. “Where’s that cloak?” Bradley demanded. Nan Burdette handed it to him, and he flung it about Mary. “Slim, got your car all ready?” “Yes.” “Then gimme that motor-veil, Slim.” It was handed over. “And you keep out of this, Morton,--remember we’re doing it to help you. Just hold her, Loveman.” Nan Burdette and Hilton stepped forward and held apart the curtains--while Jack, his face still wine-flushed, looked on waveringly, Nina holding his arm. Bradley threw the veil over Mary’s head and began to knot it behind. “Get ready, there, to take her out!” he ordered sharply. “Why doesn’t Jimmie Kelly come?” Clifford’s wild suspense cried within him. CHAPTER XXXI WHEN OLD FOES GET TOGETHER But Clifford dared wait no longer for his reinforcements--and he dared not shoot, with Mary standing between him and his most-desired target, Bradley. He sprang through the curtains, his automatic in his right hand, and swung his left fist mightily just beneath the ear of the unsuspecting Slim Harrison, who went down like a dead man. “Look out!” shrilled Loveman, loosening Mary’s arm. Bradley whirled about, instinctively holding Mary before him, from whose shoulders the unloosened cloak was falling, and from whose face the as yet unknotted veil fell away. “Come on, boys,” Clifford cried, as if to a squad behind him. “Guard the front door, and round up the whole bunch!” “Beat it through the basement!” Bradley roared to the others. And at the same instant he hurled Mary straight at the on-coming Clifford. As she struck Clifford, Bradley leaped upon him and knocked his pistol flying from his hand, and then, brushing Mary aside with a powerful sweep, he grappled Clifford in his bear-like arms. The two men went swaying heavily. Clifford had a brief vision of the others staring on nonplussed--then they were gone, and he and Bradley were alone, except for the limp Harrison on the floor. “So it was all a bluff--those others!” Bradley snarled at him. Exultant triumph gleamed in his malignant face. “God, I been waiting--long enough for this--but I’m going to get you at last!”