"Gee! that’s good enough for me," thought Patsy, quickly sizing up the possibilities. "I’ll take one chance at that window. That shutter is not quite closed." Stealing nearer, with eyes and ears alert, he crawled up the pile of refuse and peered in through the narrow slit between the shutter and its casing. The interior of the old stable met his gaze. One of the men, Simp Sampson, so called, had unhitched the horse and was making him fast in a near stall. In another, out of which he had kicked a quantity of straw and bedding, Mullen was raising a large trapdoor, drawing it up by means of a ring in the floor. Patsy could see through the opening a flight of wooden steps leading down into a dark hole under the floor, the depth and extent of which he could only conjecture. "Gee! that’s a secret hiding place, all right," he said to himself. "The bedding in the stall would ordinarily conceal the trapdoor. Besides, who would be looking for one in a horse’s stall? I’m evidently up against a gang that makes a business of crooked work. If I can corner them----” Patsy’s train of thought ended when Mullen, having tipped the trapdoor back against one side of the stall, turned and said to Corson, who had been grimly watching him: "Lend a hand, Jim, and we’ll lug her down there. It will be safer than keeping her in the house until we learn how the cat’s going to jump. Is the old woman in the house?" "Not now," said Corson, with his habitual growl. "She’s gone to market. It takes some grub, Mullen, to feed you fellows." "We’ll have coin enough for grub, Jim, if his nibs gets all he’s banking on from this job," Mullen pointedly answered. "I hope he’ll get it, then. We need it." "And we were dead lucky in getting a whack at a piece of it," Mullen added. "That came of my friendship with Fallon, who knows all about his nibs and has been standing in with him on this job. The taxi came in handy, you know. The trick could not have been turned without it." "Not very well, Jake." "Fallon reckoned that I knew of a safe place for the skirt, and having got safely away with her, we’re dead lucky to be in the game. Here, you, Sampson, lay hold and lift her out." Mullen had been unbuckling the back flap of the wagon top while speaking, and Sampson had secured the horse and emerged from the near stall. Together the three men raised the form of the senseless woman from the wagon and placed her on the stable floor. Her hat dropped off while they were doing so and the veil fell from her white, expressionless face. Patsy Garvan caught his breath with sudden amazement. "Holy smoke! That’s young Mantell’s wife, Helen Mantell," was his first thought, while the three men stood gazing down at her. "Gee! there’s more to this than I guessed. Can it be that the old man has soured on her and wants her out of the way? I cannot believe that. There is more to this job than I have suspected."