Piling on Phelan's Agony. 269 XL. Striking While the Iron Is Hot. 278 XLI. The Escape. 285 XLII. Michael Phelan's Predicament. 291 XLIII. The Circumvention of Auntie. 298 XLIV. Miss Featherington's Shattered Dream. 304 ILLUSTRATIONS His gaze had wandered to the great chest, the lid of which was distinctly rising. Frontispiece "Now here's a cunning little line", he pursued. "That shows something too." 110 "Give me me uniform an' let me git out of here." 164 "He's almost as madly in love with her as I am." 282 The Publishers wish to acknowledge, with thanks, the permission to use some sketches of the H. C. MINER LITHOGRAPHING COMPANY in illustrating this book. OFFICER 666 CHAPTER I. A GRAPEFRUIT PRELUDE. Splash! The grapefruit hit her in the eye! Splash! His psychic wave was dashed to smithereens! "Oh! Oh!" the two girls screamed in unison. "D----!" the young man sitting near ejaculated. For ten minutes there in the Oak Room of the Ritz-Carlton he had been hurling across the narrow intervening space this mental command to the girl facing him: "Look here! Look at me! Let me see your eyes! Look here!" For half that time she had been conscious of his insistent gaze and his message. But with as much will power as he himself displayed she bent her head over her plate and sent back along his telepathic transmission this reply: "I won't! I won't!" But she was weakening. "Sadie," she said to her companion, "I do awfully want to look up. I want to see who is looking at me so fiercely. I can just feel it all through me. Of course it wouldn't be proper, would it?" "Well, that all depends on who is looking at you, dear, doesn't it? If it were some horrid old man"-- "No, it doesn't feel a bit like that, Sadie. I don't know just how to explain it--really it isn't unpleasant at all." "Why, Helen! And you engaged and going to elo"---- "Hush, Sadie, you mustn't say that in here. Somebody might--but I positively cannot keep my eyes down another moment. I'm"---- Then splash! A vicious little jab of the spoon and there followed a disastrous geyser--a grapefruit geyser. With a smothered little cry of pain Helen's eyes shut tight and she groped for her napkin. And to make a good job of it the Fates dragged in at that moment Helen's guardian aunt, the tall and statuesque Mrs. Elvira Burton of Omaha, Neb. The young man who had failed so signally in what was perhaps his maiden effort at hypnotism viciously seized all the change the waiter proffered on the little silver tray, flung it back with a snarl, got up and stamped out of the room.