That individual was regarding him suspiciously. He caught the look, interpreted it correctly, and smiled encouragingly. “It’s all right, Mr. Caruth,” he extenuated. “It’s all to the regular for a gent to have the nightmare when he goes to sleep in his chair. Just you go back to your rooms and take a dose of bromide and say your lay-me-downs, and neither of us’ll remember anything about this to-morrow. I’d start the elevator for you if I could, but I can’t, so it’s you for the glue-foot climb.” Caruth scarcely heard the man. His first spasm of distrust in his own action had quickly passed, and by the time the other had finished he had gone back to his first idea. “Nonsense, Jackson!” he burst out impatiently. “I haven’t been asleep. Wilkins has fled within five minutes. If he hasn’t passed you, he must have gone some other way. How else could he go? Quick, man! He must be caught.” But the watchman refused to be hurried. “There ain’t no way out but this,” he declared, “unless he done a high dive from the fire-escape.” Caruth started. He had forgotten the dangerous combination of open platforms and loose-hung ladders plastered across the hall windows on each floor. If Wilkins had taken that means of escape, as was entirely probable, he must be well out of reach, and no way to find him would remain except the slow appeal to the police. He would call up the headquarters and---- Suddenly he recalled his visitor. Would she care to have the affair made public? Certainly he could not act without consulting her. The watchman’s voice broke on him. That individual had switched on the lights in the hall, and had gone back to where a closed door gave on an alley. “We’ll take a look at that Jacob’s ladder just to satisfy you, Mr. Caruth,” he called. “See here!” He threw open the door and let Caruth step out into the night. At first the alley seemed dark, but soon objects began to stand out in the faint light. First the skyline showed, clear against the towering sides of the chasm, then the iron of the fire-escape disentangled itself from the darkness and began to show in rectangular tracery. Before Caruth could distinguish more, the watchman uttered an exclamation. “By George!” he cried. “Somebody _has_ been on that escape. It’s been let down.” Caruth looked where the other pointed. Plainly discernible now to his distended pupils, the lowest stretch of the iron ladder trailed across his field of vision. Some one had cut loose the fastenings that held it high in the air, out of reach of casual sneak thieves, and had lowered it to the ground. Wilkins’s selection of a route was obvious. But it was also obvious that he was gone.