“Damn you!” he said. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN--ALIAS MR. ANDERSON DOCTOR Sydney Angus Crang looked at his watch, as he stepped from a taxi the next afternoon, and entered the Bayne-Miloy Hotel. It was fifteen minutes of two. He approached the desk and obtained a blank card. “From J. B.,” he wrote upon it. He handed it to the clerk. “Please send this up to Mr. R. L. Peters,” he requested. He leaned nonchalantly against the desk as a bellboy departed with the card. From where he stood the front windows gave him a view of the street, and he could see Birdie parking the taxi a little way up past the entrance. He smiled pleasantly as he waited. Presently the bell-boy returned with the information that Mr. Peters would see him; and, following the boy upstairs, he was ushered into the sitting room of one of the Bayne-Miloy's luxurious suites. A tall man with a thin, swarthy face confronted him. Between his fingers the tall man held the card that he, Crang, had sent up; and between his lips the tall man sucked assiduously at a quill toothpick. “Mr. Peters, of course?” Crang inquired easily, as the door closed behind the bell-boy. Mr. Peters, alias Gilbert Larmon, nodded quietly. “I was rather expecting Mr. Bruce in person,” he said. Crang looked cautiously around him. “It still isn't safe,” he said in a lowered voice. “At least, not here; so I am going to take you to him. But perhaps you would prefer that I should explain my own connection with this affair first?” Again Larmon nodded. “Perhaps it would be just as well,” he said. Once more Crang looked cautiously around him. “We--we are quite alone, I take it?” “Quite,” said Larmon. “My name is Anderson, William Anderson,” Crang stated smoothly. “I was the one who telephoned you last night. I am a friend of John Bruce--the only one he's got, I guess, except yourself. Bruce and I used to be boys together in San Francisco. I hadn't seen him for years until we ran into each other here in New York a few weeks ago and chummed up again. As I told you over the phone, I don't know the ins and outs of this, but I know he is in some trouble with a gang that he got mixed up with in the underworld somehow.” “_Tck!_” The quill toothpick flexed sharply against one of the tall man's front teeth. “William Anderson”--he repeated the name musingly--“yes, I remember. I sent a telegram in your care to Mr. Bruce a few days ago.” “Yes,” said Crang. The quill toothpick appeared to occupy the tall man's full attention for a period of many seconds. “Are you conversant with the contents of that telegram, Mr. Anderson?” he asked casually at last. Crang suppressed a crafty smile. Mr Gilbert Larmon was no fool! Mr. Gilbert Larmon stood here as Mr. R. L. Peters--the telegram had been signed: “Gilbert Larmon.” The question that Larmon was actually asking was: How much do you really know?