"Al" staggered, regained his balance, and came on in a blind rush, bull neck lowered, long, monkey-like arms taut and rigid for the first blow. Blaine set himself to meet it, but it was never delivered. At that instant the whirring roar of a high-powered car, unmuffled, sounded in all their ears, and a second machine drew up at the steps. Its single passenger flung himself out and bounded up to the door. "What in h--l does this mean?" he bellowed. "Didn't you hear my horn?" He stopped abruptly in sheer amazement, for Blaine had turned, with beaming face and outstretched hand. "Mac Alarney!" he exclaimed. "Thank the Lord you've come! This thick-skulled boob wouldn't give me time for a word, and every minute is precious! Come where I can talk to you, quick!" Then, as if catching sight of the car in which Mac Alarney had come, for the first time his eyes widened and he seemed struggling to suppress an outburst of mirth. "Great guns! Is that _your_ car, yours? Do you mean to tell me it was you I was playing with, back there on the road? When I flashed the light in your face I was sure you were Donnelley!" As he uttered the name of the Chief of Police, Mac Alarney involuntarily stepped backward, and a wave of startled apprehension swept the amazement from his face, to be succeeded in turn by the primitive craftiness of the brute instinct on guard. "And what may you be wanting here, Mr. Blaine?" he demanded, warily. "To beat the police to it!" Blaine replied in a gruff whisper, adding as he jerked his thumb in the direction of the waiting Al. "Get rid of him! We haven't got a minute, I tell you!" "The police!" repeated the other man, sharply. "Sure, I passed two cars full of plain-clothes bulls, with an ambulance trailing them!--You can go now, Al." Without giving the burly proprietor of the retreat time to discover him for himself, Blaine pulled the astonished Doctor forward. "Here's Doctor Alwyn, whom you brought here last night. The police trailed you, and got his number, but fortunately when they began to question him, he smelled a rat in the whole business and came to me. They told him a man named Paddington had double-crossed you, but of course I knew that was all rot, the minute I'd doped it out. You've got a fortune under your roof this minute, and you don't know it, Mac! That's the best joke of all! You're entertaining an angel unawares!" "Say, what're you gettin' at, Mr. Blaine?" Mac Alarney's brows drew close together, and he stared levelly from beneath them at the detective's exultant face.