"That young man with the fractured skull in the corner room upstairs--the one you brought Doctor Alwyn to attend last night--when you know who he is you're going up in the air! I don't know who brought him here, or what flim-flam line of talk they gave you, but it's a wonder you haven't guessed from the start who he was, with the papers full of it for days! Of course they must have given you a lot of money to get him well, and hush it all up, when you were able to pay the Doctor, here, five thousand dollars, but whatever they paid, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the reward they expected to get. Mac, it's Ramon Hamilton you've got upstairs!" Blaine stepped back himself, as if the better to observe the effect of what he manifestly seemed to believe would be astounding news, and clumsily and cautiously the other tried to play up to his lead. "Ramon Hamilton!" he echoed. "You're crazy, Blaine! You don't know what you're talking about!" "You'd better believe I do! See this photograph?" He held the tiny thumbnail picture before Mac Alarney's amazed eyes. "The Doctor took it last night, at the bedside of the young man upstairs, when you thought he was feeling his pulse. That watch of his was in reality a camera." With a roar, the burly man turned upon the erect, unshrinking figure of the gray-haired doctor, but Blaine halted him. "Not so fast, Mac. If it hadn't been for him, you'd be in the hands of the police now, remember, and they've only been waiting to get something on you, as you know. You can't blame Doctor Alwyn for being suspicious, after all the mysterious fuss you made bringing him here. I know Ramon Hamilton well, and I recognized his face the instant it was handed to me! I'm on the case, myself--Miss Lawton, the girl he's going to marry, engaged me. I might have come and tried to take him away from you, so as to cop all the reward myself, but as it is, we'll split fifty-fifty--unless the police get here while we're wasting time talking! Man, don't you see how you've been done?" "You can bet your life I do--that is, if the young man I've got upstairs is the guy you think he is," he added, in an afterthought of cautious self-protection. The acid of the hint that Paddington had betrayed him to the police had burned deep, however, as Blaine had anticipated, and he walked blindly into the snare laid for him. "I'll tell you all about how he come to be here, later, and I'll fix them that tried to pull the wool over my eyes! Now, for the love of Heaven, Mr. Blaine, tell me what to do with him before the bulls come! Thank God, they can search the rest of the place, and welcome--I've got nothin' here but a half-dozen souses, and two light-weights, training."