"Surely, you wouldn't spoil the pleasure of anyone so sweet as Miss Mason." "I can't help it, you know," answered Heinric von Lertz somewhat testily. "My head aches." "Your head aches?" Grant laughed. "And you're going home on account of that? I'd lose my head for a person like Miss Mason!" "Mr. Grant, you're Irish!" Dixie laughed up at him. Grant smiled again. "I only wish I were, so I could say the things I'd like to say in the way I'd like to say them. But come now, Mr. Von Lertz, you're only joking about leaving. Why it's only midnight." "Midnight?" Von Lertz started. "Then we must go. It's imperative. That is--" And while he hesitated and explained, a taxi had driven up outside, at the little triangle which divides Broadway at 72nd Street. From the darkness within, a high cheeked, raw-boned man had started forward, a grip in his hand, only to be halted by a cowering individual who shot forth from a bench at the sidewalk. "Back in that cab!" he ordered in a whisper. The raw-boned bomb maker started. "Why--?" "Don't ask any questions. Back in that cab!" "But I've got the bomb! Von Lertz said everything would be ready for me. I--" "Everything is ready--but in a way that we didn't look for," answered the spy on the sidewalk. "Look!" Quickly and surreptitiously, he pointed upward. Where the flaring sign of the Ansonia Hotel blazed out upon the night, was silhouetted the figure of a man. Ten feet away was another--and another--and another. Down on the sidewalk, a solid cordon of police in uniform was drawn about the building. Not a person could approach without being seen--the guarding arm of the police was absolute. "And that's not all," growled the spy on the sidewalk. "That's just the beginning. There are fifty secret service men scattered about the entrances and the areas. Bluer just signalled me by the electric light code that even the elevator shafts are full of them. I signalled him back to tell Von Lertz that everything is off. As for you--move away from here quick! There'll be twenty policemen on our shoulders in another minute!" The taxicab turned swiftly. In another moment it had vanished down the street, while in the hotel-- Von Lertz still stood at the entrance of the cloakroom, arguing with Harrison Grant and Dixie Mason, a scant veneer of pleasantness covering his words. "But I simply can't stay," he was repeating for the fiftieth time, "I tell you my head aches."