Whatever it was that had struck me, the wound on the side of my head was only a scratch. Larry, seething with indignation and curiosity, washed it out for me, keeping up a running fire of questions the while, to which I returned no answer. My visitor’s manner, to say nothing of my own narrow escape, had convinced me that the matter was serious, and the less Larry knew the less he could talk, though I doubted anything but his discretion. A few moments later I went to the telephone, leaving Larry in his room with orders to stay there and to keep his mouth shut in future, and leaving Moore still busy with his victim. My own head was seething with remonstrance and questions, to say nothing of a slight dizziness induced by the blow it had received. But I succeeded in getting Captain Peters and delivering my message. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, tell him!” came over the wire to me, followed by the crash of the receiver in its socket. Then I turned back to Moore and the thing he was searching. He looked up as I gave him the captain’s message. “Thanks,” he said. Then, indicating the man on the floor, “Nothing at all on him except—this! What do you make of it? Be careful!” I took the metal object that the intruder had dropped as he fell. But I could make nothing of it. It resembled nothing I had ever seen except that there was a projection about an inch long from the middle of it that might be a muzzle. It was made of blued steel and built to fit in the hand when half closed, so that the muzzle protruded between the second and third fingers. “It’s some sort of an air revolver,” Moore explained; “but I’ve never seen anything just like it before. Maybe it’ll come in useful, though. Gad, I hope this fellow was alone!” he added. “But who is he?” I demanded at last, “and how on earth did he get in here?” “As to who he is,” Moore smiled, a little grimly, “you’ll find out all about that to-morrow—if he was alone. Otherwise you probably won’t live that long. As to how he got in: like a fool I misunderstood your man and followed him a little way toward the roof when he first started after you. He had left the door of the apartment open and this poor devil must have slipped in then. Your man turned back and showed me in here, but I suppose he must have hidden behind the curtain at once. The time was so short that I never thought to suspect anything or look for eavesdroppers, until I saw the curtain bulge a little in a way no summer breeze would move it. You saw the rest, and I’ll say it was a damned close thing at that, that he didn’t get the two of us. But come on, let’s get him out of this.” Together we carried the man to a chair and sat him up in it. I put my ear to his chest, but the burnt hole in his coat and in the shirt beneath, through which bright red blood was still slowly oozing, was directly over the heart. The man was stone dead.