And so we left the station-house and went out into the morning, I feeling a little weak and sick, but confident at last that we had the knowledge for which we had been searching so long, and that it was now only a matter of hours before our work would be completed. Captain Peters’ big police car burned up the miles to New York, while I lay back in the tonneau, nursing my bandaged shoulder as well as I could from the jolting, leaning on the captain a little and relating to him everything that had happened that night. He wanted me to wait until we got to town and tell the story to the Chief first. For he had wired him as soon as he got my telephone message. But, with my aching shoulder and the strain I had been through, I refused to wait. I alone knew the whereabouts of the house where Natalie and Margaret, and probably Moore, Larry and Pride, were imprisoned, and my life had been threatened too often that night for me to keep that vital information to myself any longer than I had to. So he was in possession of the whole story before he reached the city. And by the time we did reach it I was sound asleep. The captain inspired confidence. The search, at last, was over. And if I was to be in at the death, as I was determined to be, I would need all the sleep I could get, while the Chief and Captain Peters made the necessary preparations. Chapter XXII Through the Outposts When I awoke it was broad daylight. I lay for a moment in the daze of intense fatigue and the temporary befuddlement that follows very deep sleep. I glanced about me at bare stone walls, a barred window and a door made of heavier iron bars, and suddenly I was conscious of a deadly chill at my heart. Where was I? Then memory returned, and the terror at my queer surroundings was surmounted by an intense anxiety to be up and doing. What had happened to Natalie and Margaret, to Moore and Pride and Larry, while I had been lying asleep? What might not be happening to them now? I sat up with a jerk that sent a fierce twinge of pain through my shoulder and brought a gasp out of me, and at the same moment I realized that some one was calling my name, fumbling at the bars of my door the while. “All right, Mr. Clayton! Just a moment, sir!” I stared at the opening door. And I cannot express my relief at the sight of a stout and powerful member of New York’s finest, with a tray of food in his hands. “What’s that?” I demanded. “And where’s Captain Peters? And how did I get in here, anyhow?” “The captain will be here in ten minutes, sir. He just ’phoned to have you waked. And he said to tell you that he hoped you’d eat something. You’re in the Tombs, sir. We carried you in last night, for all the world like a dead man.”