Wade and Carton waited for a moment as silent as the grouped silent men behind them, and then as Wade passed a whispered order to them, they all were melting into the dark forest likewise. Swiftly they formed a circle of a hundred feet in radius around the great oak at whose foot was the stone the Invisible Master had specified. On that stone by then, Carton knew, the steel box would be resting, with Grantham and Kingston watching from close beside for the warning bell. The circle of men had in a moment crouched down here and there in the brush, Wade beside Carton, and the wood settled back into its accustomed night silence. The trap was ready. Would the Invisible Master dare to enter it? Carton remembered afterward the time of waiting that followed as a period of almost infinite length. Crouching silent and motionless with Wade in a clump of brush he listened tensely. Out to right and left of him, he knew, were crouching the dozens of men who made up the circle, each ready with rifle or pistol and electric torch, each listening as intently as themselves. And at the circle's center, Grantham and Kingston. All waiting for the unseen man who was to come to claim the price of the terror he had loosed upon New York. Was it a twig that snapped somewhere to the left, Carton wondered? Every slightest sound seemed intensified in the unnatural stillness of the place. A half-hour had passed but there came still no alarm. Wade was chewing gum as softly and silently as ever beside him, his heavy pistol ready in his hand. The desolate hum of crickets came to their ears. Through the branches above Carton could see the moon drifting past. He began to try estimating by it how long they had waited. Then suddenly a sound came that shattered the stillness of the woods as with a tangible blow. The jangling of a bell! "At him!" Wade cried as they leapt up, forward. All around them the dark shapes of men were running toward the towering oak! They heard hoarse cries from Kingston and Grantham ahead--a single brief exclamation in a deeper voice--and then--crash!--crash!--crash! three shots echoing through the forest from ahead like the crash of cannon! "He's there--don't let him get through!" Wade cried. The circle of running men was contracting and merging in an instant upon the central oak. Their guns leapt in their hands as they burst into the little clearing beneath it. They stopped. Kingston lay on the ground in a grotesque attitude beneath the light of their torches, shot through the heart. Grantham, blood welling from his left shoulder, was twisted in a half-sitting position beside him. There was no one else in the clearing and of the steel box that had rested on the boulder there was no sign! "He got it!" Grantham whispered, his face distorted with pain. "He got it and got away--the Invisible Master!"