Some girls, some men ... perhaps most girls and most men ... would have remained in the protection of the four walls, resigned to uncertainty, until daybreak. Of their number was not Lynette Brooke, a girl little given to fear and greatly moved by a desire to _know_! She waited as long as she could bear to wait. Then, holding Taggart's revolver well before her and walking with one silent footfall distanced patiently from the other, she gained the door and stepped outside. She was trembling; that she could not help. But she was determined to go on. And on she did go, cautiously, until she had gone ten steps toward the sound which she had heard. She paused, turning in all directions, ready to fire and ready to run.... "_Sh! Come here!_" A whisper through the dark. And one man's whisper is much like another's. It could have been Deveril's or Taggart's or even Mexicali Joe's. "Who are you?" her own whisper answered him. "Is Standing in there?" "Who are you?" she insisted. There was a pause, a silence; a long silence. Then: "Come with me ... just a few feet. So we won't be overheard." She found herself frowning. Was it Babe Deveril? She did not fancy a man's whispering; she could not imagine a man like Bruce Standing whispering at a moment like this! More like him, like any man who was a man, to roar out what he had to say rather than whisper in the dark. But that curiosity of hers, that inborn desire _to know_, lured her on. But under guard. She held her weapon so that it menaced the vague form so close to her and she whispered again, not realizing that she, too, whispered, but because she was under the spell of the moment. "I'll go with you another ten steps ... count them! And I have a revolver in my hand, aimed at the middle of your body!" "You're a game kid! Dead game and I don't mind saying so!" They had stopped; the whisper was dropped for a low-toned voice. It was not Babe Deveril! Not Mexicali Joe. Then Taggart? "I want to talk to you. I take it he is in there. Asleep? So much the better. I'm Taggart." "Well? What can I do for you, Mr. Taggart?" "That gun of yours," he said. "I don't know how used you are to guns. Knowing who I am you can point it down!" "Knowing who you are," she returned coolly, "I keep it just as it is! I have asked what I could do for you?" "I've seen Babe Deveril. He's told me all about everything." "Babe Deveril! When? Where is he?" Jim Taggart, had time and opportunity afforded, would have laughed at her quickened exclamation, being an evil-thoughted individual with restricted mental horizons. She appeared interested. He had his own mind of her sex and it was not high, since those of her sex with whom such as Jim Taggart consorted were not such as to give a man a high idea of femininity. In the words which, had he spoken his thought aloud, would have been his, Taggart estimated that "he had this dame's number, street, and telephone."