“Yes, I say--your life!” Jack looked into the muzzle of the weapon and wondered if he could cross the space between them and seize the man before he could press the trigger. “You told a plausible tale, and he believed you. You passed yourself off as Belmont, who lies in fifty fathoms of water, and he took it all for gospel. You’ve got to die.” The crook said nothing. “Sit down,” commanded the stranger. Involuntarily Jack sat down and awaited the fellow’s next movement. “What have you to say before you die? Any word to send to any person?” “You don’t mean to take my life?” “I do. It isn’t worth the snuffing of a candle just now. All the money in the world could not save you.” Suddenly Jack was pounced upon by the human wolf and crushed deeper into the chair. A pair of demon hands seemed to meet behind his windpipe, and he tried, but vainly, to rise. His eyes bulged from his head, his tongue protruded and he emitted a groan. Three minutes later the demon arose and looked down at the dark face in the chair. Then he went through the crook’s pockets and found nothing of value even to him. Behind Jack was a wall tolerably white, and the murderer went toward it. He took a pencil from his pocket and wrote in scrawling characters across the surface a few words that seemed to please him. “That’s it. He’ll see it,” he hissed. “And he’ll know that it is a death trail if he persists.” In another moment the little den was tenanted by no one but the silent man in the chair. The gas burned over his head, sicklylike and blue, and the room seemed filled with a noxious odor. It burned on till the first streaks of morning revealed the city, and pedestrians reappeared on the sidewalks. No one came. Several hours passed and the streets swarmed again with their eager thousands. Then the door was opened and Carter came in. He stood stock-still at sight of the dead man--his spy--in the chair, and then he happened to glance at the wall. In another second he was there, and his bulging eyes had read: “The spy first, the master next! There is no escape for him!” CHAPTER XIX. THE KNOCK-OUT DROPS. The man of many trails read the inscription on the wall more than once before he turned away. It meant him. There was not the least doubt of this, and for some time the detective stood rooted to the spot, as it were, and looked at what appeared to be a record of doom. At last he went over to the dead man in the chair, and, lifting the body, he knew what had terminated Jack Redmond’s career. The hands of some fiend had strangled him, and Nick seemed to inspect the marks on the throat for the time that had elapsed since the tragedy. Slowly and with deliberation the detective quitted the scene of crime and went down the steps. At the bottom he nearly ran against a woman with a black shawl pulled over her head in such a manner as to conceal her features. She tried to escape the detective, but the detective’s hand shot out and drew her toward him.