"Grinning?" asked Bill Gregg, grinding his teeth and starting from his
chair. "Was the skunk laughing at me?"

"Sure! Every minute."

Bill Gregg groaned. "I'll smash every bone in his ugly head."

"Shake!" said Ronicky Doone. "That's the sort of talk I wanted to
hear, and I'll help, Bill. Unless I'm away wrong, it'll take the best
that you and me can do, working together, to put that gent down!"




Chapter Nine


_A Bold Venture_

But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer, how, above all,
to make sure that he was really the power controlling Caroline Smith,
were problems which could not be solved in a moment.

Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea. "We've waited a week to see
her; now that we've seen her let's keep on waiting," he said, and
Ronicky agreed.

They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged for such a
length of time that it was impossible to keep it as strictly as it had
been observed before. Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long