Around the squalid room, lighted now only by the moonrays, Jimmie Dale's
eyes travelled slowly, abstractedly. Yes, in that one particular it was
different; but here was the New Sanctuary, and again he was living the
old life in close, intimate companionship with the underworld--the old
life that only six months ago he had thought to have done with forever!

He turned his face suddenly to the wall, and lay very still--only his
hands still remained tightly clenched, and the hard, set look on his
face grew harder still.

Six months ago, like some mocking illusion, like some phantom of
unreality that jeered at him, it seemed now, he had lived for a few
short weeks in a dreamland of wondrous happiness, a happiness that all
his own great wealth had never been able to bring him, a happiness that
no wealth could ever buy--the joy of her--the glad promise that for
always their lives would be lived together--and then, as though she had
vanished utterly from the face of the earth, she was gone.

The Tocsin! Marie LaSalle to the world, she was always, and always would
be, the Tocsin to him. _Gone_! A hand unclenched and passed heavily
across his eyes and flirted the hair back from his forehead. She had
taken her place in her own world again; her fortune had been restored to
her, its management placed in the hands of a trust company; the interior
of the mansion on Fifth Avenue, with its sliding walls and secret
passages, that had served as headquarters for the Crime Club, was in the
process of reconstruction--and she had disappeared.

It had come suddenly, and yet--as he understood now, though then he had
only attributed it to an exaggerated prudence on her part--not without
warning. In the three weeks that had intervened between the night of the