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"Presence of James L. Durkin, electrical expert, essential at office of Stephens & Streeter, patent solicitors, etc., Empire Building, New York City, before contracts can be culminated. Urgent."

A low red moon shone above the belching pinnacle of Vesuvius. Frank and Durkin leaned over the rail together, as they drifted slowly up the bay, the most beautiful bay in all the world, with its twilight sounds of shipping, its rattle of anchor chains, its far-off cries and echoes, and its watery, pungent Southern odors.

Perhaps it was the absence of the customary wailing of the next door violin that put Penny Durkin in mind. Clint had never been in Penny's room, nor ever said more than two dozen words to him except on the occasion of Penny's encounter with Harmon Dreer, but just now Clint wanted mightily to talk to someone and so he decided to see if Penny was in.

"There's nothing here!" Frank was saying, under her breath. "Then it must be the box!" he told her. Durkin knew it was already too late to file and fit a skeleton key. His first impulse was to bury the box under a muffling pile of bedding and send a bullet or two through the lock.

"Someone was too lazy to open the door and come in." "What is it?" asked Tom, bending over Steve's shoulder. "It's from that idiot Durkin," chuckled the latter. "'Got just what you fellows need. Shoe-blacking stand, two brushes, all complete. Cheap. Come and see it. P. Durkin." "A shoe-blacking stand!" laughed Tom. "Say, he must have seen your shoes, Steve." "Must have seen yours, you mean!"

"Where would I see the Herald?" "But you must have known I was trying to find you that I was doing everything possible!" "I knew nothing," she answered, in her poignantly emotionless voice. And the thought swept through Durkin that something within her had withered and died during those last grim weeks of suffering.

These stops, Durkin had found, would be brief, and the danger would be small, for the Laminian was primarily known as a freighter, carrying out blue-stone and salt fish, and on her return cruise picking up miscellaneous cargoes of fruit.

Its blunt end had been driven with powerful force, straight against the left ear of Ab Durkin, having been deflected slightly from where Tad had intended to plant it. "Lie low!" commanded the boy. The next instant, a shower of revolver shots flattened themselves against the rocks all about the boys. "Give them a volley and drop back quickly!" ordered Tad.

But there is an order for five hundred pounds waiting for me at the British Embassy, in Rome, from the Foreign Office, if I secure those papers!" "That's twenty-five hundred dollars?" "Yes, almost." "And I was on the point of crawling away with a few napoleons!" said Durkin in a whisper. He began to succumb to the intoxication of this rapidity of movement which life was once more taking on.

"All right, you keep them." Durkin hesitated and sighed. Finally, as the boys showed a strong inclination to seek the stairway, "Give me a dollar for the lot," he said. Steve questioned Tom with his eyes and Tom nodded. "All right," said Tom, "but it's more than they're worth." "You'd have to pay a dollar and a half if you bought them new," said Durkin. "Honest! Now, about that chair "