The sight of that wide-eyed and eager trio irritated me beyond words.

There was no longer any thrill in the thing. I had gone through too much; I could not react to this newer emergency. I kept wondering if the idiot with the Colt realized just how delicate a pressure would operate the trigger on which I could see his finger shaking. But that shake, it was plain, was more from excitement than fear.

"We've got him!" cried the youth in the cerise pajamas. I might have been a somewhat obstinate black ba.s.s wheedled into his landing-net, from the way he spoke.

"Don't move!" commanded the older of the two, wrinkling his brow into a frown of youthful determination. "Don't you dare move one inch, or I'll put a hole through you."

I had no intention of moving.

"Watch his hands," prompted the younger man. "He ought to put 'em up."

"Yes, Orrie, he ought to put them up," echoed the girl by the newel-post. She reminded me, with her delicate whites and pinks and blues, of the cabinet of porcelain at which I had so recently stared.

"Back up through the door," cried Orrie. "Come on--back up!"

I wearily obeyed this somewhat equine order. Then he commanded me to hold my hands above my head. I did so without hesitation; I had no wish to argue while that Colt was staring me in the eyes.

They followed me, Indian file, into the room. It was the girl who closed the door as Orrie switched on the lights. She stood with her back to it, studying my face. I could see that I rather interested them all. But in that interest I detected no touch of either friendliness or respect. The only one I seemed to mystify was the girl at the door.

"Have you anything to say?" demanded Orrie, squaring his shoulders.

"Yes, I have a great deal to say," I told him. "But I prefer saying it to you alone."

I could see his movement of disdain.

"Will you listen to that!" commented the youth in the cerise pajamas.

"And if you will be so good as to stop poking that pistol in my face,"

I continued with some heat, "and then send these children out of the room, I shall say what I have to, and do it very briefly!"

"Children!" came in an indignant gasp from the girl at the door.

"We'll stick by you, old man," a.s.sured the youthful hero in cerise, with his heels well apart.

"And just why should I closet myself with a burglar?" inquired the astute Orrie, staring at me with the utmost insolence. Yet I could see that at least the precision of my articulation was puzzling him a bit.

"That's asinine," I retorted. "I'm not a burglar, and you ought to know it."

To my astonishment, a little tripart.i.te ripple of laughter greeted this statement.

"Then what are you?" asked the incredulous Orrie.

I knew there was no further use beating about the bush.

"Yes, who are you?" demanded the other youth.

He still held the magazine-revolver balanced in his right hand. The truth had to come out.

"I'm Witter Kerfoot," I told them, as steadily as I could. "Kerfoot, of Gramercy Park West."

"What number?"

I gave him the number. I could see the trio exchange glances; they were plainly glances of amus.e.m.e.nt. My young friends, I could see, were enjoying a home melodrama, a melodrama in which I was obviously the most foolish of villains. I began to feel a good deal like a phonograph grinding out a comic record.

"And with that face!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the man called Orrie.

The quiet contempt of his glance caused me to shift about, so I could catch a glimpse of myself in the Venetian mirror between the book-shelves. That glimpse was indeed a startling one. I had quite forgotten the transit through the coal-hole. I could not even remember how or when I broke my hat-crown. I had remained as unconscious of the scratch across my cheek as I was of the garret cobwebs that festooned my clothing. I saw as I peeped into the mirror only a sickly-hued and grimy-looking footpad with dirty hands and a broken hat. It was no wonder they laughed. My environment for the last hour had not been one that tended toward consciousness of attire. I was about to remove my disgracefully disfiguring headgear when the younger man swung about on me with the Savage thrust point-blank in my face.

"Don't try any of that!" he gasped. "You keep up those hands."

The whole situation was so beside the mark, was so divorced from the sterner problem confronting both them and myself, that it dispirited and angered me.

"We've had about enough of this tommy-rot!" I protested.

"Yes, we'll cut out the tommy-rot, and get him tied," proclaimed the man with the Colt.

"Then search him first," prompted the young man. "Here, Caddy, take Orrie's Colt while he goes through him," he commanded, in the chest-tones of a newly-acquired savagery, "and if he tries to move, wing him!"

The girl, wide-eyed and reluctant, took the heavy revolver. Then Orrie advanced on me, though in an altogether wary and tight-lipped manner.

To continue my protests, I saw, would be only to waste my breath.

There was nothing to do but submit to the farce.

I said nothing as he produced the telltale flashlight. I also remained silent as he triumphantly unearthed the jimmy and the d.a.m.natory skeleton keys. I could see the interchange of exultant glances as these were tossed out on the polished table-top.

"Get the straps from the golf bags!" suggested the youth with the Savage. I could not help remembering how this scene was paralleling another of the same nature and the same night, when Benson and I had been the masters of the situation.

The man called Orrie seemed a little nonplussed at the fact that he had found no valuables in my outer pockets, but he did not give up. He grimly ignored my protests as he explored still deeper and dug out my monogramed wallet, and then a gold cigarette-case, on which my name was duly inscribed. He turned them over in his hand a couple of times and examined them carefully. Then a great light seemed to come to him. He succ.u.mbed, as even his elders have done, to a sudden sense of drama.

I saw him dart to the outer room and catch up a telephone directory.

He riffled through the pages with quick and impatient fingers. Then he strode back, and looked me up and down.

"I know what this man's done," he cried, his eyes alight with conviction.

"What?" demanded the younger man.

"He's visited more than this house to-night. He's gone through Witter Kerfoot's, as well. He's taken these things from there. And now _it's up to us to take him back with them_!"

I could see the sheer theatricality of the situation clutch at his two listeners. I could see them surrender to it, although the girl still seemed to hesitate.

"Hadn't I better call Uncle Anthony?" she suggested.

At one breath her words brought me back to both the tragedy that lay so close at hand, and the perilous complexity of my own position.

"No, that's foolish!" cut in Orrie. "The car's still outside. Caddy, I think you'll have to come along. You can sit with Jansen on the driving-seat."

The hero of the maneuver turned back to me. I was thinking mostly of the soft-eyed girl with the baby-white skin, and how I could get her safely away.

"Will you come quietly?" my captor demanded of me.

"Yes," I answered, without looking up, "I'll come quietly."