from headquarters, by any chance. Will you save me? Oh, please, please take me away. I'm wealthy, I'll pay you anything you ask if only"
"One moment, Mademoiselle," de Grandin cut off her torrential speech. "I desire to think."
He remained immersed in thought a moment, then murmured softly, as though meditating aloud: "Parbleu, I see it all, now! As usual, Jules de Grandin was right. This is a gigantic conspiracy—a sort of Mephistopheles and Company, Limited. Yes, pardieu, limited only by these villains' capacity to invent devilish tricks to defraud defenseless women. Mordieu, this is infamous, this is monstrous, this must not be permitted! Me, I shall"
His voice shut off abruptly, like a suddenly tuned-out radio, for a sharp click sounded from the doorway and something faintly luminous was shining face-high through the dark.
Nearer, nearer the fiery thing floated, and we were able to make out the lineaments of a long, thin, evil face; a face with spiked beard and pointed mustaches, with uprearing pointed eyebrows and crooked goat's horns growing from its forehead. That was all—no body, no neck—just the leering, demoniacal face floating forward through the blackness, its hideous, fire-outlined eyes gleaming with diabolical amusement as it neared the whimpering, cowering woman in the corner.
"O-o-o-h!" wailed the terrified spinster as she cringed against the wall and the grinning, Satanic face bent above her.
"Ugh!" A short, surprized grunt answered her outcry, and the fiery face dropped downward through the dark like a burnt-out rocket falling
"Behold Satan's assistant, mon ami," de Grandin commanded, a note of fierce elation in his whisper as he switched the beam of his pocket flash on the prostrate form at our feet.
A tall, broad-shouldered man, his face made up in imitation of the popular conception of the Devil, lay sprawled on the floor within the circle of the flashlight's glow. A long gash, bleeding freely, told where the blue steel barrel of de Grandin's heavy service revolver had struck as the Frenchman lashed the weapon downward through the dark with unerring aim and devastating force.
"Eh bien, my friend, we have met again, it seems," de Grandin remarked as he snatched away the makeup from the fellow's face and surveyed his features in the electric light. I started with surprize as I gazed into the unconscious one's countenance. He was the man who had demanded he be allowed to take Fräulein Mueller from us when we rescued her in the park.
As the flashlight switched off momentarily, the mock devil's beard and mustache became alive with glowing, smoking fire. Instantly I realized de Grandin's surmise had been correct. Phosphorus, or some kind of luminous paint, had been employed to make the faces of the men accosting the little Austrian girl glow as though aflame when they met her in the dark, and the same device had been used here to torture Miss Mytinger.
A further explanation lay at our feet, too, for beside the unconscious man's hand we found a queer-looking instrument. A moment's examination proved it to be something like an oversized flashlight, only, instead of a lamp, its tip was fitted with a metal plate on which the design of a devil's face surmounted by a reversed crucifix was soldered. As de Grandin pressed the switch actuating the contrivance we saw the design suddenly glow red-hot. To all intents the filing was a branding-iron which would burn its device on the flesh of anyone with whom it came in con-
