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THE THIEVES' BALL
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altogether, thirty-six persons,—twenty, girls, sixteen men.

The "bulls" booked them all but proved able to hold nobody. They showed prison records against seven but nothing then "out" against any one. The pick-up, as shown on the picture pages, included a Tudor queen, two of the lighting plants, a pirate, a Turk, a Cæsar but not Cleopatra; not even Magellan. Not the Elizabethan Christina, not Ralegh, either Jerry or Keeban.

The raid was made to get Jerry and Christina; for some one had tipped it that they'd be at the Flamingo Feather. The tip told even the time.

I kept wondering about that tip and who gave it. Not Jerry, I thought; but where, during the end of that evening, was Jerry? And I considered that it was only after he had gone that Keeban had come in,—or the man in mask whom I'd called Keeban, and who did that dagger dance with Christina.

She'd told me, at that time when she lay on her bed like Madame Récamier, that Jerry had killed old Win; she showed no knowledge at all of Keeban.

You'll understand I kept my thoughts to my-