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It is needless to say that Dr. McDill responded to his invitation with the greatest alacrity and gratitude. For the first time did the rotund gentleman become aware that there were other persons present. Some four of the doctor’s pursuers had now gathered at the curb of the crossing and the rest were coming thither, though with no great haste, for they were gentry to whom caution was second nature and it was by no means certain what the arrival of the automobile might portend. The four at the curb, deterred from retreat by that sense of shame which is not entirely absent even in the lowest and most depraved, were now insistently giving their rap to incite their comrades to hasten. The rotund gentleman walked around to that side of the carriage and gazed at them with some degree of interest and curiosity. “Rap, rap–rap; rap, rap–rap,” went the sticks of the four and down the street came answering raps and soon the four were joined by two more.

“Don’t let him go now, we’ve almost got him. We’d had him, if Red hadn’t gone to sleep and let him get by. Come on, come on.”

The six rushed at the carriage, whereat the rotund gentleman, with an agility not to be looked for in one of his contour and condition, received the foremost with smash, smash–smash, in each eye and on the nose, and the second likewise, when bidding the driver be off, he leaped into the carriage with his comrades. A single bullet whistled after them as they whirled away.

“Rap, rap–rap. I rapped ’em,” said the rotund gentleman. “I always did hate a knocker.”

With your permission I will here interpolate the remark that the further adventures of the eminent surgeon with the mysterious confederacy that sought his life, bore evidence that these depraved and ruffianly men were not without a certain rude artistic temperament as well as a tinge of romance, and a dramatic sense that many who write for the stage might well envy them.

The elation of the doctor over his escape from the toils of the thieves was not of long duration. His breakfast was interrupted by a call to the telephone and over the wires came to his startled ears a hollow “knock, knock–knock; knock, knock–knock.” At his office door down town softly came “tap, tap–tap; tap, tap–tap,” and snatch the door open as hastily as he might, he saw nothing, heard nothing, heard nothing but the electric bells on the floors above and floors below calling for the elevator: “buzz, buzz–buzz; buzz, buzz–buzz.” He walked along State Street at the busy hour of noon and all about him in the throngs was the dull impact of canes upon the pavement, “thud, thud–thud; thud, thud–thud.” As he rode home in the street car at nightfall, back of him in the train at street corner after corner he heard passengers jingle the bell for stopping, “ding, ding–ding; ding, ding–ding.”

Although Dr. McDill was a man of great native resolution and intrepid in the face of known and seen dangers, the horrors of the invisible forces of death everywhere surrounding him so wore at his soul that he returned down town and spent the night at a hotel. On the morrow, he severely condemned himself for this yielding to fear, for on the front steps of his house lay the dead form of his great watch dog, Jacques. There were evidences of a struggle in which the assailants had not been unscathed. Bits of cloth lay about and examining the stains of blood that plentifully blotched the walk, he discovered that some of it was human blood.

“Ah,” he said, in deep self-reproach, “if I had stayed here as I should, I would have been able to fight with poor Jacques and brought low some of my enemies. How easily I could have fired from the upper windows as Jacques made their presence known. It is evident that the noise of the struggle was so great that the fiends were afraid to continue the attack and ran away.”