He snatched up a chair to crash it down on the white man’s head. But Baldwin’s hand flew to his coat and he fired through the pocket. Once . . . twice . . . three times. Two of the slugs found their mark in Johnson’s body. With a groan, he dropped the chair, fell back against the wall and collapsed on the floor with a sickening thud.

Babe rushed to Baldwin who was staring blankly first at the gun and then at the body on the floor.

“My God!” she cried, in an awed voice. “What have you done? What have you done?”

They stood there as Johnson’s head sank lower and lower until it touched the floor. He was dead.

“Oh, why did you do it?” Babe’s voice was almost a whisper.

Baldwin staggered a little. He was deathly pale. His body was wet with a cold sweat.

“I was mad—mad,” he said hoarsely, as he slumped into a chair, weak with nervous exhaustion. The gun fell from his limp hand.

They stared at each other for a moment. What were they to do? Everything seemed deadly still in the wrecked apartment. Evidently no one in the building had heard the shots fired. The racket of automobiles passing through the street and the noisy tenants had no doubt drowned out the sound. At any rate, if the shots were heard no attention had been paid to them.

Babe, half-dazed, walked over to Baldwin and threw her arms around him.

“You did this for me,” she said. “I didn’t think I meant that much to you.”

She hid her face against his shoulder. She must get him out of this.

He wanted to call the police. But she insisted that he go. He protested that he couldn’t leave her to face things alone. But she finally persuaded him that he could do no good by staying. She convinced him that he could help more by being free and using his money and influence than if he was arrested as the murderer. She declared that she would find some way out of it. Finally she convinced him, and covered by the darkness, Baldwin went down the fire-escape at the rear of the flat into a yard where the remains of old autos and piles of junk lay around, and made his way out through an alley that connected with the next street.

While she had been talking to Baldwin a plan of escape had formed itself in Babe’s mind. She went to the window and looked through the shutter. Yes, there was a way out.

The Bearcat was still waiting. It was almost as though fate had directed him to be there at that moment. Jenny could not know that she had done Babe the biggest favor of her life by telling the Bearcat where to find her.