Hagan, almost in a state of collapse, muttered inaudibly.  The crash of a toppling door sounded from above.  Jimmie Dale shook the man desperately.

“Where is it?” he repeated fiercely.

“He—­he was holding it tight, it—­it tore in his hand,” Hagan stammered.  “Does it make any difference?  Oh, let’s get out of here, whoever you are—­for God’s sake let’s get out of here!”

Any difference!  Jimmie Dale’s jaws were clamped like a steel vise.  Any difference!  The difference between life and death for the man beside him—­that was all!  He was reading the portion in his hand.  It was the last part of the letter, beginning with:  “There’s a paper stuck under the edge of Hagan’s table—­” From above, from the floor of the front room now, came the rush and trample of feet.  He could not go back for the other half.  And any attempt to conceal the fact that Connie Myers had been alone in the house was futile now.  They would find the torn letter in the dead man’s hand, proof enough that some one else had been there.  What was in that part of the letter that was still clutched in that death grip upstairs?  A sentence from it, that he had heard Connie Myers read, seemed to burn itself into his brain.  “If you want to know who did it, look in Mike Hagan’s room on the floor above.”  And then, suddenly, like light through the darkness, came a ray of hope.  He pulled Hagan to the cellarway, and stealthily lifted one side of the double trapdoor.  There was a chance, desperate enough, one in a thousand—­but still a chance!

Voices from the house came plainly now, but there was no one in sight.  The police, to a man, were evidently all inside.  From the road in front showed the lamp glare of their automobile.

“Run for the car!” Jimmie Dale jerked out from between set teeth—­and with Hagan beside him, steadying the man by the arm, dashed across the intervening fifty yards.

They had not been seen.  A minute more, and the car, evidently belonging to the local police, for it was headed in the direction of New York, and as though it had come from Pelham, swept down the road, swept around a turn, and Jimmie Dale, with a gasp of relief, straightened up a little from the wheel.

How much time had he?  The police must have heard the car; but, equally, occupied as they were, they might well give it no thought other than that it was but another car passing by.  There was no telephone in the house; the nearest house was a quarter of a mile away, and that might or might not have a telephone.  Could he count on half an hour?  He glanced anxiously at the crouched figure beside him.  He would have to!  It was the only chance.  They would telephone the contents of the dead man’s half of the letter to the New York police.  Could he get to Hagan’s room first!  “Look in Hagan’s room,” their part of the letter read—­but