"Credo may be in with them."
"But he knows you hold his life as it were in your hands, and——"
"Well?"
"He knows if you have trailed these fellows down so close that there is no show for him and he will be on your side."
"By ginger! you are right, so here goes. We are down on these people for fair now."
"We are, Oscar."
Cad Metti, the strange, weird girl, who could flit from place to place like a shadow, who could change her appearances as readily as a change actress on the stage, glided away, and our hero, who also, as our readers will recall, had worked a change, boldly went to the house which Cad had indicated as the place where the woman and Girard had entered. He stepped into the dark hall of the house, and then quickly worked a second change; then he stepped to the street. The house was one well known to the police; its character, we will say, was established as the headquarters for the lowest sort of rogues. The owner pretended to keep a respectable hotel. He had rooms to let, and on the first floor he ran a barroom, and although the building itself was an old tumble-down affair the barroom was quite expensively fitted up.
Oscar staggered into the house, and as good luck would have it only the proprietor of the place was present at the moment and he was acting as bartender. Oscar staggered up to the bar, his eyes rolling in his head, but as they rolled, under their seemingly drunken glare shot forth a keen, observant glance.
As stated, he staggered up to the bar and fell over on to his elbows, demanding a drink.
"Where's your pile?" came the answer from the proprietor, a fellow named Credo, who was a good-looking octoroon.