"I thought the button was obtained in some such manner. Terry, this fellow is the crook, or one of the crooks, who were hired by your unknown collector friend to steal the Cerberus! He is here by the same route as ourselves." He whirled upon the thief. "Did you or did you not pass through a kind of dream, or place, or condition called Ulithia?"
"Say," demanded the prisoner in turn, "is either of you fellows the guy that owns that bottle? Are you the guys that left that gray, dusty stuff laying on a newspaper on the floor?"
"We are those very identical guys," retorted Drayton solemnly.
"Suppose we all compare notes, Mr. Burglar," suggested Viola. "Perhaps we can help each other."
It was after three a.m. before the suggested conference ended. Any animosity which might have existed between robber and robbed was by then buried in the grave of that distant, unregainable past from which all four of them had been so ruthlessly uprooted. From the moment when the three first-comers became assured that Arnold Bertram-self-introduced, and a very fine name to be sure, as Trenmore commented-was actually a man of their own old, lost world, they welcomed him almost as a brother. There was surprising satisfaction and relief in relating their recent adventures to him. So far as they knew, Bertram was the only man living in whom they could confide, unbranded as outrageous liars. Bertram understood and believed them, and Bertram had good reason to do so. At the conclusion of their story, he frankly explained about the vial.
"I was near down and out," said he. "Nothing doing for weeks, and whatever I put my hand to fizzling like wet firecrackers. Then an old guy comes along and says to me and Tim-Tim's my sidekick-'Boys, there's a little glass bottle with three dogs' heads on the top. A guy named Trenmore stole it off me. Get it back and there's two thousand bucks layin' in the bank for each of you!' Well, he didn't put that 'stole it' stuff over on me and Tim. We're wise, all right, but most anybody'd crack a box for two grand, and he let on the job was an easy one. So we tried it that night and the old boy with us. He would come along, but we wished later we'd made him stay behind. We was going to jimmy the trap off the roof, but when we got to your house, Mr. Trenmore, darned if the trap wasn't open. Down we go, the old guy making a noise like a ton of brick; but nobody wakes up. Then we seen the light of a bull's-eye in the front bedroom on the top floor. We sneaks in quiet. There's a guy and his torch just showin' up the neatest kind of an easy, old-fashioned safe. So we knocks this convenient competition on the noggin, and opens the box. There's some ice there, but no bottle. Me an' Tim, we was satisfied to take the ice; but what does this old guy that brung us there do? Why, he flashes a rod, and makes us beat it and leave the stuff layin' there!"
Here Trenmore glanced quizzically at his friend, and again Drayton blushed. Viola, however, was far too intent on the burglar's tale to give heed.
"That must have happened before my brother and Mr. Drayton opened the vial," she observed. "How did you come-"
"I'll get to that in a minute, lady. We'd missed the bottle some way, and the old guy was scared to look any further that night. Next day, though, I goes back on my own, just for a glance around, and there was the front door of your house, Mr. Trenmore, standing wide open. 'Dear me, but these people are friendly,' thinks I. 'Come at it from the roof or the street, it's Welcome Home!' So up I goes, and once inside I seen this here bottle, right out in the middle of the floor. Things seem most too easy, but I picks it up, and then, like the nut I am, I have to go meddling with the gray stuff on the floor, wondering what it is and does the boss want that, too. He'd let on the bottle was full of gray powder.
"Next thing I knowed the room went all foggy. Then I found I was somewhere else than I ought to be, and hell-beg pardon, lady-but honest, if what I went through didn't send me off my nut nothin' ever will!"