Chapter IV.

A perfect lady into whose drawing-room twenty-six corpses had suddenly intruded might have been expected to give some evidence of training in voice production or, at the very least, to lift her eyebrows in mild surprise. Miss Benzoline Bernarr's reception of her grisly visitors clearly indicated that she fell short of ladylike perfection. No sound issued from her lips other than that which the most casual of glances might produce. Her eyebrows preserved complete composure. It was the thin gentleman with the green eyes who broke the silence.

"Cheer, cheer," he ventured, "the gang's all here."

"Minus how many?" inquired Miss Bernarr, coldly.

"Dicken," protested the green-eyed person. "I don't want to turn the place into a morgue."

"Squeamish?" queried Benzoline.

"Not a bit," grinned the other. "I like a smoke-oh now and then, that's all. A master mind can't work and think at the same time."

"Master mind's right," returned the lady, with a wry twist of her mouth. She bent a thoughtful gaze on the corpses.

"Any kick left in them?" she asked.

"There's no telling," rejoined the man. "Perhaps I'd better fix 'em properly for once and for all."

"Do," said Benzoline Bernarr. "I'll change."

The scene which followed would have intrigued the eye of a moving picture producer. The remarkable Miss Benzoline Bernarr turned to a dainty-looking Vance Vivian escritoire, from a hidden compartment of which she extracted a complete outfit of gentlemen's clothing. Then, with a complete absence of feminine modesty, she rapidly divested herself of her feminine garments—a very simple procedure—and donned the male attire. Her gentleman friend had meanwhile procured a wicked-looking carving-knife and was busily occupied thrusting it through and through the corpses. He concluded his gruesome task with a happy sigh.

"All quiet on the Western Front," he announced, straightening up. His eyes rested appraisingly on the transformed Benzoline. "Shift some of that truck off your frontispiece and you're set," he enjoined.

The lady (if we may continue so to term her) sprayed a little caustic over her complexion, then vigorously rubbed lips and cheeks with emery paper. When the last of the synthetic pulchritude had been removed and her mirror assured her that her face was in a state of nature, she turned.

Her face was the face of a thin man with green eyes! ... A man? It might be more accurate to use the term she-man or he-woman—but this is anticipating.

"Now," she-he said, smartly.

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"Peale?" inquired the man.

"Yes."

"Righto."

They entered the opening in the wall and the concealed door swung" to behind them. A torch in the hand of the lady-gentleman lit up the bold lettering of a sign: