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for the light switch. The door leading in from the street was ahead and to the left, out of the direct beams of light, but close enough for the side glow to light it clearly. It was a ramshackle wooden door hanging on rollers from an iron girder.
    If it were open, Shayne thought despairingly, it would be a good bet to leap behind the wheel at the same moment that he turned off the lights and put the idling motor into action.
    The hanging door swayed slightly at the bottom as he considered this. His body muscles tightened. Somewhere off to the right in the darkness Perry was crouched, waiting quietly for him to make a break for freedom.
    Shayne studied the position of the front wheels in relation to the car exit. A slight swing of the steering wheel to the left would head the car directly toward it.
    He drew in a deep, silent breath and got one foot on the running board. The dash light was on, illuminating the instrument panel. He picked out the headlight switch, lunged forward into the seat and pushed the switch while his left foot found the accelerator.
    The blackness was absolute when the lights went out. Shayne gunned the idling motor and jerked the shift lever into low, swung the steering wheel slightly to the left, crouched low over the wheel, and drove the heavy car directly at what he hoped was a flimsy, swinging door.
    He was conscious of a flashlight gleaming on his right and of a pistol thundering in the room, but there was no time to think of such things in the few seconds before the car struck the door with a splintering crash.
    He was through at the same instant, and surging up the concrete incline to the street. He straightened behind the wheel and eased up on the gas, swung to the right on the deserted street, passing directly in front of the two-story frame structure above the cellar garage.
    Street signs on the next corner located the spot perfectly for him. He heard another car roaring up the incline behind him. Perry was in pursuit.
    For the first time since his prison door opened, Shayne became fully conscious of the fact that he was stark naked, behind the wheel of a strange car, and in a strange part of town.

 
Chapter Six
    ALIBI TO ORDER
     
    THERE WAS ENOUGH MOONLIGHT for driving without headlights, yet not quite enough, Shayne believed, to enable Perry to see the unlighted car a block and a half ahead.
    Just as Perry’s headlights swung into the street behind him, Shayne took his foot from the accelerator and turned into a driveway leading to a vine-covered porte-cochere by the side of a small bungalow. He shut off the motor and let the car roll silently along the drive, braking it gently to a stop beneath the porte-cochere.
    Perry’s car raced past the house, and the sound of it was presently swallowed up in the night.
    Shayne sat very still, slouched low under the wheel, alarmed now by the thought of his naked body. The bungalow was dark and silent. If the family was at home it evidently had not been aroused by the sound of his tires.
    He shivered as he sat there, not so much for lack of clothing as at the thought of some member of the household rousing and discovering his plight. That, he thought morosely, would be the crowning episode of the night’s crazy and puzzling adventure.
    He became aware of a bundle on the other side of the seat—a fold of hard fabric. He sat up quickly and examined it by feel, unfolding and spreading it out. He found it to be a pair of mechanic’s coveralls, evidently left there by the owner when he finished work the preceding day.
    Clutching the garment to him, he opened the door and got out, sidled to a corner of the porte-cochere where the vines were thick and stepped into the coveralls. They had been made to fit a short, stout man. The cuffs reached halfway between his knees and ankles, and the sleeves were well above his wrists. He gave a great sigh of relief as he fumbled with the metal buttons down the front.
    As he gave a hitch to pull the coveralls more