He glanced at his watch.

"A shocking hour!" he ejaculated. "Ten o'clock. If I go now, may I come back for breakfast?"

"You may not." She made an effort to speak lightly.

"To take you to luncheon, then, at one?"

"No, please."

He shook his head at her.

"This is not the atmosphere of hospitality I am used to, but I shall come anyway. I'll be here at one. In the meantime, I suddenly realize that we are not using all of our opportunities. We must change that."

He looked around as he spoke, and, finding what he sought, picked it up. It was a small scarf, a narrow bit of Roman silk carrying a vivid stripe. He held this before her.

"Something may happen some day, and you may want me in a hurry," he said. "I have observed with regret that you have no telephone in this room, but we can get on without one. My mirror reflects your window, you know," he added a little self-consciously. "If you need me, hang up this scarf. Just drape it over this big window-catch. If I ever see it, I'll come prancing across the square like a knight to your rescue."

"Thank you."

She gave him her hand and the enigmatic smile that always subtly but intensely annoyed him. There was something in that smile which he did not understand, but he suspected that it held an element of amused understanding. So might Doris, years hence, smile at her little son.

"She thinks I'm a reed," Laurie reflected as he waited in the outer hall for the elevator. "I don't blame her. I've been a perfectly good reed ever since I met her friend Bertie."

His thoughts, thus drawn to Shaw, dwelt on that ophidian personality. When the elevator arrived he was glad to recognize the familiar face of Sam.

"Yaas, sah," that youth affably explained, with a radiant exhibition of teeth, "it's Henry's night off, so I has to be on."

They were alone in the car. Laurie, lighting a cigarette, asked a casual question.

"There's a plump person in blue serge who hangs around here a good deal," he remarked, indifferently. "Does he live in the building?"

"The one wid eyes what sticks out?"

"That's the one."

Sam's jaw set.

"No, sah, dat party don' live yere. An' ef he don' stop hangin' 'round yere, somethin's gwine t' happen to dat man," he robustly asserted.

"What's he after?"

"I dunno. I only seen him twicet. Las' time he was sneakin' fum de top flo'. But I cert'n'y don' like dat man's looks!"

Nothing more was to be learned from Sam. Laurie thoughtfully walked out into the square. He had taken not more than a dozen steps when a voice, strange yet unpleasantly familiar, accosted him.

"Good-evening, Mr. Devon," it said.

Laurie turned sharply. Herbert Ransome Shaw was walking at his side, which was as it should be. It was to meet and talk with Herbert Ransome Shaw that he had so abruptly ended his call.

"Look here," he said at once, "I want a few words with you."

"Exactly." Shaw spoke with suave affability. "It is to have a few words that I am here."

"Where can we go?"

Shaw appeared to reflect.

"Do you mind coming to my rooms?" Laurie hesitated. "I live quite near, and my quarters, though plain, are comfortable."

Anger surged up in the young man beside him. There was something almost insulting in Shaw's manner as he uttered the harmless words, and in the reassuring yet doubtful intonation of his voice.

"Confound him!" Laurie told himself. "The hound is actually hinting that I'm afraid to go!" Aloud, he said brusquely, "All right."

"You have five minutes to spare? That's capital!"

Shaw was clearly both surprised and pleased. He strode forward with short steps, rapid yet noiseless, and Laurie adapted his longer stride to his companion's. He, too, was content. Now, at last, he reflected, he was through with mysteries, and was coming to a grip with something tangible.



CHAPTER X

THE LAIR OF SHAW

The walk was not the brief excursion Herbert Ransome Shaw had promised. It was fifteen minutes before he stopped in front of a tall building, which looked like an out-of-date storehouse, and thrust a latch-key into a dingy door. The bolt was old and rusty. Shaw fumbled with it for half a minute before it yielded. Then it grudgingly slipped back, and Laurie followed his guide into a dark hall, which was cold and damp.

"They don't heat this building." The voice of Shaw came out of the darkness. He had closed the door and was standing by Laurie's side, fumbling in his pocket for something which proved to be a match-box. "They don't light it, either," he explained, unnecessarily, as the blaze of his match made a momentary break in the gloom. "But it's quite comfortable in my room," he added reassuringly. "I have an open fire there."

As he spoke he led the way down the long hall with his noiseless, gliding steps. Laurie, following close behind him, reflected that the place was exactly the sort the ophidian Shaw would choose for a lair, a long black hole, ending in—what?

The match had gone out and he could see nothing. He kept close to his guide. He almost expected to hear the creature's scales rattle as it slid along. But snakes like warmth, and this place—Laurie shivered in the chill and dampness of it. The next instant Shaw pushed open a door and, standing back, waved his guest into a lighted room.

On first inspection it was a wholly reassuring room, originally intended for an office and now turned into a combination of office and living-apartment. A big reading-lamp with an amber shade, standing on a flat writing-desk, made a pleasant point of illumination. Real logs, large and well seasoned, burned with an agreeable crackle in the old-fashioned fireplace. Before this stood two easy-chairs, comfortably shabby; and at the arm of one of them a small table held a decanter, glasses, a siphon, and a box of cigars.

As he took in these familiar details, Devon's features unconsciously relaxed. He was very young, and rather cold, and the quick reaction from the emotions he had experienced in the outer hall was a relief. Also, Shaw's manner was as reassuring as his homely room. He dropped the visitor's coat and hat on a worn leather couch, which seemingly served him as a bed, and waved a hospitable hand toward an easy-chair. Simultaneously, he casually indicated a figure bending over a table on the opposite side of the room.

"My secretary," he murmured.

The figure at the table rose and bowed, then sat down again and continued its apparent occupation of sorting squares of paper into a long, narrow box. In the one glance Laurie gave it, as he returned the other's bow with a casual nod, he decided that the "secretary" was arranging a card-catalogue. But why the dickens should Shaw have a secretary? On the other hand, why shouldn't he?

Laurie began to feel rather foolish. For a few moments, in that hall, he had actually been on the point of taking Shaw seriously; and an aftermath of this frame of mind had led him to turn a suspicious regard on a harmless youth whose occupation was as harmless as he himself looked. Laurie mentally classified the "secretary" as a big but meek blond person, who changed his collars and cuffs every Wednesday and Sunday, and took a long walk in the country on Sunday afternoons.

However, the fellow had pursuing eyes. Evidently his work did not need his whole attention, for his pale blue eyes kept returning to the guest. Once Laurie met them straight, and coolly stared them down. After this they pursued him more stealthily. He soon forgot them and their owner.

Despite Shaw's hospitable gestures, Laurie was still standing. He had chosen a place by the mantel, with one elbow resting upon it; and from this point of vantage his black eyes slowly swept the room, taking in now all its details—a type-writer, a letter-file, a waste-paper basket that needed emptying, a man's worn bedroom slipper coyly projecting from under the leather couch, a litter of newspapers.

It was all so reassuringly ordinary that he grinned to himself. Whatever hold this little worm had on Doris—Shaw had even ceased to be a snake at this point in Laurie's reflections—would be loosed after to-night; and then she could forget the episode that had troubled her, whatever it was.

At precisely this point in his meditations Laurie's eyes, having completed a tour of the room and returned to the fireplace, made two discoveries. The first was that the room had no windows. The second, and startling one, was that it contained Doris's photograph. The photograph stood on the mantel, in a heavy silver frame. It was a large print and a good one. The girl's eyes looked straight into his. Her wonderful upper lip was curved in the half-smile that was so familiar and so baffling.

"Well," the smile asked, "what do you think of it all, now that you are here? Still a bit confusing, isn't it? For you didn't expect to find me here, seemingly so much at home; did you?"

In the instant when his eyes had found the photograph, Laurie had been about to light the inevitable cigarette. The discovery arrested his hand and held him for an instant, motionless. Then, with fingers that trembled, he completed the interrupted action, threw the match into the fire, and with blind eyes stared down into the flames.

In that instant he dared not look at Shaw. He was shaken by an emotion that left him breathless and almost trembling. What was Doris's photograph doing in this man's room? In the momentary amazement and fury that overwhelmed him at the discovery, he told himself that it would not have been much worse to find her actual presence here.

All this had taken but a moment. Shaw, hospitably busy with his decanter and siphon, had used the interval to fill two glasses, and was now offering one to his guest.

"No, thanks." Laurie spoke with abrupt decision.

"No?" Shaw looked pained. Then he smiled a wide smile, and Laurie, seeing it and the man's pointed teeth, mentally changed him again from the worm to the serpent. He understood Shaw's mental process. The fellow thought he was afraid to drink the mixture. But what did it matter what the fellow thought?

"Perhaps, then, you will have a cigar, and sit down comfortably for our chat?"

Shaw himself set the example by dropping into one of the easy-chairs and lighting a fat Perfecto. His smooth brown head rested in what seemed an accustomed hollow of the chair back. His wide, thin lips were pursed in sybaritic enjoyment of his cigar. He stretched himself in the warmth of the fire, sleek, torpid, and loathsome.

"Mr. Shaw."

"Y-e-s."

Still standing, with his elbow braced against the mantel, the visitor tossed his cigarette into the fire and looked down into his host's projecting eyes. It appeared that Shaw roused himself with difficulty from the gorged comfort of the moment. There was a perceptible interval before he gave his guest his whole attention. Then he straightened in his chair, and the projecting eyes took on their veiled but watchful look.

"Yes," he repeated, more briskly.

In the brief interval Laurie had planned his little campaign. He would address this creature as man to man; for perhaps, after all, there was more of the man in him than he revealed.

"I am going to ask you to be frank with me."

"Yes?" Shaw let it go at that.

"When we met on the street it appeared that you were as anxious as I am for this interview. Will you tell me at once why you brought me here, and what you wish to say?"

"Willingly." Shaw flicked the ash off his cigar, and kept his eyes on its lighted end as he went on: "I brought you here because I want you out of the way."

"Why?"

"Because, my temperamental young friend, you are a nuisance. You are interfering with my plans. I can't be bothered with you."

The sudden spark that in the old days would have warned Devon's friends of an impending outburst appeared now in his black eyes, but he kept his temper.

"Would you mind confiding these plans to me?" he suggested. "They would interest me, profoundly."

Shaw shook his sleek brown head.

"Oh, I couldn't do that," he said, with an indulgent smile. "But I have a proposition to make to you. Perhaps you will listen to it, instead."

"I'll listen to it," Laurie promised.

"It is short and to the point. Give me your word that you will stop meddling in Miss Mayo's affairs, which are also my affairs," he added parenthetically, "and that you will never make an effort to see her again. As soon as you have given me this promise, I will escort you to the front door and bid you an eternal farewell, with great pleasure."

"I'm looking forward to that pleasure, myself," confessed the visitor. "But before we throw ourselves into the delights of it, suppose you outline the other side of your proposition. I suppose it has another side."

Shaw frowned at his cigar.

"It doesn't sound pretty," he confessed, with regret.

"I'll judge of that. Let's have it."

"Well,"—Shaw sighed, dropped the cigar into the tray at his elbow, and sat up to face the young man with an entire change of manner—"The rest of it," he said, calmly, "is this. Unless you make that promise we can't have the farewell scene we are both looking forward to so eagerly."

"You mean—" Laurie was staring at him incredulously—"you mean you don't intend to let me leave here?"

Shaw shrugged deprecating shoulders.

"Oh, surely! But not immediately."

His guest turned and addressed the fire.

"I never listened to such nonsense in my life," he gravely assured it.

Shaw nodded.

"It does seem a little melodramatic," he conceded. "I tried to think of something better, something less brusque, as it were. But the time was so short; I really had no choice."

"What do you mean by that?" Laurie had again turned to face him.

"Exactly what I say. Think it over. Then let me have your decision."

Laurie moved closer to him.

"Get up," he commanded.

Shaw looked surprised.

"I am very comfortable here."

"Get up!" The words came out between the young man's clenched teeth.

Shaw again shrugged deprecating shoulders. Then, with another of his wide, sharp-toothed grins, he rose and faced his visitor. At the desk across the room the big blond secretary rose, also, and fixed his pale blue eyes on his employer.

"Now," said Laurie, "tell me what the devil you are driving at, and what all this mystery means."

"What an impulsive, high-strung chap you are!" Shaw was still grinning his wide grin.

"You won't tell me?"

"Of course I won't! I've told you enough now to satisfy any reasonable person. Besides, you said you had something to say to me."

He was deliberately goading the younger man, and Laurie saw it. He saw, too, over Shaw's shoulder, the tense, waiting figure of the secretary. He advanced another step.

"Yes," he said, "I've got three things to say to you. One is that you're a contemptible, low-lived, blackmailing hound. The second is that before I get through with you I'm going to choke the truth out of your fat throat. And the third is that I'll see you in hell before I give you any such promise as you ask. Now, I'm going."

He walked over to the couch and picked up his hat and coat. The secretary unostentatiously insinuated himself into the center of the room. Shaw alone remained immovable and unmoved. Even as Laurie turned with the garments in his hands, Shaw smiled his wide smile and encircled the room with a sweeping gesture of one arm.

"Go, then, by all means, my young friend," he cried jovially, "but how?"

Laurie's eyes followed the gesture. He had already observed the absence of windows. Now, for the first time, with a sudden intake of breath, he discovered a second lack. Seemingly, there was no exit from the room. Of course there was a door somewhere, but it was cleverly concealed, perhaps behind some revolving piece of furniture; or possibly it was opened by a hidden spring. Wherever it was, it could be found. In the meantime, his manoeuver had given him what he wanted—more space in which to fight two men. With a sudden movement Shaw picked up the silver-framed photograph, and ostentatiously blew the dust off it. This done, he held it out and looked at it admiringly.

"You will stay here, but you will not be alone," he promised, with his wide, sharp-toothed grin. "This will keep you company. See how the charming lady smiles at the prospect—"

He dropped the picture, which fell with a crash on the tiled flooring around the fireplace. The glass broke and splintered. Shaw gasped and gurgled under the strangling hold of the powerful fingers on his throat. Lamp and table were overturned in the struggle that carried the three men half a dozen times across the room and back.

Laurie, fighting two opponents with desperate fury, could still see their forms and Shaw's bulging eyes in the firelight. Then he himself gasped and choked. Something wet and sweet was pressed against his face. He heard an excited whisper:

"Hold on! Be careful there. Not too much of that!"

A moment more and he had slipped over the edge of the world and was dropping through black space.



CHAPTER XI

A BIT OF BRIGHT RIBBON

When Laurie opened his eyes blackness was still around him, a blackness without a point of light. But as his mind slowly cleared, the picture he saw in his last conscious moment flashed across his mental vision—the dim, firelit room, the struggling, straining figures of Shaw and the blond secretary. He heard again the hissed caution, "Not too much of that!"

He sat up, dizzily. There had been "too much of that." He felt faint and mildly nauseated. His hands, groping in the darkness, came in contact with a brick floor; or was it the tiling around the fireplace? He did not know. He decided to sit quite still for a moment, until he could pull himself together.

His body felt stiff and sore. There must have been a dandy fight in that dingy old room, he reflected with satisfaction. Perhaps the other two men were lying somewhere near him in the darkness. Perhaps they, too, were knocked out. He hoped they were. But no, of course not. Again he remembered the hurried caution, "Not too much of that."

He decided to light a match and see where he was, and he fumbled in his pockets with the first instinct of panic he had known. If those brutes had taken his match-box! But they hadn't. He opened it carefully, still with a lingering suggestion of the panic. If he had been a hero of romance, he reasoned, with a dawning grin, that box would have held exactly one match; and he would have had to light that one very slowly and carefully. Then, at the last instant, the feeble flicker would have gone out, leaving it up to him to invent some method of manufacturing light.

As it was, however, his fat match-box was comfortably filled, and his cigarette-case, which he eagerly opened and examined by touch, held three, no, four cigarettes. That was luck! His spirits rose, singing. Now for a light!

He lit a match, held it up, looked around him, and felt himself grow suddenly limp with surprise. He had expected, of course, to find himself in Shaw's room. Instead, he was in a cellar, which resembled that room only in the interesting detail that it appeared to have no exit. With this discovery, his match went out. He lit another, and examined his new environment as carefully as he could in the brief interval of illumination it afforded.

The cellar was a perfectly good one, as cellars go. It was a small, square, hollow cube in the earth, not damp, not especially cold, and not evil-smelling. Its walls were brick. So was its floor, which was covered with clean straw, a discovery that made its present occupant suddenly cautious in handling his matches. He had no wish to be burned alive in this underground trap. The place was apparently used as a sort of store-room. There was an old trunk in it, and some broken-down pieces of furniture. The second match burned out.

Affluent though he was in matches, it was no part of the young man's plan to burn his entire supply at one sitting, as it were. For half an hour he crouched in the darkness, pondering. Then, as an answer to certain persistent questions that came up in his mind, he lit a third match. He greatly desired to know where lay the outlet to that cellar, and in this third illumination he decided that he had found it. There must be some sort of a trap-door at the top, through which he had been dropped or lowered. Those wide seams in the whitewashed ceiling must mean the cracks due to a set-in door. Undoubtedly that door had been bolted. Also, even assuming that it was not fastened, the ceiling was fully eight feet above him. There was no ladder, there were no stairs. His third match burned out.

In the instant of its last flicker he saw something white lying on the straw beside him. He promptly lit another match, and with rising excitement picked up the sheet of paper and read the three-line communication scrawled in pencil upon it:

Out to-morrow. Flash-light, candles, cigarettes, and matches in box at your left. Blankets in corner. Be good.

The recipient of this interesting document read it twice. Then, having secured the box at his left—a discarded collar box, judging by its shape and labels—he drew forth the flash-light, the cigarettes, the matches, and the candles it contained. Lighting one of the candles, he stuck it securely on a projecting ledge of the wall. By its wan light, aided by the electric flash, he took a full though still dazed inventory of his surroundings. The ophidian Shaw had puzzled him again.

He had handled Shaw very roughly for a time. He could still feel—and he recalled the sensation with great pleasure—the thick, slippery neck of the creature, and the way it had squirmed when he got his fingers into it. Yet the serpent evidently bore no malice. Or—a searing thought struck Laurie—having things his own way, he could afford to be generous. In other words, he was now perfecting his plans, while he, Laurie, was out of the way.

The promise of release to-morrow could mean, of course, only one thing—that those plans, whatever they were, would be carried out by then. And yet—and yet— The boy put his head between his hands and groaned. What was happening to Doris? Surely nothing could happen that night! Or could it? And what would it be? Only a fool would doubt Shaw's power and venom after such an experience as Laurie had just had, and yet—Even now the skeptical interrogation-point reared itself in the young man's mind.

One fact alone was clear. He must get out of this. But how? Flash-light in hand, he made the short tour of the cellar, examining and tapping every inch of the wall, the masonry, and the floor-work. Could he pile up the furniture and so reach the door in the ceiling? He could not. The articles consisted of the small, battered trunk, a legless, broken-springed cot, and a clock whose internal organs had been removed. Piled one on the other, they would not have borne a child's weight. Laurie decided that he was directly under Shaw's room. Perhaps the creature was there now. Perhaps he would consent to a parley. But shouts and whistles, and a rain of small objects thrown up against the trap-door produced no response.

He began to experience the sensations of a trapped animal. So vivid were these, and so overpowering, as he measured his helplessness against the girl's possible need of him, that he used all his will power in overcoming them. Resolutely he reminded himself that he must keep cool and steady. He would leave nothing undone that could be done. He would shout at intervals. Perhaps sooner or later some night-watchman would hear him. He would reach that trap-door if the achievement were humanly possible. But first, last, and all the time he would keep cool.

When he had exhausted every resource his imagination suggested, he sat in the straw, smoking and brooding, his mind incessantly seeking some way out of his plight. At intervals he shouted, pounded, and whistled. He walked the floor, and reexamined it and the cellar walls. He looked at his watch. It was three o'clock in the morning. He was exhausted, and his body still ached rackingly.

Very slowly he resigned himself to the inevitable. Morning would soon come. He must sleep till then, to be in condition for the day. He found Shaw's blankets, threw himself on the straw, and fell into a slumber full of disturbing dreams. In the most vivid of these he was a little boy, at school; and on the desk before him a coiled boa-constrictor, with Shaw's wide and sharp-toothed grin, ordered him to copy on his slate an excellent photograph of Doris.

He awoke with a start, and in the next instant was on his feet. He had heard a sound, and now he saw a light falling from above. He looked up. A generous square opening appeared in the ceiling, and leading down from it was the gratifying vision of a small ladder. Up the ladder Laurie sprang with the swiftness of light itself. Subconsciously he realized that if he was to catch the person who had opened that door and dropped that ladder, he must be exceedingly brisk about it. But quick as he was, he was still too slow. With a grip on each side of the opening, and a strong swing, he lifted himself into the room above. As he had expected, it held no occupant. What he had not expected, and what held him staring now, was that it held not one stick of furniture.

Bare as a bone, bleak as a skeleton, it had the effect of grinning at him with Shaw's wide white grin.

His first conscious reflection was the natural one that it was not Shaw's room. He had been carried to another building. This room had a window, which, of course, might have been concealed behind the letter-files. Yet, bare as it was, it looked familiar. There was the fireplace, with its charred logs. There, yes, there were the splinters of the glass that had protected Doris's photograph. And, final convincing evidence, there, forgotten in a corner, was the worn bedroom slipper he had noticed under the couch the night before.

With eyes still bewildered, still incredulous, he stared around the empty room. Before him yawned an open door, showing an uninviting vista of dingy hall. He stepped across its threshold, and looked down the winding passage of the night before. But why hadn't he seen the door? He moved back into the empty room. A glance explained the little mystery. The room had been freshly papered, door and all. The surface of the door had been made level with the wall. When it was closed there was no apparent break in the pattern of the wall-paper.

If there had been a chair in the room, young Mr. Devon would have sat down at this point. His body wanted to sit down. In fact, it almost insisted upon doing so. But just as he was relaxing in utter bewilderment, he received another gentle shock. Above the old-fashioned mantel was a narrow, set-in mirror, and in this mirror Laurie caught a glimpse of the features of a disheveled young ruffian, staring fixedly at him. He had time to stiffen perceptibly over this vision before he realized that the disheveled ruffian was himself, a coatless, collarless self, with shirt torn open, cuffs torn off, hair on end, features battered and dirty, and bits of straw clinging to what was left of his clothing.

For a long moment Laurie gazed at the figure in the glass, and as he gazed his mingled emotions shook down into connected thought. Yes, there had been a dandy fight in this room last night, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that his two opponents must have come out of it as disheveled as himself. He had "had them going." Beyond doubt he could have handled them both but for their infernal chloroform. Again he recalled, with pleasure, the feeling of Shaw's thick, slippery neck as it choked and writhed under the grip of his fingers. Incidentally he had landed two blows on the secretary's jaw, sending him first into a corner and the next time to the floor. It was soon after the second blow that the episode of the chloroform occurred.

Straightening up, he began the hurried and elemental toilet which was all the conditions permitted. He removed the pieces of straw from his clothing, smoothed his hair, straightened his garments to conceal as much of the damage to them as possible, and gratefully put on his coat, which lay neatly folded on the floor, with his silk hat resting smugly upon it. It required some courage to go out into the clear light of a January morning in patent-leather pumps and wearing a silk hat. He would find some one around the place from whom he could borrow a hat and get the information he needed about the late tenants of this extraordinary office. He looked at his watch. It was half-past seven. He had slept later than he had realized. He had slept while Doris was in peril. The reminder both appalled and steadied him.

With a last look around the dismantled room, he closed its door behind him and went out into the winding hall. He hurried up and down its length, poking his head into empty store-rooms and dusty offices, but finding no sign of life.

At last a cheerful whistle in the lower regions drew him down a flight of stairs to what appeared to be an underground store-room. Here a bulky, overalled individual, looming large in the semi-darkness, stopped in his labor of pushing about some boxes, and regarded Laurie with surprise.

"Are you the watchman?" asked the latter, briskly.

"I am, that."

"Were you here last night?"

"I was."

"Was any one else here?"

"Divil a wan."

"Did you hear any noise during the night?"

"Divil a bit."

"Were you asleep?"

"I was," admitted the watchman, simply. His voice was Hibernian, and rich with tolerant good humor.

"I want to make a trade with you." The new-comer held out his silk hat. "Will you give me your hat, or any old hat you've got around the place, for this?"

"I will," said the watchman calmly. Though good-humored, he seemed a man of few words. "And who might you be?" he added.

"I came in last night with Mr. Shaw, and I spent the night here. When I woke up," added Laurie drily, "I found that my host had moved."

The watchman sadly shook his head.

"You're a young lad," he said, with friendly sympathy. "'Tis a pity you've got into these habits."

Laurie grinned at him. He had discovered that his money, like his watch, was safe in his pockets. Taking out a bill, he showed it to his companion.

"Do you like the looks of that?" he inquired.

"I do," admitted the watchman, warmly.

"Tell me all you know about Shaw, and take it for your trouble."

"I will," promptly agreed the other, "but 'tis not much you'll get for your money, for 'tis little enough I know. The man you're talkin' about, I suppose, is the fat fella with eyes you could hang yer hat on, that had the back room on the ground floor."

"That's the one."

"Then all I know is, he moved in three days ago, and he moved out two hours ago. What he did between-times I don't know. But he paid for the room for a month in advance, so nobody's mournin' his loss."

"Didn't he say why he was going, or where?"

"Divil a word did he say. He was in a hurry, that lad. He had a gang of three men with him, and they had the place empty in ten minutes. I lent 'em a hand, an' he give me a dollar, and that's the last I saw of him."

A sudden thought struck the watchman. "Where was you all the time?" he asked with interest.

"In the cellar."

The watchman nodded, understandingly.

"You're too young for that sort of thing, me boy. Now, I'm no teetotaler meself," he went on argumentatively. "A glass once in a while is all right, if a man knows whin to stop. But—"

"How about that hat?" interrupted the restive victim of this homily. "Have you got one handy?"

"I have."

The watchman disappeared into a shadowy corner and returned with a battered derby.

"An' a fine grand hat it is!" he earnestly assured the new owner, as he handed it over.

Laurie took the hat and put it on his head, where, being too small for him, it perched at a rakish angle. He dropped the bank-note into his own silk hat, and handed them to his companion, who accepted them without visible emotion. Evidently, brief though his stay in the building had been, Herbert Ransome Shaw had accustomed its watchman to surprises. Laurie's last glimpse of the man as he hurried away showed him, with extreme efficiency and the swift simultaneous use of two well-trained hands, putting the silk hat on his head and the bill in his pocket.

Laurie rushed through the early East Side streets. He was not often abroad at this hour, and even in his anxiety it surprised him to discover how many were abroad so early in the morning. The streets seemed full of pretty girls, hastening to factories and offices, and of briskly stepping men and women, representing types that also would ordinarily catch the attention of the young playwright. But now he had neither thought nor eyes for them.

His urgent needs were first the assurance that Doris was safe, and next the privacy of his own rooms, a bath, and a change of clothing. Obviously, he could not present himself to Doris in the sketchy ensemble he presented now; or could he? He decided that he could, and must. To remain in his present state of suspense a moment longer than he need do was unthinkable.

In a surprisingly short time he was in the studio building, facing the man Sam had called Henry, a yawning night elevator man who regarded him and his questions with a pessimism partly due to the lack of sleep and fatigue. These combined influences led him to make short work of getting rid of this unkempt and unseasonable caller.

"No, sah," he said. "Miss Mayo don' receive no callers at dis yere hour. No, sah, Sam don' come on tell eight o'clock. No, sah, I cain't take no messages to no ladies what ain't out dey beds yit. I got to perteck dese yere folks, I has," he ended austerely.

The caller peeled a bill from his ever-ready roll, and the face of the building's guardian angel changed and softened.

"P'raps I could jes' knock on Miss Mayo's do'," he suggested after a thought-filled interval.

"That's all I want," agreed Laurie. "Knock at her door and ask her if Mr. Devon may call at nine and take her out to breakfast. Tell her he has something very important to say to her."

"Yaas, sah."

The guardian was all humility. He accepted the bill, and almost simultaneously the elevator rose out of sight. The interval before its return was surprisingly short, but too long for the nerves of the caller. Laurie, pacing the lower hall, filled it with apprehensions and visions which drove the blood from his heart. He could have embraced Henry when the latter appeared, wearing an expansively reassuring grin.

"Miss Mayo she say, 'Yaas,'" he briefly reported.

Under the force of the nervous reaction he experienced, Laurie actually caught the man's arm.

"She's there?" he jerked out. "You're sure of it?"

"Yaas, sah." Henry spoke soothingly. By this time he had made a diagnosis of the caller's condition which agreed with that of the night-watchman Laurie had just interviewed.

"She say, 'Yaas,'" he repeated. "I done say what you tol' me, and she say, 'Tell de genman, Yaas,' jes' like dat."

"All right." Laurie nodded and strode off. For the first time he was breathing naturally and freely. She was there. She was safe. In a little more than an hour he would see her. In the meantime his urgent needs were a bath and a change of clothing. As soon as he was dressed he would go back to the studio building and keep watch in the corridors until she was ready. Then, after breakfast, he would personally conduct her to the security of Louise Ordway's home. Louise need not see her, if she did not feel up to it, but she would surely give her asylum after hearing Laurie's experiences of the night.

That was his plan. It seemed a good one. He did not admit even to himself that under the air of sang-froid he wore as a garment, every instinct in him was crying out for the sound of Doris's voice. Also, as he hurried along, he was conscious that a definite change was taking place in his attitude toward Herbert Ransome Shaw. Slowly, reluctantly, but fully, he had now accepted the fact that "Bertie" represented a force that must be reckoned with.

He inserted the latch-key into the door of his apartment with an inward prayer that Bangs would not be visible, and for a moment he hoped it had been granted. But when he entered their common dressing-room he found his chum there, in the last stages of his usual careful toilet. He greeted Laurie without surprise or comment, in the detached, absent manner he had assumed of late, and Laurie hurried into the bath-room and turned on the hot water, glad of the excuse to escape even a tete-a-tete.

That greeting of Bangs's added the final notes to the minor symphony life was playing for him this morning. As he lay back in the hot water, relaxing his stiff, bruised body, the thought came that possibly he and Rodney were really approaching the final breaking-point. Bangs was not ordinarily a patient chap. He was too impetuous and high-strung for that. But he had been wonderfully patient with this friend of his heart. If it were true that the friendship was dying under the strain put upon it, and Laurie knew how possible this was, and how swift and intense were Bangs's reactions, life henceforth, however full it might be, would lack an element that had been singularly vital and comforting. He tried to think of what future days would be without Bangs's exuberant personality to fill them with work and color; but he could not picture them; and as the effort merely added to the gloom that enveloped him, he abandoned it and again gave himself up to thoughts of Doris.

As he hurried into his clothes a strong temptation came to him to tell Bangs the whole story. Then Bangs would understand everything, and he, Laurie, would have the benefit of Rodney's advice and help in untying Doris's tangle.

Doris! Again she swam into the foreground of his consciousness with a vividness that made his senses tingle. He was sitting on a low chair, lacing his shoes, and his fingers shook as he finished the task. He dressed with almost frantic haste, urged on by a fear that, despite his efforts, was shaping itself into a mental panic. Then, hair-brushes in hand, he faced his familiar mirror, and recoiled with an exclamation.

Doris was not there, but her window was, and hanging from its center catch was something bright that caught his eye and instantaneous recognition.

It was a small Roman scarf, with a narrow, vivid stripe.



CHAPTER XII

DORIS TAKES A JOURNEY

Within five minutes he was in the studio building across the square, frantically punching the elevator bell. Outwardly he showed no signs of the anxiety that racked him, but presented to Sam, when that appreciative youth stopped his elevator at the ground floor, the sartorial perfection which Sam always vastly admired and sometimes dreamed of imitating. But for such perfection Sam had no eyes to-day.

At this early hour—it was not much more than half-past eight—he had brought down only two passengers, and no one but Laurie was waiting for the upward journey. When the two tenants of the building had walked far enough toward its front entrance to be out of ear-shot, Sam grasped Laurie's arm and almost dragged him into the car. As he did so, he hissed four words.

"She gone, Mist' Devon!"

"Gone! Where? When?"

Laurie had not expected this. He realized now that he should have done so. His failure to take in the possibility of her going was part of his infernal optimism, of his inability even now to take her situation at its face-value. Sam was answering his questions:

"'Bout eight, jes' after Henry went and I come on. An aut'mobile stop in front de do', an' dat man wid de eyes he come in. I try stop him fum takin' de car, but he push me on one side an' order me up, like he was Wilson hisself. So I took him to de top flo'. But when we got dere an' he went to Miss Mayo's do', I jes' kep' de car right dere an' watch him."

"Good boy! What happened?"

"He knock an' nuffin' happen. Den he call out, 'Doris, Doris,' jes' like dat, an' she come an' talk to him; but she didn't open de do'."

"Could you hear what else he said?"

"No, sah. After dat he whisper to her, hissin' like a snake."

Laurie set his teeth. Even Sam felt the ophidian in Shaw.

"Go on," he ordered.

"Den I reckon Miss Mayo she put on a coat, an' dat man wait. I t'ought he was gwine leave, an' I sho' was glad. But he stood dere, waitin' an' grinnin' nuff to split his haid."

Laurie recognized the grin.

"'Bout two-three minutes she come out," Sam went on. "She had a big fur coat an' a veil on. She look awful pale, an' when dey got in de el'vator she didn' say a word. Dey wasn' nobody else in de car, an' it seem lak I couldn't let her go off no-how, widout sayin' somethin'. So I say, 'You gwine away, Miss Mayo?' De man he look at me mighty cold an' hard, an' she only nod."

"Didn't she speak at all?"

"No, sah. She ain't say a word. She jes' stood stiff an' still, an' he took her out to de car, an' dey bofe got in."

"Was it a limousine, a closed car?"

"Yaas, sah."

"Did the man himself drive it?"

"No, sah. He sat inside wid Miss Mayo. The man what drove it was younger."

"What did he look like?"

"I couldn't see much o' him. He had a big coat on, an' a cap. But his hair was yallah."

Laurie recognized the secretary.

"Which way did they go?"

"East."

They were standing on the top landing by this time, and Laurie strode forward.

"I'll take a look around her rooms. Perhaps she left some message."

Sam accompanied him, and though he had not desired this continued companionship, Laurie found a certain solace in it. In his humble way this black boy was Doris's friend. He was doing his small part now to help her, if, as he evidently suspected, there was something sinister in her departure.

Entering the familiar studio, Laurie looked around it with a pang. Unlike the quarters of Shaw, it remained unchanged. The room, facing north as it did, looked a little cold in the early light, but it was still stamped with the impress of its former occupant. The flowers he had given her only yesterday hung their heads in modest welcome, and half a dozen eye-flashes revealed half a dozen homely little details that were full of reassurance. Here, open and face down on the reading-table, was a book she might have dropped that minute. There was the long mirror before which she brushed her wonderful hair and, yes, the silver-backed brushes with which she brushed it. On the writing-table were a pencil and a torn sheet of paper, as if she had just dashed off a hurried note.

In short, everything in the room suggested that the owner, whose presence still hung about it, might return at any instant. And yet, there in the window, where he had half jokingly told her to place it, hung the brilliant symbol of danger which he himself had selected.

He walked over and took it from the latch. In doing this, he discovered that only half the scarf hung there, and that one end was jagged, as if roughly and hastily cut off. He put the scarf into his pocket. As he did so, his pulses leaped. Pinned to its folds was a bit of paper, so small and soft that even the inquisitive eye of Sam, following his every motion, failed to detect it. Laurie turned to the black boy.

"We'd better get out of here," he suggested, trying to speak carelessly and leading the way as he spoke. "Miss Mayo may be back at any moment."

Sam's eyes bulged till they rivaled Shaw's.

"You don' t'ink she gone?" he stammered.

"Why should we think she has gone?" Laurie tried to grin at him. "Perhaps she's merely taking an automobile ride, or an early train for a day in the country. Certainly nothing here looks as if she had gone away for good. People usually pack, don't they?"

Sam dropped his eyes. His face, human till now, took on its familiar, sphinxlike look. He followed "Mist' Devon" into the elevator in silence, and started the car on its downward journey. But as his passenger was about to depart with a nod, Sam presented him with a reflection to take away with him.

"She didn' look lak no lady what was goin' on no excu'sion," he muttered, darkly.

Laurie rushed back to his rooms with pounding heart and on the way opened and read at a glance his first note from Doris. It was written in pencil, seemingly on a scrap of paper torn from the pad he had seen on her desk.

Long Island, I think. An old house, on the Sound, somewhere near Sea Cliff. Remember your promise. No police.

That was all there was to it. There was no address, no signature, no date. The writing, though hurried, was clear, beautiful, and full of character. In his rooms, he telephoned the garage for his car, and read and reread the little note. Then, still holding it in his hand, he thought it over.

Two things were horribly clear. Shaw's "plan" had matured. He had taken Doris away. And—this was the staggering phase of the episode—she seemed to have gone willingly. At least she had made no protest, though a mere word, even a look of appeal from her, would have enlisted Sam's help, and no doubt stopped the whole proceeding. Why hadn't she uttered that word? The answer to this, too, seemed fairly clear. Doris had become a fatalist. She had ceased to hide or fight. She was letting things go "his way," as she had declared she would do.

Down that dark avenue she had called "his way" Laurie dared not even glance. His mind was too busy making its agile twists in and out of the tangle. Granting, then, that she had gone doggedly to meet the ultimate issue of the experience, whatever that might be, she had nevertheless appealed to him, Laurie, for help. Why? And why did she know approximately where she was to be taken?

Why? Why? Why? Again and again the question had recurred to him, and this time it dug itself in.

Despite his love for her (and he fully realized that this was what it was), despite his own experience of the night before, he had hardly been able to accept the fact that she was, must be, in actual physical danger. When, now, the breath of this realization blew over him, it checked his heart-beats and chilled his very soul. In the next instant something in him, alert, watchful, and suspicious, addressed him like an inner voice.

"Shaw will threaten," this voice said. "He will fight, and he will even chloroform. But when it comes to a show-down, to the need of definite, final action of any kind, he simply won't be there. He is venomous, he'd like to bite, but he has no fangs, and he knows it."

The vision of Shaw's face, when he had choked him during the struggle of last night, again recurred to Laurie. He knew now the meaning of the look in those projecting eyes. It was fear. Though he had carried off the rest of the interview with entire assurance, during that fight the creature had been terror-stricken.

"He'll have reason for fear the next time I get hold of him," Laurie reflected, grimly. But that fear was of him, not of Doris. What might not Doris be undergoing, even now?

He went to the little safe in the wall of his bedroom, and took from it all the ready money he found there. Oh, if only Rodney were at home! But Mr. Bangs had gone out, the hall man said. He also informed Mr. Devon that his car was at the door.

The need of consulting Rodney increased in urgency as the difficulties multiplied. Laurie telephoned to Bangs's favorite restaurant, to Epstein's office, to Sonya's hotel. At the restaurant he was suavely assured that Mr. Bangs was not in the place. At the office the voice of an injured office boy informed him that there wasn't never nobody there till half-past nine. Over the hotel wire Sonya's colorful tones held enough surprise to remind Laurie that he could hardly hope that even Rodney's budding romance would drive him to the side of the lady so early in the morning.

He hung up the receiver with a groan of disgust, and busied himself packing a small bag and selecting a greatcoat for his journey. Also, he went to a drawer and took out the little pistol he had taken away from Doris in the tragic moment of their first meeting.

Holding it in his hand, he hesitated. Heretofore, throughout his short but varied life, young Devon had depended upon his well-trained fists to protect him from the violence of others. But when those others were the kind who went in for chloroform—and this time there was Doris to think of. He dropped the revolver into his pocket, and shot into the elevator and out on the ground floor with the expedition to which the operator was now becoming accustomed.

His car was a two-seated "racer," of slender and beautiful lines. As he took his place at the wheel, the machine pulsated like a living thing, panting with a passionate desire to be off. Laurie's wild young heart felt the same longing, but his year in New York had taught him respect for its traffic laws and this was no time to take chances. Carefully, almost sedately, he made his way to Third Avenue, then up to the Queensboro Bridge, and across that mighty runway to Long Island. Here his stock of patience, slender at the best, was exhausted. With a deep breath he "let her out" to a singing speed of sixty miles an hour.

A cloud had obscured the sun, quite appropriately, he subconsciously felt, and there were flakes of snow in the air. As he sped through the gray atmosphere, the familiar little towns he knew seemed to come forward to meet him, like rapidly projected pictures on a screen. Flushing, Bayside, Little Neck, Manhasset, Roslyn, Glenhead, one by one they floated past. He made the run of twenty-two miles in something under thirty minutes, to the severe disapproval of several policemen, who shouted urgent invitations to him to slow down. One of these was so persistent that Laurie prepared to obey; but just as the heavy hand of the law was about to fall, its representative recognized young Devon, and waved him on with a forgiving grin. This was not the first time Laurie had "burned up" that stretch of roadway.

At the Sea Cliff station he slowed up; then, on a sudden impulse, stopped his car at the platform with sharp precision and entered the tiny waiting-room. From the ticket window a pretty girl looked out on him with the expression of sudden interest feminine eyes usually took on when this young man was directly in their line of vision. With uncovered curly head deferentially bent, he addressed her. Had she happened to notice a dark limousine go by an hour or so before, say around half-past eight or nine o'clock? The girl shook her head. She had not come on duty until nine, and even if such a car had passed she would hardly have observed it, owing to the frequency of the phenomenon and her own exacting responsibilities.

Laurie admitted that these responsibilities would claim all the attention of any mind. But was there any one around who might have seen the car, any one, say, who made a specialty of lounging on the platform and watching the pulsations of the town's life in this its throbbing center? No, the girl explained, there were no station loafers around now. The summer was the time for them.

Then perhaps she could tell him if there were any nice old houses for rent near Sea Cliff, nice old houses, say, overlooking the Sound, and a little out of the town? Laurie's newly acquired will power was proving its strength. With every frantic impulse in him crying for action, for knowledge, for relief from the intolerable tension he was under, he presented to the girl the suave appearance of a youth at peace with himself and the hour.

The abrupt transitions of the gentleman's interest seemed to surprise the lady. She looked at him with a suspicion which perished under the expression in his brilliant eyes. What he meant, Laurie soberly explained, was the kind of house that might appeal to a casual tourist who was passing through, and who had dropped into the station and there had suddenly realized the extreme beauty of Sea Cliff. The girl laughed. She was a nice girl, he decided, and he smiled back at her; for now she was becoming helpful.

Yes, there was the Varick place, a mile out and right on the water's edge. And there was the old Kiehl place, also on the Sound. These were close together and both for rent, she had heard. Also, there was a house in the opposite direction, and on the water's edge. She did not know the name of that house, but she had observed a "To Let" sign on it last Sunday, when she was out driving. Those were all the houses she knew of. She gave him explicit instructions for reaching all three, and the interview ended in an atmosphere of mutual regard and regret. Indeed, the lady even left her ticket office to follow the gentleman to the door and watch the departure of his chariot.

Laurie raced in turn to the Varick place and the Kiehl place. Shaw, he suspected, had probably rented some such place, just as he had rented the East Side office. But a very cursory inspection of the two old houses convinced him that they were tenantless. No smoke came from their chimneys, no sign of life surrounded them; also, he was sure, they were not sufficiently remote from other houses to suit the mysterious Shaw.

The third house on his list was more promising in appearance, for it stood austerely remote from its neighbors. But on its soggy lawn two soiled children and a dog played in care-free abandon, and from the side of the house came the piercing whistle of an underling cheerily engaged in sawing wood and shouting cautions to the children. Quite plainly, the closed-up, shuttered place was in charge of a caretaker, whose offspring were in temporary possession of its grounds. Laurie inspected other houses, dozens of them. He made his way into strange, new roads. Nowhere was there the slightest clue leading to the house he sought.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon when, with an exclamation of actual anguish, he swung his car around for the return journey to the station. For the first time the hopelessness of his mission came home to him. There must be a few hundred houses on the Sound near Sea Cliff. How was he to find the right one?

Perhaps that girl had thought of some other places, or could direct him to the best local real-estate agents. Perhaps he should have gone to them in the first place. He felt dazed, incapable of clear thought.

As the car swerved his eye was caught by something bright lying farther up the road, in the direction from which he had just turned. For an instant he disregarded it. Then, on second thought, he stopped the machine, jumped out, and ran back. There, at the right, by the wayside, lay a tiny jagged strip of silk that seemed to blush as he stared down at it.

Slowly he bent, picked it up, and, spreading it across his palm, regarded it with eyes that unexpectedly were wet. It was a two-inch bit of the Roman scarf, hacked off, evidently, by the same hurried scissors that had severed the end in his pocket. He realized now what that cutting had meant. With her hare-and-hounds' experience in mind, Doris had cut off other strips, perhaps half a dozen or more, and had undoubtedly dropped them as a trail for him to pick up. Possibly he had already unseeingly passed several. But that did not matter. He was on the right track now. The house was on this road, but farther up.

He leaped into the car again and started back. He drove very slowly, forcing the reluctant racer to crawl along, and sweeping every inch of the roadside with a careful scrutiny, but he had gone more than a mile before he found the second scent. This was another bit of the vivid silk, dropped on a country road that turned off the main road at a sharp angle. With a heartfelt exclamation of thanksgiving, he turned into this bypath.

It was narrow, shallow-rutted, and apparently little used. It might stop anywhere, it might lead nowhere. It wound through a field, a meadow, a bit of deep wood, through which he saw the gleam of water. Then, quite suddenly, it again widened into a real road, merging into an avenue of trees that led in turn to the entrance of a big dark-gray house, in a somber setting of cedars.

Laurie stopped his car and thoughtfully nodded to himself. This was the place. He felt that he would have recognized it even without that guiding flame of ribbon. It was so absolutely the kind of place Shaw's melodramatic instincts would lead him to choose.

There was the look about it that clings to houses long untenanted, a look not wholly due to its unkempt grounds and the heavy boards over its windows. It had been without life for a long, long time, but somewhere in it, he knew, life was stirring now. From a side chimney a thin line of smoke curled upward. On the second floor, shutters, newly unbolted, creaked rustily in the January wind. And, yes, there it was; outside of one of the unshuttered windows, as if dropped there by a bird, hung a vivid bit of ribbon.

Rather precipitately Laurie backed his car to a point where he could turn it, and then raced back to the main road. His primitive impulse had been to drive up to the entrance, pound the door until some one responded, and then fiercely demand the privilege of seeing Miss Mayo. But that, he knew, would never do. He must get rid of the car, come back on foot, get into the house in some manner, and from that point meet events as they occurred.

Facing this prospect, he experienced an incredible combination of emotions—relief and panic, recklessness and caution, fear and elation. He had found her. For the time being, he frantically assured his trembling inner self, she was safe. The rest was up to him, and he felt equal to it. He was intensely stimulated; for now, at last, in his ears roared the rushing tides of life.



CHAPTER XIII

THE HOUSE IN THE CEDARS

Less than half a mile back, along the main road, Laurie found a country garage, in which he left his car. It was in charge of a silent but intelligent person, a somewhat unkempt and haggard middle-aged man, who agreed to keep the machine out of sight, to have it ready at any moment of the day or night, and to accept a handsome addition to his regular charge in return for his discretion. He was only mildly interested in his new patron, for he had classified him without effort. One of them college boys, this young fella was, and up to some lark.

Just what form that lark might take was not a problem which stirred Henry Burke's sluggish imagination. Less than twenty hours before his seventh had been born; and his wife was delicate and milk was seventeen cents a quart, and the garage business was not what it had been. To the victim of these obsessing reflections the appearance of a handsome youth who dropped five-dollar bills around as if they were seed potatoes was in the nature of a miracle and an overwhelming relief. His mind centered on the five-dollar bills, and his lively interest in them assured Laurie of Burke's presence in the garage at any hour when more bills might possibly be dropped.

While he was lingeringly lighting a cigarette, Laurie asked a few questions. Who owned the big house back there in the cedar grove, on the bluff overlooking the Sound? Burke didn't know. All he knew, and freely told, was that it had been empty ever since he himself had come to the neighborhood, 'most two years ago.

Was it occupied now? No, and Burke was sure of that. Only two days before he himself had driven past it and had noted its continued closed-up, deserted appearance. It was a queer place, anyhow, he added; one couldn't get to it from the main road, but had to follow a blind path, which he himself had blundered into by chance, when he was thinking about something else. He had heard, he now recalled, that it was owned by some New Yorker who didn't like noise.

Laurie strolled out of the garage with a well-assumed air of indifference to the perplexities of life, but his heart was racked by them. As he hesitated near the entrance, uncertain which way to turn, he saw that behind the garage there was a tool shed, and following the side path which led to this, he found in the rear of the shed a workman's bench, evidently little used in these cold January days. Tacitly, it invited the discoverer to solitude and meditation, and Laurie gratefully dropped upon it, glad of the opportunity to escape Burke's eye and uninterruptedly think things out. But the daisied path of calm reflection was not for him then.

Theoretically, of course, his plan would be to wait until night and then, sheltered by the darkness, to approach the house, like a hero of melodrama, and in some way secure entrance. But even as this ready-made campaign presented itself, a dozen objections to it reared up in his mind. The first, of course, was the delay. It was not yet two o'clock in the afternoon, and darkness would not fall until five, even unwisely assuming that it would be safe to approach the place as soon as darkness came. In three hours all sorts of things might happen; and the prospect of marking time during that interval, while his unbridled imagination ran away with him, was one Laurie could not face.

On the other hand, what could he do in broad daylight? If he were seen, as he almost certainly would be, Shaw, careless now, perhaps, in his fancied security, would take precautions which might make impossible the night's work of rescue. That, of course, assuming that Shaw was still at the house among the cedars.

Was he? Laurie pondered that problem. Undoubtedly he had personally taken Doris there, he and the secretary. But the chances seemed about even that, having done this, he would leave her, for the day at least, either in charge of the secretary or of some caretaker. In that case—in that case—

The young man sprang to his feet. He would waste no more time in speculation. He would know, and at once, who was in that house with Doris. He swung back to the garage with determination in his manner, and entered the place so unexpectedly that Burke, who had fancied him a mile away, started at the sight of him. Then, with a contented smile, he stilled his nerves and kept his eyes on the bill the visitor held before him.

"See here," said the latter, "I want to do a tramp act."

"Sure you do!" Burke promptly acquiesced.

"Can you find me some ragged trousers and an old coat and cap? The worse they look, the better I'll like it. And while you're about it, get me some worn-out shoes or boots. How soon can you have them here?"

"I—I dunno." Burke was looking somewhat overwhelmed. "You're pretty big," he mentioned. "Nothin' o' mine 'd fit you."

"Great Scott!" exploded the other. "I don't want 'em to fit! I'm not going to a pink tea in them."

"But you want to get 'em on, don't you?" Burke demanded, with some coldness.

"I do."

"Well, look at yerself; young fella, and then look at me."

Laurie obeyed the latter part of the injunction. The father of seven was at least five inches shorter than he, and his legs and shoulders were small in proportion. No coat or trousers he wore could possibly go on the young Hercules before him.

"Oh, well," urged the latter, impatiently, "get some, somewhere. Here. Take a run into town. Use my car if you like. Or go to some one you know who's about my size. Only, mum's the word."

Five-dollar bills were in the air, fluttering before the eyes of the garage-owner like leaves in Vallambrosa. He clutched them avidly.

"And hurry up," added his impatient patron. "Let's see you back here in five minutes."

"Who'll look after the garage? Not that any one's likely to stop," the proprietor gloomily admitted.

"I'll look after it. Come, get a move on!"

"Oh, all right! But I can't be back in no five minutes, nor in thirty minutes, neither. I gotta go over to Nick Swanson's. He's about your size."

"All right, all right! Go to it."

The impatient youth was fairly shooing him out of his own garage, but with the sweet memory of those five-dollar bills to sustain him, Burke was patient, even good-humored. One thing he could say about them college lads: they was usually ready to pay well for their nonsense. With a forgiving grin he hurried off.

Left alone, Laurie removed his coat and cap, searched the garage successfully for grease, oil, waste, and shoe-blacking, and then, establishing himself in front of a broken mirror in Burke's alleged office, removed his collar and effected a startling transformation in the appearance of his head, face, hands, and shirt.

Beginning in his college days, and continuing throughout his more recent theatrical experiences, the art of make-up had increasingly interested him. The people in his plays owed something to his developing skill, and even one of the leading ladies had humbly taken suggestions from him. But never in any stage dressing-room had young Mr. Devon secured a more extraordinary change than the one he produced now, with the simple aids at hand.

When Burke returned he found his garage in charge of an unwashed, unkempt, unprepossessing young ruffian whom he stared at for a full minute before he accepted him as the man he had left there. The ragged trousers, the spotted "reefer" buttoned high around the neck, the dirty cap pulled over the eyes, and the wholly disreputable broken shoes Burke had brought with him completed the transformation of an immaculate young gentleman into a blear-eyed follower of the open road.

Clad in these garments, Laurie took a few preliminary shuffles around the garage, while the owner, watching him, slapped his thigh in approval. So great was his interest in the "act," indeed, that when the impersonator left the garage and started off, Burke showed a strong desire to follow him and see the finish of the performance, a desire that recalled for a fleeting instant the determined personality of the young gentleman hidden under the tramp disguise.

At the last moment before leaving, Laurie took from his pocket the tiny revolver he had brought with him, and holding it in his palm, studied it in silence. Should he take it, or shouldn't he? He hesitated. Then habit mastered caution. He dropped it among the discarded heap of clothes, and picked up in its stead a small screw-driver, which he put into his ragged pocket. That particular tool looked as if it might be useful.

Lounging up the country road, with his cold, bare, dirty hands in the pockets of the borrowed reefer, he looked about with assurance. He believed that in this unexpected guise, he could meet even Shaw and get away with it; but he meant to be very careful and take no unnecessary chances.

He cut across half a dozen fields, climbed half a dozen fences, was fiercely barked at by a dozen dogs, more or less, and finally reaching the grounds of the house in the cedars, approached it from the rear in exactly the half-sneaking, half-cocky manner in which the average tramp would have drawn near a shuttered house from one of whose chimneys smoke was rising. It was a manner that nicely blended the hope of a hand-out with the fear of a rebuff. Once he fancied he saw something moving among the trees. He ducked back and remained quiet for some time. Then, reassured by the continued silence, he emerged, sauntered to the back entrance, and after a brief preliminary study of the shuttered windows, assailed the door with a pair of grimy knuckles.

He had expected a long delay, possibly no response at all. But the door opened as promptly as if some one had been standing there awaiting his signal, and on its threshold a forbidding-looking woman, haglike as to hair and features but cleanly dressed, stood regarding him with strong disapproval. In the kitchen range back of her a coal fire was burning. A tea-kettle bubbled domestically on its top, and cheek by jowl with this a big-bellied coffee-pot exhaled a delicious aroma.

The entire tableau was so different from anything Laurie had expected that for an instant he stared at the woman, speechless and almost open-mouthed. Then the smell of the coffee gave him his cue. He suddenly remembered that he had eaten nothing that day, and the fact gave a thrill of sincerity to the professional whine in which he made his request.

"Say, lady," he begged urgently, "I'm down an' out. Gimme a cup o' cawfee, will yuh?"

Her impulse, he saw clearly, had been to close the door in his face. Already her hand was automatically responding to it. But he whipped off his dirty cap and, shivering on the door-step, looked at her with Laurie's eyes, whose beauty no amount of disguise could wholly conceal. There was real appeal in them now. Much, indeed almost everything, depended on what this creature would do in the next minute. She hesitated.

"I ain't had a mouthful since yesterday," croaked the visitor, pleadingly and truthfully.

"Well, wait there a minute. I'll bring you a cup of coffee."

She turned from the door and started to close it, evidently expecting him to remain outside, but he promptly followed her in, and her face, hardening into quick anger, softened a little as she saw him cowering over the big hot stove and warming his dirty hands. In silence she filled a cup with coffee, cut a thick slice from a loaf of bread, buttered it, and set the collation on the kitchen table.

"Hurry up and eat that," she muttered, "and then clear out. If any one saw you here, I'd get into trouble."

Laurie grunted acquiescence and wolfed the food. He had not sat down, and now, as he ate, his black eyes swept the room while he planned his next move. Drying on a stout cord back of the stove were several dish-towels. They gave him his first suggestion. His second came when he observed that his hostess, evidently reassured by his haste, had turned her back to him, and, bending a little, was examining the oven. Noiselessly setting down the cup and the bread, he crept behind her, and, seizing her in one powerful arm, covered her mouth with his free hand. He could not wholly stifle the smothered shriek she gave.

For the next moment he had his hands full. Despite her wrinkles and her gray hair, she was a strong woman, and she fought with a violence and a false strength due to overwhelming fury and terror. It was so difficult to control her without hurting her that all his strength was taxed. But at last he brought her slowly down into a chair under the row of dish-towels, and seizing two of these useful articles, as well as the cord that held them, securely bound and gagged her. As he did so he dropped his role and looked soberly into her furious eyes.

"Look here," he told her. "I'm not going to hurt you; be sure of that. But I've got something to say, and I want you to stop struggling and listen to it."

Under his quiet tones some of the frenzy died out of the eyes staring up at him.

"I'm here to get Miss Mayo," he went on. "She's in the house, isn't she? If she is, nod." There was a long moment of hesitation. At last the head nodded. "Is there any one else in the house?" The head shook negatively. "Is there no one here but you and Miss Mayo?" Laurie could hardly take in this good luck, but again the head shook negatively. "Where is she? Upstairs?"

The head nodded. He stepped back from the bound figure.

"All right," he said cheerfully. "Now I'm going to unbind you and let you take me up to her. As a precaution, I shall leave the bandage on your mouth and hands. But, being a sensible woman, of course you realize that you have absolutely nothing to fear, unless you give us trouble. If you try to do that, I shall have to lock you into a closet for a few hours."

As he spoke he was unfastening the cord.

"Lead on," he invited, buoyantly.

There was an instant when he thought the struggle with her would begin all over. He saw her draw herself together as if to spring. But she was evidently exhausted by her previous contest. She was also subdued. She rose heavily, and, taking her time to it, slowly led the way out of the kitchen and along a hall to the front of the house.

"No tricks, remember," warned Laurie, keeping close behind her. "Play fair, and I'll give you a year's salary when I take Miss Mayo out of this."

She turned now and looked at him, and there was venom in the glance. Violently and negatively, she shook her head.

"Don't you want the money?" he interrupted, deeply interested in this phenomenon. "I'm glad to have met you," he politely added. "You're an unexpected and a brand-new type to me."

She was walking forward again, with no sign now that she heard his voice. Reaching a wide colonial staircase that led to the second floor, she started the ascent, but so slowly that the young man behind her uttered another warning.

"No tricks, remember," he repeated, cheerfully. "I'm afraid you're planning to start something. I believe you're capable of falling backward, and bowling me over like a ten-pin. But don't you do it. A dark, musty closet is no place for a kind-hearted, sensible woman to spend twenty-four hours in."

She ignored that, too, but now she moved more quickly, and her companion, close at her heels, found himself in an upper hall, approaching a door at the front of the house. Before this door his guide now planted herself, with much of the effect of a corner-stone settling into place.

Keeping a careful eye on her, he stretched out a long arm and tapped at the panel. There was no answer. He tapped again. Still no answer. He glanced at the enforcedly silent woman beside him, and something in her eyes, a gleam of triumph or sardonic amusement, or both, was tinder to his hot spirit.

"Have you led me to the wrong door?" he asked. He spoke very quietly, but the tone impressed the woman. The gleam faded from her eyes. Hastily she shook her head.

"If you have—" He nodded at her thoughtfully. Then he raised his voice.

"Doris," he called. "Doris!"

He heard a movement inside the room, an odd little cry, half exclamation, half sob, and hurried steps approaching. The next minute her voice came to him, in breathless words, with a tremor running through them.

"Is it you?" she gasped. "Oh, is it you?"

"Yes, open the door."

"I can't. It's locked."

He stared at the unyielding wood before him.

"You mean they've locked you in?"

"Yes. Of course."

It would be, of course, Laurie reflected. That was Shaw's melodramatic method.

"We'll change all that, in a minute." He stepped back from the door.

"What are you going to do?" The voice inside was anxious.

"Break it down, if necessary. Breaking down doors to get to you is my specialty. You haven't forgotten that, I hope." He turned to the woman beside him. "Have you the key to this?" She shook her head. "If you have, you may as well hand it over," he suggested. "I shall certainly break down the door if you don't; and it's a perfectly good door, with a nice polish on it."

He saw her hesitate. Then, sullenly, she nodded.

"You have it, after all?" He spoke with the natural relief of an indolent young man spared an arduous job. Again she nodded. "Where is it?" She could make no movement with her bound hands, but with an eye-flash she indicated the side of her gown. "In your pocket? Good. I'll get it."

He got it, as he spoke. Holding it in his hand, he again addressed his reluctant companion.

"When I unlock the door, you will go in first, and walk over to the nearest corner and stand there with your back to the room. Also, here's my last warning: I should be very sorry to do anything that would hurt or inconvenience you. If you behave yourself I will soon take off that gag. If you don't, I shall certainly lock you up. In either case, you can't accomplish anything. So take your choice."

He unlocked the door, and the deliberate figure preceded him into the room. In the next instant he saw nothing in the world but the eyes of Doris, fixed on his. Then he knew that he was holding her hands, and listening to her astonished gasp as she took in his appearance.

"My disguise," he explained. "I couldn't ride up as publicly as young Lochinvar, though I wanted to. So I got this outfit." He turned around for her inspection, deliberately giving her and himself time to pull up under the strain of the meeting. At the first glimpse of her all his assurance had returned. He was excited, triumphant. But as he again met her eyes, something in their expression subdued him.

"It took longer to get here than I expected, but of course you knew I was on the way," he said.

Her response was unexpected. Dropping into a low chair, she buried her face in her hands and burst into a passion of tears. Aghast, he stared at her, while from the corner the hag stared at them both. Laurie dropped on his knees beside Doris and seized her hands, his heart shaking under a new fear.

"They've been frightening you," he muttered, and was surprised by the intensity of his terror and anger as he spoke. "Don't cry. They'll pay for it."

She shook her head. "It isn't that," she sobbed at last.

"Then what is it?"

"I've brought you here. And I—I think it was a horrible thing to do. I—I can't forgive myself."

Laurie groped vaguely amidst sensations of relief and the mental confusion with which, someway, she always filled him.

"You're—all right, aren't you? And you expected me, didn't you?"

"Yes, but—Oh, don't make me talk! Let me cry."

She was crying as she spoke, rackingly, and every sob tore his heart. Again, as so often before, he felt dazed and helpless before the puzzle she presented. Yet, as always, there seemed nothing to do but obey her, since she, and not he, invariably held the key to the strange situations in which she placed him. Her tears made him feel desperate, yet he dared not continue to hold her hands, and he did not know what to say. Rising, but keeping his position beside her, he waited for her to grow calmer, and as he waited he subconsciously took in the room.

It was a big front chamber, furnished as a sitting-room. Its broad windows, with their cushioned window-seats, faced east. Besides the window, it had two exits, the door by which he had entered, and another door, half open, apparently leading into a bedroom. Its comfortable easy-chairs were covered with gay chintz, its curtains were of the same material, its reading-table held books and newspapers, and in its big open fireplace fat logs were blazing. Shaw "did" his prisoners well. Laurie remembered the cigarettes, matches, and blankets so thoughtfully provided for himself. Like Shaw's own room, the chamber breathed simple comfort. It was impossible to take in the thought of anything sinister in connection with it until one observed the gagged woman in the corner, and remembered the locked door.

"Well, Princess," he said at last, still trying to speak lightly, "this isn't much of a donjon tower, is it?"

Her sobs, hysterical and due to overwrought nerves, had given place to occasional sharp catches of the breath, like those uttered by a little child whose "crying-spell" is almost over. She did not speak, but she put out her hand to him, and he took it and held it closely, conscious of a deep thrill as the small palm touched his.

"I want to talk to you," he said gently, "but I'd feel a lot more comfortable if our chaperon were a little more remote. Can we put her into this inner room?"

Doris nodded, and he waved the woman across the threshold of the bedroom. She would be safe there. He had observed that the windows of the inner room were still barred and shuttered. Seemingly, in all the big house, this up-stairs sitting-room alone had opened its heart to the sun.

"Are you really alone in the house?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so; I'm almost sure of it."

"Then there's no mad rush about leaving?"

"No—I—I think not."

He observed her hesitation but ignored it. He drew two big chairs close to the open fire, and, leading Doris to one, seated her in it, and took the other himself, turning it to face hers. As he did so, she recoiled.

"You look so dreadful!" she explained with a shudder.

"I suppose I do. But forget that and tell me something. When did Shaw leave?"

"Within half an hour of the time he brought me here."

"When is he coming back?"

"To-night, I think."

"And he's left you here alone, with no one around but this woman?" Laurie asked, incredulously. Here was another situation hard to understand.

"His secretary is somewhere around, a wretched jackal that does what he's told."

"Oh!" This was news. "Where is he?"

"Out in the garage. He has a room there. I heard him say he had no sleep last night, and that he expected to get some to-day."

Laurie rose.

"I'll take a look around and see where he is," he suggested. "We can't have him catching on to my little visit and telephoning to Shaw, you know."

As he spoke he was walking toward the door that led into the hall, and now he confidently put out his hand and turned the knob. His expression changed. He gave the knob a violent twist, then, setting his shoulder against the jamb, tried to wrench the door open. It did not yield. Doris, watching him wide-eyed, was the first to speak.

"Locked?" she whispered.

"Locked," corroborated Laurie. He nodded thoughtfully. Several things, small in themselves, which had puzzled him, were clearing up. Among others, the housekeeper's persistent efforts to gain time were now explained. Shaw had not been so careless as he had seemed. The meek blond secretary with the pursuing eyes and the chloroforming habit was certainly in the house.



CHAPTER XIV

LAURIE CHECKS A REVELATION

Laurie shook his head.

"That was rather stupid of him," he remarked, mildly. "It's almost as easy to force open a locked door from the inside as from the outside."

"I know." Doris was again breathless. "But in the meantime he's telephoning to Shaw."

"I don't think so." Laurie, his hands in his pockets, was making a characteristic turn around the room. "What has he to gain by telephoning? Shaw's coming back anyway in a few hours; and in the meantime the secretary has got me safely pocketed, or thinks he has. I have an idea he'll stand pat. You see, he doesn't know about my talent for opening locked doors."

He strolled back to the door as he spoke and examined the lock. Then, appreciatively, he drew from his pocket the screw-driver he had thoughtfully brought from the garage.

"I fancied this might be useful. It will take me just about four minutes to open that door," he announced. "So get on your things and be ready to start in a hurry."