did
not move a muscle. Then, just when she was expecting from him some harsh
or forbidding word, he wheeled abruptly away from her and crossing to a
window at his side, lifted the shade and looked out. When he returned,
he was his usual self so far as she could see.

"There is a way," he now confided to her in a tone as low as her own,
"but it can only be taken by a child."

"Not by me?" she asked, smiling down at her own childish proportions.

For an instant he seemed taken aback, then she saw his hand begin to
tremble and his lips twitch. Somehow--she knew not why--she began to
pity him, and asked herself as she felt rather than saw the struggle in
his mind, that here was a trouble which if once understood would greatly
dwarf that of the two men in the room behind them.

"I am discreet," she whisperingly declared. "I have heard the history
of that door--how it was against the tradition of the family to have
it opened. There must have been some very dreadful reason. But old
superstitions do not affect me, and if you will allow me to take the way
you mention, I will follow your bidding exactly, and will not trouble
myself about anything but the recovery of this paper, which must lie
only a little way inside that blocked-up door."

Was his look one of rebuke at her presumption, or just the constrained
expression of a perturbed mind? Probably, the latter, for while she
watched him for some understanding of his mood, he reached out his hand
and touched one of the satin folds crossing her shoulder.

"You would soil this irretrievably," said he.

"There is stuff in the stores for another," she smiled. Slowly his touch
deepened into pressure. Watching him she saw the crust of some old fear
or dominant superstition melt under her eyes, and was quite prepared,
when he remarked, with what for him was a lightsome air:

"I will buy the stuff, if you will dare the darkness and intricacies of
our old cellar. I can give you no light. You will have to feel your way
according to my direction."

"I am ready to dare anything."

He left her abruptly.

"I will warn Miss Digby," he called back. "She shall go with you as far
as the cellar."

V

Violet in her short career as an investigator of mysteries had been in
many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and courage. But
never--or so it seemed to her at the time--had she experienced a greater
depression of spirit than when she stood with Miss Digby before a small