dgment prompts me to believe in your truth and your sincerity. I have
been thinking the matter over since I saw you last night. I therefore
ask you to remain here, never leaving the apartment--"

"Miss Sherwood!" he ejaculated.

"And a little later, when we go out to our place on Long Island, you'll
have more freedom. For the present you will be, to the servants and any
other persons who may chance to come in, Mr. Brandon, a second cousin
staying with us; and your explanation for never venturing forth can be
that you are convalescing after an operation. Perhaps you can think of a
plan whereby later on you might occasionally leave the house without too
great risk to yourself."

"Yes. The risk comes from the police, and from some of my old friends
and the gangsters they have enlisted. So long as they believe me in
New York, they'll all be on the lookout for me every moment. If they
believed me out of New York, they would all discontinue their vigilance.
If--if--But perhaps you would not care to do so much."

"Go on."

"Would you be willing to write a letter to some friend in Chicago,
requesting the friend to post an enclosed letter written by me?"

"Certainly."

"My handwriting would be disguised--but a person who really knows my
writing would penetrate the attempted disguise and recognize it as mine.
My letter would be addressed to my grandmother requesting her to express
my recent purchase of forfeited pledges to me in Chicago. A clever
person reading the letter would be certain I was asking her to send me
my clothes."

"What's the point to that?"

"One detail of the police's search for me will be to open secretly, with
the aid of the postal authorities, all mail addressed to my grandmother.
They will steam open this letter about my clothes, then seal it and let
it be delivered. But they will have learned that I have escaped them and
am in Chicago. They will drop the hunt here and telegraph the Chicago
police, And of course the news will leak through to my old friends, and
they'll also stop looking for me in New York."

"I see."

"And enclosed in another letter written by you, I'll send an order, also
to be posted in Chicago, to a good friend of mine asking him to call at
the express office, get my clothes, and hold them until I call or send
for them. When he goes and asks for the clothes, the Chicago police will
get him and find the order on him. They'll have no charge at all against
him, but they'll have