. At sight of the unexpected stranger Miss Ballister halted. She
uttered a shocked little exclamation and recoiled, pulling away from her
escort as though she meant to flee back across the threshold. But her
shoulders came against the solid panels.

The door so soon had been shut behind her, cutting off retreat.

"Well?" said the stranger.

Miss Smith stood away from the shrinking figure, leaving it quite alone.

"This is the woman," she said, and suddenly her voice was accusing and
hard. "The stolen paper is in that necklace she is wearing round her
neck."

For proof of the truth of the charge Mullinix had only to look into
their captive's face. Her first little fit of distress coming on her so
suddenly while she was being bound had made her pale. Now her pallor was
ghastly. Little blemishes under the skin stood out in blotches against
its dead white, and out of the mask her eyes glared in a dumb terror.
She made no outcry, but her lips, stiff with fright, twisted to form
words that would not come. Her shoulders heaved _as_--futilely--she
strove to wrench her arms free. Then quickly her head sank forward and
her knees began to bend under her.

"Mind--she's going to faint!" warned Mullinix.

Both of them sprang forward and together they eased the limp shape down
upon the rug. She lay there at their feet, a pitiable little bundle. But
there was no compassion, no mercifulness in their faces as they looked
down at her.

Alongside the slumped form Miss Smith knelt down and felt for the clasp
of the slender chain and undid it. She pressed the catch of the locket
and opened it, and from the small receptacle revealed within, where a
miniature might once have been, she took forth a tightly folded half
sheet of yellow parchment paper, which had it been wadded into a ball
would have made a sphere about the size of the kernel of a fair-sized
filbert.

Mullinix grasped it eagerly, pressed it out flat and took one glance at
the familiar signature, written below the close-set array of seemingly
meaningless and unrelated letters.

"You win, young lady," he said, and there was thanksgiving and
congratulation in the way he said it. "But how did you do it? How was it
done?"

She looked up from where she was casting off the binding about the
relaxed hands of the unconscious culprit.

"It wasn't hard--after the hints you gave me. I made up my mind
yesterday that the paper would probably be hidden in a piece of
jewelry--in a