where they lay before the
looking-glass and cut the cords by which Ella was secured.

With a sigh of relief she straightened herself from the confined
position in which she had been held and began to rub her wrists, which
were slightly inflamed where the cords had bruised her soft skin.

"Like to tie him up that way now?" asked Deede Dawson. "You shall if you
like."

She turned and looked full at Dunn and he looked back at her with eyes
as steady and as calm as her own.

Again she showed that faint doubt and wonder which had flickered through
her level gaze before as though she felt that there was more in all this
than was apparent, and did not wish to condemn him utterly without a
hearing.

But it was plain also that she did not wish to say too much before her
stepfather and she answered carelessly:

"I don't think I could tie him tight enough, besides, he looks
ridiculous enough like that with his hands up in the air."

It was her revenge for what he had made her suffer. He felt himself
flush and he knew that she knew that her little barbed shaft had struck
home.

"Well, go and look through his pockets," Deede Dawson said. "And see if
he's got a revolver. Don't be frightened; if he lowers his hands he'll
be a dead man before he knows it."

"He has a pistol," she said. "He showed it me, it's in his coat pocket."

"Better get it then," Deede Dawson told her. She obeyed and brought
him the weapon, and he nodded with satisfaction as he put it in his own
pocket.

"I think we might let you put your hands down now," he remarked, and
Dunn gladly availed himself of the permission, for every muscle in his
arms was aching badly.

He remained standing by the wall while Deede Dawson, seating himself on
the chair to which Ella had been bound, rested his chin on his left
hand and, with the pistol still ready in his right, regarded Dunn with a
steady questioning gaze.

Ella was standing near the bed. She had poured a few drops of
eau-de-Cologne on her wrists and was rubbing them softly, and for ever
after the poignant pleasant odour of the scent has remained associated
in Robert Dunn's mind with the strange events of that night so that
always even the merest whiff of it conjures up before his mind a picture
of that room with himself silent by the fireplace and Ella silent by
the bed and Deede Dawson, pistol in hand, seated between them, as silent
also as they, and very watchful.

Ella appeared fully taken up with h