thing to anybody," was Zoie's noncommittal answer, "not even to
Aggie. Jump in a taxi and come as quickly as you can."

"But what IS it?" persisted Jimmy. The dull sound of the wire told him
that the person at the other end had "hung up."

Jimmy gazed about the room in perplexity. What was he to do? Why on
earth should he leave his letters unanswered and his mail topsy turvy to
rush forth in the shank of the morning at the bidding of a young woman
whom he abhorred. Ridiculous! He would do no such thing. He lit a cigar
and began to open a few letters marked "private." For the life of him he
could not understand one word that he read. A worried look crossed his
face.

"Suppose Zoie were really in need of help, Aggie would certainly never
forgive him if he failed her." He rose and walked up and down.

"Why was he not to tell Aggie?"

"Where was Alfred?" He stopped abruptly. His over excited imagination
had suggested a horrible but no doubt accurate answer. "Wedded to an
abomination like Zoie, Alfred had sought the only escape possible to a
man of his honourable ideals--he had committed suicide."

Seizing his coat and hat Jimmy dashed through the outer office without
instructing his astonished staff as to when he might possibly return.

"Family troubles," said the secretary to himself as he appropriated one
of Jimmy's best cigars.

CHAPTER IV

LESS than half an hour later, Jimmy's taxi stopped in front of the
fashionable Sherwood Apartments where Zoie had elected to live.
Ascending toward the fifth floor he scanned the face of the elevator boy
expecting to find it particularly solemn because of the tragedy that
had doubtless taken place upstairs. He was on the point of sending out
a "feeler" about the matter, when he remembered Zoie's solemn injunction
to "say nothing to anybody." Perhaps it was even worse than suicide. He
dared let his imagination go no further. By the time he had put out his
hand to touch the electric button at Zoie's front door, his finger was
trembling so that he wondered whether he could hit the mark. The result
was a very faint note from the bell, but not so faint that it escaped
the ear of the anxious young wife, who had been pacing up and down the
floor of her charming living room for what seemed to her ages.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" Zoie cried through her tears to her neat little
maid servant, then reaching for her chatelaine, she daubed her small
nose and flushed cheeks with powder,