losed with an ominous
click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he
realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange
house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at
any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from
a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably
predestined for one another.

Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no
good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged
to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate
down four flights of stairs.

He tried to break down the door--they do it in all novels. He only
rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading
fiction.

It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden
misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It
was no use.

The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising
himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and
textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and
madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of
which he had never dreamed himself capable.

Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening
and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate
him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.

His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted
air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No
wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made.
Fortunately he did not realize it.

And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.

She did not know where she was going--how far away she could get in a
rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an
automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried
the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupe, and was now awaiting
its advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take charge
of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to
her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny
behind her mother's skirts.

Flight was, therefore, imperative--it was absolutely indispensable that
she put a number of miles between herself and this you