er of the kitchen
garden and a vista of trees beyond. It was a high-ceiled room with walls
bare except for two large mirrors in the Empire fashion, which stared at
each other across the way with dull and flaking eyes. Under each of
these stood a heavy gilt and ebony console with a top of
chocolate-colored marble, and in the centre of the room there was a
table of a like fashion to the consoles. Further than this there was
nothing save three chairs, upon one of which lay Captain Stewart's
dust-coat and motoring cap and goggles.

A shaft of golden light from the low sun slanted into the place through
the western window from which the Venetians had been pulled back, and
fell across the face of the man who lay still and lax in his chair, eyes
closed and chin dropped a little so that his mouth hung weakly open. He
looked very ill, as, indeed, any one might look after such an attack as
he had suffered on the night previous. That one long moment of deathly
fear before he had fallen down in a fit had nearly killed him. All
through this following day it had continued to recur until he thought he
should go mad. And there was worse still. How much did Olga Nilssen
know? And how much had she told? She had astonished and frightened him
when she had said that she knew about the house on the road to Clamart,
for he thought he had hidden his visits to La Lierre well. He wondered
rather drearily how she had discovered them, and he wondered how much
she knew more than she had admitted. He had a half-suspicion of
something like the truth, that Mlle. Nilssen knew only of Coira O'Hara's
presence here, and drew a rather natural inference. If that was all,
there was no danger from her--no more, that is, than had already borne
its fruit, for Stewart knew well enough that Ste. Marie must have
learned of the place from her. In any case Olga Nilssen had left
Paris--he had discovered that fact during the day--and so for the
present she might be eliminated as a source of peril.

The man in the chair gave a little groan and rolled his head wearily to
and fro against the uncomfortable chair-back, for now he came to the
real and immediate danger, and he was so very tired and ill, and his
head ached so sickeningly that it was almost beyond him to bring himself
face to face with it.

There was the man who lay helpless upon a bed up-stairs! And there were
the man's friends, who were not at all helpless or bedridden or in
captivity!

A wave of almost