edly. "Are you game?"

Anita Douglas looked at her friend squarely. In her face Constance read
the desperation of a woman battling for life and honor.

"Yes," replied Anita in a low, tense tone, "for anything."

"Then meet me after dinner in the Terminal. We'll go out to Glenclair."

The two looked deeply into each other's eyes. Nothing was said, but
what each read was a sufficient answer to a host of unspoken questions.

A moment after Mrs. Douglas had gone, Constance opened a cabinet. From
the false back of a drawer she took two little vials of powder and a
small bottle with a sponge.

Then she added a long steel bar, with a peculiar turn at the end, to
her paraphernalia for the trip.

Nothing further occurred until they met at the Terminal, or, in fact,
on the journey out. On most of the ride Mrs. Douglas kept her face
averted, looking out of the window into the blackness of the night.
Perhaps she was thinking of other journeys out to Glenclair, perhaps
she was afraid of meeting the curious gaze of any late sojourners who
might suffer from acute suburban curiosity.

Quietly the two women alighted and quickly made their way from the
station up the main street, then diverged to a darker and less
frequented avenue.

"There's the house," pointed out Mrs. Douglas, halting Constance, with
a little bitter exclamation.

Evidently she had reasoned well. He had gone out there early and there
was a light in the library.

"He isn't much of a reader," whispered Mrs. Douglas. "Oh--it's clear to
me that he has the stuff all right. He's devouring it, gloating over
it."

The sound of footsteps approaching down the paved walk came to them.
Loitering on the streets of a suburban town always occasions suspicion,
and instinctively Constance drew Anita with her into the shadow of a
hedge that set off the house from that next to it.

There was no fence cutting it off from the sidewalk, but at the corner
of the plot a large bush stood. In this bower they were perfectly
hidden in the shadow.

Hour after hour they waited, watching that light in the library,
speculating what it was he was reading, while Anita, half afraid to
talk, wondered what it was that Constance had in mind.

Finally the light in the library winked out and the house was in
darkness.

Midnight passed, and with it the last belated suburbanite.

At last, when the moon had disappeared under some clouds, Constance
pulled Anita gently along up the lawn.