zzily still. Such an order she had never given.
But the writing was amazingly similar to her own.

"Well, Matilda?" she managed to inquire, in a voice she tried to make
like the sickly Angelica's.

"When the man showed me the note, I tried to put him off; but he
simply wouldn't go and he followed me in. His orders, he said. I
showed the letter to Mary and Mr. Pyecroft. The man saw them. They
said call up Judge Harvey and ask him what to do. I did and
Judge Harvey came down and he examined the letter and said it was
undoubtedly written by Mrs. De Peyster. And he called up the Tiffany
Studios, and they said they'd had such a telephone order from Mrs. De
Peyster."

"Jack and I never dreamed that his mother might have left orders to
have people in here to renovate the house!" cried Mary in dismay.

"Then--then Judge Harvey asked the man to put off the work," Matilda
went on. "The man was very polite, but he said his orders from Mrs.
De Peyster had been strict, and if he wasn't allowed to go on with the
work, he said, in order to protect himself, he'd have to cable Mrs.
De Peyster that the people occupying her house wouldn't let him. Judge
Harvey didn't want Mrs. De Peyster to find out about Mr. and Mrs.
Jack, so he told the man to go ahead."

"And the man?" breathed Mrs. De Peyster. "Where is he?"

"He's down in the drawing-room, beginning on the tables."

"It seems to me," suggested Mr. Pyecroft, "that since this
summer hotel is filling so rapidly, we might as well withdraw our
advertisements from the papers."

"I wonder, ma'--" Matilda checked herself just in time. "I wonder,
Angelica," she exclaimed desperately, "who it'll be next?"

"Isn't it simply awful!" cried Mary. "But Jack's gone into hiding and
isn't going to stir--and the man didn't see him--and I'm your niece,
you know. So Jack and I are in no danger. Anyhow, Judge Harvey gave
the man a--a large fee not to mention any one being in the house
besides Matilda, and the man promised. So I guess all of us are safe."

But no such sentiment of security comforted Mrs. De Peyster.

Who was the man?

What was he here for?

One thing was certain: he and those behind him had made clever and
adequate preparations for his admission. And she dared not expose him,
and order him out--for only that very morning she had left Paris on
her motor trip! She could only lie on the second maid's narrow bed and
await developments.

Matilda went out to attend to her domes