s on the pavement, but she
was up again and clinging to him before he could tear free of her.

"My letter!" she gasped. "I shall kill you, I tell you--unless you
return it!"

His solitary yellow eye began to glare and glitter as he wrenched and
dragged at her wrists and arms about him.

"Schweinstueck!" he panted. "Let los, mioche de malheur! Eh! Los!--or I
strike! No? Also! Attrape!--sale gallopin!----"

His blow knocked her reeling across the hall. Against the whitewashed
wall she collapsed to her knees, got up half stunned, the clang of the
outer grille ringing in her very brain.

With dazed eyes she gazed at the remnants of the torn letter, still
crushed in her rigid fingers. Bright drops of blood from her mouth
dripped slowly to the tessellated pavement.

Reeling still from the shock of the blow, she managed to reach the
outer door, and stood swaying there, striving to pierce with confused
eyes the lamplit darkness of the street. There was no sign of the
one-eyed man. Then she turned and made her way back to the desk,
supporting herself with a hand along the wall.

Waiting a few moments to control her breathing and her shaky limbs,
she contrived finally to detach the receiver and call Barres. Over the
wire she could hear the gramophone playing again in the studio.

"Please may I come up?" she whispered.

"Has the last mail come? Is there a letter for me?" he asked.

"Yes ... I'll bring you w-what there is--if you'll let me?"

"Thanks, Sweetness! Come right up!" And she heard him say: "It's
probably your letter, Thessa. Dulcie is bringing it up."

Her limbs and body were still quivering, and she felt very weak and
tearful as she climbed the stairway to the corridor above.

The nearer door of his apartment was open. Through it the music of the
gramophone came gaily; and she went toward it and entered the
brilliantly illuminated studio.

Soane, who still lay flat on the roof overhead, peeping through the
ventilator, saw her enter, all dishevelled, grasping in one hand the
fragments of a letter. And the sight instantly sobered him. He tucked
his shoes under one arm, got to his stockinged feet, made nimbly for
the scuttle, and from there, descending by the service stair, ran
through the courtyard into the empty hall.

"Be gorry," he muttered, "thot dommed Dootchman has done it now!" And
he pulled on his shoes, crammed his hat over his ears, and started
east, on a run, for Grogan's.

Grogan's was stil