though he were
dying.

Suddenly the key turned in the lock, the door swung open and Kendale
entered, bearing a lighted candle in his hand.

"Ah, you have come to, have you?" he remarked, seeing the other's eyes
turn toward him; and before Lester Armstrong could answer he went on
quickly: "You are the only one who knows the combination which opens the
safe of the late Marsh & Co., and as I intend to open it to-morrow
morning at the usual hour in place of your punctual self, it will be
most necessary for you to give me the required information."

For one moment Lester Armstrong gazed steadily into the face of the
fiend incarnate before him--a look before which the other quailed
despite his apparent bravado.

"I am in your power and at your mercy," he said, "but though you torture
me on the rack I shall never tell you what you want to know. That safe
contains valuable papers which belong to others; they are secure in my
keeping. You can kill me, but the secret of the safe combination will
die with me."

Kendale laughed a little short, hard laugh.

"You are mad to thus defy me," he cried, harshly, "when you stop to
consider that I can open it in any event. I can simply say the
combination has slipped from my mind. Who is there to question Mr.
Lester Armstrong, the head of the firm? No one--no one. It will be
broken open quite as soon as workmen can be found to accomplish it."

The lines about the sufferer's mouth tightened; he clutched his hands
hard. He knew the dare devil Kendale would stop at nothing--nothing.

"I will give you until daylight to decide. I promise you that it will go
hard with you if you are not complaisant."

With that he turned on his heel and quitted the room.

During all the long hours of that never-to-be-forgotten night Lester
Armstrong lay there on his pallet of straw praying for strength to foil
the villain--for Heaven to direct him what to do.

For the Marsh millions he cared nothing; but his heart was wrung with
anguish when he trusted himself to think of Faynie.

He knew that Kendale had kept the appointment made by himself, but for
some reason the elopement could not have taken place. A thousand causes
might have prevented its successful carrying out, though Kendale was
sure of a satisfactory finish, he imagined.

Daylight broke at last; he could see it dimly through the dust-begrimed,
boarded-up windows; but it was not until the sun had well risen that his
cousin put in an appe