I said them, with an
Ourfather at the end. And without further praying I got to my feet.
The church seemed to be full of breathless whisperings, as if it
watched and listened while I moved over to Stanislaus and tipped him
backward. He is a rather heavy and sizable boy for all his saintly
slimness. Up in the hollow inside, in the crook of his arm, lay the
oilskin package he had kept these long years through, waiting for
to-night.

"If ever you prayed for mortals in peril, pray, for the love of God,
for all of us this night!" I told him. And with the package in a fold
of my cassock I went back across the dark garden and let myself into
the Butterfly Man's rooms, and was hardly inside the door when he
himself returned.

"Didn't meet a soul. And they got in without waking anybody in the
house," said he complacently, rubbing his hands before the fire. "I
waited until they showed a light upstairs. She's all right, now
Madame's with her."

"Have you--have you thought of anything--any way, John?" I quavered,
and wondered if he heard my heart dunting against my ribs.

"Why, I've thought that she's got until to-morrow night to come to
terms," said he, and turned to face me. "And she can't accept them.
Nobody could--that is, not a girl like her. As for Inglesby, he might
push Eustis under, but he wouldn't have been so cocksure of _her_ if
it wasn't for those letters. She's been afraid of what might happen if
Eustis or Laurence found out about them--somebody ran the risk of
being put to bed with a shovel. There's where they had her. A bit
unbearable to think of, isn't it?" He spoke so mildly that I looked up
with astonishment and some disappointment.

"Why," said I, ruefully, "if that's as far as you've gone, we are
still at the starting point."

"No need to go farther and fare worse, parson," said he, equably. "I
saw that the first minute I could see anything but red. Yet do you
know, when she was telling us about it, I thought like a fool of
everything but the right thing, from sandbagging and shanghaing
Inglesby, down to holding up Hunter with an automatic?

"When I got my reason on straight, I went back to the starting
point--the letters, parson, the letter in the safe in Hunter's office.
Given the letters she'd be free--the one thing Inglesby doesn't want
to happen. We've got to have those letters."

My mouth was parched as with fever and I saw him through a blur.

"I don't know," he went on, "if you agree with me