"Just hurry and
go."

"If you need me, write or wire," he said.

"Good-night!"

She retreated a little way from him, as if she felt he might exact a
husband's right of farewell, which the absence of witnesses made quite
unessential.

"Good-night," she answered, adding wistfully; "I am very grateful,
believe me."

She gave him her hand, and his own hand trembled as he took it.

A moment later he was out upon the street, a wild, sweet pleasure in
his veins.

Across the way a man's dark figure detached itself from the darkness of
a doorstep and followed where Garrison went.

Shadowed to his very door, Garrison came to his humble place of abode
with his mind in a region of dreams.

It was not until he stood in his room, and his hand lay against his
pocket, that he thought again of Dorothy's parcel surrendered to his
keeping. He took it out. He felt he had a right to know its contents.

It had not been sealed.

He removed the paper, disclosing a narrow, shallow box, daintily
covered with leather. It was merely snapped shut with a catch.

He opened it, and an exclamation of astonishment escaped his lips.

It contained two necklaces--one of diamonds and one of pearls, the gems
of both marvelously fine.

CHAPTER V

THE "SHADOW"

Nothing more disquieting than this possession of the necklaces could
possibly have happened to Garrison. He was filled with vague
suspicions and alarms. The thing was wholly baffling.

What it signified he could not conjecture. His mind went at once to
that momentary scene at the house he had entered by mistake, and in
which he had been confronted by the masked young woman, with the jewels
on her throat, she who had patted his face and familiarly called him by
name.

He could not possibly doubt the two ropes of gems were the same. The
fact that Dorothy's cousin, in the garb of Satan, had undoubtedly
participated in the masking party, aroused disturbing possibilities in
Garrison's mind.

What was the web in which he was entangled?

To have Theodore come to the house in his long, concealing coat,
straight from the maskers next door; to have him disappear, and then to
have Dorothy bring forth these gems with such wholly unimaginable trust
in his honesty, brought him face to face with a brand-new mystery from
which he almost shrank. Reflections on thefts, wherein women were
accomplices, could not be driven from his brain.

Here was Dorothy suddenly requiring a p