ith
no emotion but slowly awakening disgust, against which she found it
useless to struggle. She watched him with a sense of detachment and
aloofness, as if looking down on him from a great height, while he tore
upon the manila envelope and gave vent to a little cry of satisfaction.
They at last possessed the Penfield securities. Then she went over and
replenished the waning flame in the alcohol lamp.

"We've got to get away from here now," said Durkin quickly. "And the
sooner the better!"

She looked about her, a little helplessly. Then she glanced at Keenan.
"See, he's coming to!"

"Are you ready?" Durkin demanded sharply.

"Yes," she answered, in her dead and resigned voice, as she took up her
hat and coat. "But where are we going?"

"I'll tell you on the way down. Only you must get what you want, and
hurry!"

"But is it safe now?" she demurred, "and for _you_?"

He thought for a moment, with his hand on the doorknob. Then he turned
back.

"You'd better keep this, then, until I find what we have to face,
outside here!"

He passed into her hand the manila envelope, and stepped out into the
hall.

A moment later she had secreted the packet, along with Pobloff's
revolver, which she picked up from the floor. Then she ran to the
door, and locked it. She would fight like a hornet, now, she inwardly
vowed, for what she held.

Then she caught her breath, behind the locked door, for the sounds that
crept in from the hallway told her that her fear had not been
groundless.

She heard Durkin's little choked cry of pain and surprise, for he had
been seized, she knew, and pinned back against the door. It was
Pobloff's men, she told herself. They had him by the throat, she knew
by the sound of the guttural oaths which they were trying to choke
back. She could hear the kick and scrape of feet, the movement of his
writhing and twisting body against the door, as on a sounding-board.
She surmised that they had his arms held, otherwise he would surely
have used his revolver. She was conscious of a sort of wild joy at the
thought that he could not, for they were going through him, from the
quieted sounds, pocket by pocket, and she knew he would have shot them
if he could.

"There's nothing here!" said a voice in French. Frank, listening so
close to them, could hear the three men breathe and pant.

"Then the woman has it!" answered the other voice, likewise in French.

"Shut up! She'll get on!" And Fr