he answered.

"It was to discuss this," he continued, "that we met to-night. I laid a
trap for my four friends, and they fell into it. They have signed a
document pledging themselves to resist this bill, in such a fashion that
their doing so renders them parties to an illegal conspiracy. That
document is in my possession. They all signed it, and it was left for me
to be the last. No one noticed that my name was written across a piece
of paper laid over the document itself. Now this I keep as a hostage
over them. Sooner or later, when their plans mature, it will occur to
them what they have done. They will remember that, so long as I hold
this document, I have them in my power. Weiss was uneasy before he left
the room to-night. In less than a week they will be trying to regain
possession of that document under some pretext or other. I am going to
show you where I keep it."

He pushed his chair away and pulled up the rug from beneath it. Even
then Virginia, who had obeyed his gesture and was standing by his side,
could see nothing unusual in the appearance of the hardwood floor. She
watched his finger, however, count the cracks from a knot in the wood.
Then he pressed a certain spot, and one of the blocks sprang up a little
way and was easily removed. Beneath it was the steel lid of a small
coffer, with two keyholes.

"This is my hiding-place," he said calmly, "and these," he added, "are
the keys."

He laid before her two keys of curious device, and he took from a drawer
in his desk a thin chain of platinum and gold.

"Now," he said, "you are going to be the guardian of these keys. You are
going to wear this chain around your neck all the time, and the keys are
going in here."

He drew from his pocket a gold locket, and touching the spring showed
her that inside, instead of any place for a photograph, were little
embedded pads of velvet, shaped for the keys. He placed them in and hung
the locket around her neck. She looked at it, half terrified.

"I do not understand," she said, "why you trust me with this. Surely it
would be safer with you!"

He smiled grimly.

"You do not know my friends," he said. "Remember that in my possession
is not only the document which must cause them to abandon their great
scheme of attack upon me, but also that that same document, if made
proper use of, means ruin and ridicule for them. New York is a civilized
city, it is true, but money can buy the assassin's pistol to-day as
easi