for something
more than a good-night. No more than that did she give him, however. He
himself was obliged to introduce the subject in his mind. "If I should
come again, would Helen tell me more?"

"Perhaps. From the excellent result to-night I should call it likely."

"Then may I come again?" His voice broke once, as with eagerness.

"Certainly. Will you make an appointment?"

"Tuesday night?"

"I had an engagement for Tuesday. Could you come as well on Friday?"

And though it meant postponing a directors' meeting, he answered
promptly:

"Very well. Say Friday at eight."

And now he was in his automobile. He settled himself against the
cushions and held the attitude, without motion. For five minutes he sat
so, until the chauffeur, who had been throwing nervous backward glances
through the limousine windows, asked:

"I beg your pardon, sir, did you say 'home'?"

"Yes, home," responded Norcross. And even on those words, his voice
broke again.

Mrs. Markham stood beside the table, hardly moving, until she knew by
whir and horn that the Norcross automobile was gone. Then she sent
Ellen to bed, and herself moved quickly to a secretary in the little
alcove library back of the drawing-room. Taking a key from her bosom,
she unlocked a drawer and took out a packet of yellow legal cap paper.
Holding this document concealed in a fold of her waist, she passed
rapidly to an apartment upstairs. She opened the door softly, and
listened. Nothing sounded within but the light, even breathing of a
sleeper. After a moment, she crossed the room, finding her way expertly
in the darkness. Well within, she knelt and began some operation on the
floor.

And her hand made a slip. A crash echoed through the house. Following
the startled, half-articulate cry of a sudden awakening, Mrs. Markham,
still finding her way with marvelous precision in the darkness, passed
through a set of portieres and crossed to the bed.

"Hush, dear," she said, "I only came upstairs to borrow a handkerchief.
Go to sleep. I'm sure it won't bother your rest. Don't think of it
again."

IX

ROSALIE'S SECOND REPORT

As though to prove her maxim, "Nothing turns out the way you expect
it," Rosalie, on her second Tuesday off, failed to meet her anxious
young employer in the ladies' parlor of the Hotel Greenwich. Instead
came a page, calling "Dr. Blake!" It was a note--"Stuyvesant Fish Park
as soon as you get this. R. Le G.," it read. Dr. Blake leap