nced about the daintily furnished room with a smile. The
appointments were simple, almost girlish, in spite of their owner's
large salary. Mrs. Morton began to set the room to rights. She had
finished making the bed, and had gone over to the dressing table to
arrange the articles upon it, when a square of white upon the floor
attracted her attention.

It lay upon the rug in front of the dressing table, and appeared to be a
letter of some sort.

Supposing it to be something that the girl had dropped in the hurry of
leaving, Mrs. Morton stooped and picked it up. Then a queer feeling of
dismay came over her. The large square white envelope, the typewritten
address, bore a singular and disquieting resemblance to the one in which
the threatening letter had been received so short a time before.

With trembling hands, Mrs. Morton tore the envelope open and removed the
folded sheet of paper within. When her eyes fell upon the contents of
the latter, she shuddered, and stood white with fear.

There was a message in typewritten characters upon the sheet, and Mrs.
Morton read it with a groan of despair.

"_Only twenty-nine days more!_" the message said. "We shall not fail."
Below the words grinned the frightful death's head seal.

CHAPTER II

Mrs. Harriet Morton was a courageous woman, but when she read the second
threat against her daughter, she was filled with instant indignation and
horror. The thing was so appallingly mysterious, so utterly without
reasonable explanation.

Ruth had left the room but a few moments before. Certainly the letter
was not upon the floor then. The maid, Nora, had gone with her. That
removed her from any suspicion, even had such a thought been reasonable
or possible, and Mrs. Morton felt it was not. The only other person in
the apartment was Mary, their old cook, a negro from the south, who had
been a faithful and patient member of the Morton household for over ten
years. That she could have had a hand in placing this mysterious message
in Ruth's bedroom seemed incredible, not to be entertained for a moment.
And yet, there was the message, appallingly simple, direct, threatening.
"_Only twenty-nine days more!_" Mrs. Morton shuddered.

She glanced about the room. How had the letter come there? Certainly not
by means of the door. Yet it seemed equally out of the question that it
could have been brought in through one of the windows.

There were two in the room, one facing to the front