e door
to Ruth Morton's bedroom stood ajar.

With the clerk beside her, Grace hurriedly crossed the room. With a
prayer in her heart she pushed open the bedroom door. Her companion at
the same moment felt along the door-jamb for the electric switch. In an
instant the bedroom lights were turned on.

Then Grace saw that her fears had been fully justified. On the floor,
halfway between the door and the bed, lay Ruth Morton, apparently
lifeless. Her face was the color of chalk, her eyes were closed. With a
cry, Grace fell on her knees beside the unconscious girl and with
trembling fingers felt her heart. The clerk, a weak-faced young man,
stood gazing at the scene before him in amazed horror.

"She isn't dead!" Grace exclaimed, turning an excited face to him. "Her
heart is still beating. Send for a doctor, quick!" Then, taking the
unconscious girl in her arms, she lifted her to the bed.

CHAPTER XV

Richard Duvall, realizing that the woman he sought had once more eluded
him, was for the moment unable to decide what to do next. He was
oppressed by a sense of failure. Apparently this enemy of Ruth Morton's
was far more resourceful than he had supposed. She had gotten clear
away, and there appeared no means by which he could trace her. That the
second cab, the one he had hailed, contained Grace, did not of course
occur to him. The trail appeared to be hopelessly lost.

Still, his investigations in Miss Ford's room had not been entirely
fruitless, although they had also added a startlingly new element to the
mystery of the case. Who was the person who had attacked him from the
closet? Was it the woman who had just left the house? He did not think
so. Nor was it Miss Ford herself. There had been something uncanny about
the whole experience; he was by no means certain that his assailant had
been a human being at all. And yet, its cries--its fingers, tearing at
his throat. He was unable to account for the experience at all, and
determined, as soon as possible, to repeat his visit, and sift the
matter to the bottom.

He remembered that he had seen two persons in the Ford girl's room,
after his hasty retreat. Two women, he thought, outlined against the
lighted square of the window. One of these had already left the house.
The other, Miss Ford herself, was still there. He determined to
interview her at once.

Of course, he told himself, to do so would put her on her guard, but his
visit to her room had already done