t that?"

"Whether it is here, or when it will be? I think I can."

"Where will it be when it is here?"

"Where? Oh!" The girl's eyes went to the wall close to where Eaton
stood; she seemed to measure with them a definite distance from the
door and a point shoulder high, and to resist the impulse to come over
and put her hand upon the spot. As Eaton followed her look, he heard a
slight and muffled click as if from the study; but no sound could reach
them through the study doors and what he heard came from the wall
itself.

"A safe?" he whispered.

"Yes; Miss Santoine--she's in there, isn't she?--closed it just now.
There are two of them hidden behind the books one on each side of the
door."

Eaton tapped gently on the wall; the wall was brick; the safe
undoubtedly was backed with steel.

"The best way is from inside the room," he concluded.

She nodded. "Yes. If you--"

"Look out!"

Some one now was coming downstairs. The girl had time only to whisper
swiftly, "If we don't get a chance to speak again, watch that vase."
She pointed to a bronze antique which stood on a table near them.
"When I'm sure the agreement is in the house, I'll drop a glove-button
in that--a black one, if I think it'll be in the safe on the right,
white on the left. Now go."

Eaton moved quietly on and into the drawing-room. Avery's voice
immediately afterwards was heard; he was speaking to Miss Davis, whom
he had found in the hallway. Eaton was certain there was no suspicion
that he had talked with her there; indeed, Avery seemed to suppose that
Eaton was still in the study with Harriet Santoine. It was her lapse,
then, which had let him out and had given him that chance; but it was a
lapse, he discovered, which was not likely to favor him again. From
that time, while never held strictly in restraint, he found himself
always in the sight of some one. Blatchford, in default of any one
else, now appeared to assume the oversight of him as his duty. Eaton
lunched with Blatchford, dined with Blatchford and Avery--Blatchford's
presence as a buffer against Avery's studied offense to him alone
making the meal endurable. Eaton went to his room early, where at last
he was left alone.

The day, beginning with his discovery of the fact that he was in
Santoine's house and continuing through the walk outside, which first
had shown him the lay of the grounds, and then the chance at the sight
of Santoine's study followed by the me