ds. But at the time, the
brief conversation over the telephone seemed to me both horrible and
unnatural.

From a great distance a woman's voice said, "Is anything wrong there?"

That was the first question, and I felt quite sure that it was the
Bullard girl's voice. That is, looking back from the safety of the next
day, I so decided. At the time I had no thought whatever.

"There is nothing wrong," I replied. I do not know why I said it. Surely
there was enough wrong, with Willie chasing an armed intruder through
the garden.

I thought the connection had been cut, for there was a buzzing on the
wire. But a second or so later there came an entirely different voice,
one I had never heard before, a plaintive voice, full, I thought, of
tears.

"Oh, please," said this voice, "go out and look in your garden, or along
the road. Please--quickly!"

"You will have to explain," I said impatiently. "Of course we will go
and look, but who is it, and why--"

I was cut off there, definitely, and I could not get "central's"
attention again.

Willie's voice from the veranda boomed through the lower floor. "This is
I," he called, "No boiling water, please. I am coming in."

He went into the library and lighted a lamp. He was smiling when I
entered, a reassuring smile, but rather a sheepish one, too.

"To think of letting him get by like that!" he said. "The cheapest kind
of a trick. He had slammed the door before to make me think he had gone
out, and all the time he was inside. And you--why didn't you scream?"

"I thought it was you," I told him.

The library was in chaos. Letters were lying about, papers, books. The
drawer of the large desk-table in the center of the room had been drawn
out and searched. "The History of Bolivar County," for instance, was
lying on the floor, face down, in a most ignoble position. In one place
books had been taken from a recess by the fireplace, revealing a small
wall cupboard behind. I had never known of the hiding-place, but a
glance into it revealed only a bottle of red ink and the manuscript of a
sermon on missions.

Standing in the disorder of the room, I told Willie about the
telephone-message. He listened attentively, and at first skeptically.

"Probably a ruse to get us out of the house, but coming a trifle late
to be useful," was his comment. But I had read distress in the second
voice, and said so. At last he went to the telephone.

"I'll verify it," he explained. "If some one