rl was trapped. Susan called to her
father, daringly, a little wildly. He slued round to her, leaning
heavily on the stair rail, his face green-white, his lips held back by
some evil reflex in a fixed, appalling grin.

It was the face of a madman.... He raised his right hand, slowly, and a
tiny prismatic gleam darted from the blade of an opened razor--one of
his precious set of six. He had evidently used it to destroy the banjo
head, which he would never have done in his right mind. But now he made
a shocking gesture with the blade, significant of other uses; then
turned, crouching once more, to continue upward. Susan tried to cry out,
tried to follow him, until the room slid from its moorings into a
whirlpool of humming blackness....

* * * * *

That is all Susan remembers for some time. It is just as well.

VI

What Susan next recalls is an intense blare of light, rousing her from
her nothingness, like trumpets. Her immediate confused notion was that
the gates of hell had been flung wide for her; and when a tall black
figure presently cut across the merciless rays and towered before her,
she thought it must be the devil. But the intense blare came from the
head lights of my touring car, and the tall black devil was I. A greatly
puzzled and compassionate devil I was too! Maltby Phar--that exquisite
anarchist--was staying with me, and we had run down to the shore for
dinner, hoping to mitigate the heat by the ride, and my new sensation of
frustrate middle-age by broiled live lobsters. It was past eleven. I had
just dropped Maltby at the house and had run my car round to the garage
where Bob worked, meaning to leave it there overnight so Bob could begin
patching at it the first thing in the morning. It had been bucking its
way along on three cylinders or less all day.

Bob's garage lay back from the street down a narrow alley. Judge, then,
of my astonishment as I nosed my car up to its shut double doors! There,
on the concrete incline before the doors, lay a small crumpled figure,
half-curled, like an unearthed cut-worm, about a shining dinner pail. I
brought the car to a sudden dead stop. The small figure partly
uncrumpled, and a white, blinded little face lifted toward me. It was
Bob's youngster! What was she up to, lying there on the ribbed concrete
at this time of night? And in heaven's name--why the dinner pail? I
jumped down to investigate.

"You're Susan Blake, aren't you?"