called up-stairs to his wife in a voice that had an edge of sudden
anxiety in it. Then getting no response, he went up, two at a time.

Mary dropped down, limp with a sudden premonition, upon the gloucester
swing in the veranda. The maid of all work, who had heard his call, came
from the kitchen just as he was returning down the stairs. Mrs. Wollaston
had gone away, she said. Pete had reported with the big car at eleven
o'clock and Paula, who apparently had been waiting for him, had driven
off at once having left word that she would not be back for lunch.

"All right," John said curtly. "You may go."

He was so white when he rejoined Mary in the veranda that she sprang up
with an involuntary cry and would have had him lie down, where she had
been sitting. But the fine steely ring in his voice stopped her short.

"Have you any idea," he asked, "where she has gone or what she has gone
to do? She came down," he went on without waiting for her answer,--"and
looked for me. Waited for me. And thanks to that--walk we took, I wasn't
here. Well, can you guess what she's done?"

"It's only a guess," Mary said, "but she may have gone to see
Martin Whitney."

"Martin Whitney?" he echoed blankly. "What for? What does she want of
him?"

"She spoke of him," Mary said, "in connection with the money, the twenty
thousand dollars..."

He broke in upon her again with a mere blank frantic echo of her words
and once more Mary steadied herself to explain.

"Her agreement with Mr. Ware required her to put up twenty thousand
dollars in some banker's hands as a guarantee that she would not break
the contract. She mentioned Martin Whitney as the natural person to
hold it. So I guessed that she might have gone to consult him about
it;--or even to ask him to lend it to her. As she said, it wouldn't
have to be spent."

"That's the essence of the contract then. It's nothing without that.
Until she gets the money and puts it up. Yet you told me nothing of it
until this moment. If you had done so--instead of inviting me to go for a
walk--and giving her a chance to get away..."

He couldn't be allowed to go on. "Do you mean that you think I did
that--for the purpose?" she asked steadily.

He flushed and turned away. "No, of course I don't. I'm half mad
over this."

He walked abruptly into the house and a moment later she heard him at the
telephone. She stayed where she was, unable to think; stunned rather than
hurt over the way he had sp