l Gregg?' she says. 'I don't remember any such name!'

"That took the wind out of me. I only had enough left to say: 'The
gent that was writing those papers to the correspondence school to you
from the West, the one you sent your picture to and--'

"'Sent my picture to!' she says and looks as if the ground had opened
under her feet. 'You're mad!' she says. And then she looks back over
her shoulder as much as to wish she was safe back in her house!"

"D'you know why she looked back over her shoulder?"

"Just for the reason I told you."

"No, Bill. There was a gent standing up there at a window watching her
and how she acted. He's the gent that kept her from writing to you and
signing her name. He's the one who's kept her in that house. He's the
one that knew we were here watching all the time, that sent out the
girl with exact orders how she should act if you was to come out and
speak to her when you seen her! Bill, what that girl told you didn't
come out of her own head. It come out of the head of the gent across
the way. When you turned your back on her she looked like she'd run
after you and try to explain. But the fear of that fellow up in the
window was too much for her, and she didn't dare. Bill, to get at the
girl you got to get that gent I seen grinning from the window."

"Grinning?" asked Bill Gregg, grinding his teeth and starting from his
chair. "Was the skunk laughing at me?"

"Sure! Every minute."

Bill Gregg groaned. "I'll smash every bone in his ugly head."

"Shake!" said Ronicky Doone. "That's the sort of talk I wanted to
hear, and I'll help, Bill. Unless I'm away wrong, it'll take the best
that you and me can do, working together, to put that gent down!"

Chapter Nine

_A Bold Venture_

But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer, how, above all,
to make sure that he was really the power controlling Caroline Smith,
were problems which could not be solved in a moment.

Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea. "We've waited a week to see
her; now that we've seen her let's keep on waiting," he said, and
Ronicky agreed.

They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged for such a
length of time that it was impossible to keep it as strictly as it had
been observed before. Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long
watching and the shock of the disappointment of that day, went
completely to pieces and in the early evening fell asleep. But Ronicky
Doone went out for