o
see her.

Suddenly the idea of being shut away, even temporarily, from so great
and wonderful a world became intolerable. The possibility of arrest
before I could get to Richmond was hideous, the night without end.

I made my escape the next morning through the stable back of the house,
and then, by devious dark and winding ways, to the office. There, after
a conference with Blobs, whose features fairly jerked with excitement,
I double-locked the door of my private office and finished off some
imperative work. By ten o'clock I was free, and for the twentieth time
I consulted my train schedule. At five minutes after ten, with McKnight
not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had
agreed upon, and on being admitted slipped in and quietly closed the
door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple
dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous and stealthy
expression.

"They're here," he said, "two of 'em, and that crazy Stuart wasn't on,
and said you were somewhere in the building."

A door slammed outside, followed by steps on the uncarpeted outer
office.

"This way," said Blobs, in a husky undertone, and, darting into a
lavatory, threw open a door that I had always supposed locked. Thence
into a back hall piled high with boxes and past the presses of a
bookbindery to the freight elevator.

Greatly to Blobs' disappointment, there was no pursuit. I was
exhilarated but out of breath when we emerged into an alleyway, and the
sharp daylight shone on Blobs' excited face.

"Great sport, isn't it?" I panted, dropping a dollar into his
palm, inked to correspond with his face. "Regular walk-away in the
hundred-yard dash."

"Gimme two dollars more and I'll drop 'em down the elevator shaft," he
suggested ferociously. I left him there with his blood-thirsty schemes,
and started for the station. I had a tendency to look behind me now and
then, but I reached the station unnoticed. The afternoon was hot, the
train rolled slowly along, stopping to pant at sweltering stations,
from whose roofs the heat rose in waves. But I noticed these things
objectively, not subjectively, for at the end of the journey was a girl
with blue eyes and dark brown hair, hair that could--had I not seen
it?--hang loose in bewitching tangles or be twisted into little coils of
delight.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE SEA, THE SAND, THE STARS

I telephoned as soon as I reached my hotel, and I had not k