n't she uttered
that word? The answer to this, too, seemed fairly clear. Doris had
become a fatalist. She had ceased to hide or fight. She was letting
things go "his way," as she had declared she would do.

Down that dark avenue she had called "his way" Laurie dared not even
glance. His mind was too busy making its agile twists in and out of the
tangle. Granting, then, that she had gone doggedly to meet the ultimate
issue of the experience, whatever that might be, she had nevertheless
appealed to him, Laurie, for help. Why? And why did she know
approximately where she was to be taken?

Why? Why? Why? Again and again the question had recurred to him, and
this time it dug itself in.

Despite his love for her (and he fully realized that this was what it
was), despite his own experience of the night before, he had hardly been
able to accept the fact that she was, must be, in actual physical
danger. When, now, the breath of this realization blew over him, it
checked his heart-beats and chilled his very soul. In the next instant
something in him, alert, watchful, and suspicious, addressed him like an
inner voice.

"Shaw will threaten," this voice said. "He will fight, and he will even
chloroform. But when it comes to a show-down, to the need of definite,
final action of any kind, he simply won't be there. He is venomous, he'd
_like_ to bite, but he has no fangs, and he knows it."

The vision of Shaw's face, when he had choked him during the struggle of
last night, again recurred to Laurie. He knew now the meaning of the
look in those projecting eyes. It was fear. Though he had carried off
the rest of the interview with entire assurance, during that fight the
creature had been terror-stricken.

"He'll have reason for fear the next time I get hold of him," Laurie
reflected, grimly. But that fear was of him, not of Doris. What might
not Doris be undergoing, even now?

He went to the little safe in the wall of his bedroom, and took from it
all the ready money he found there. Oh, if only Rodney were at home! But
Mr. Bangs had gone out, the hall man said. He also informed Mr. Devon
that his car was at the door.

The need of consulting Rodney increased in urgency as the difficulties
multiplied. Laurie telephoned to Bangs's favorite restaurant, to
Epstein's office, to Sonya's hotel. At the restaurant he was suavely
assured that Mr. Bangs was not in the place. At the office the voice of
an injured office boy informed him tha