er have dared to come?" Henson said, hoarsely. "I heard
your voice and I was bound to give you a welcome, even at considerable
personal inconvenience. Help me back to bed again. And now, you insolent
young dog, how dare you show your face here?"

"I came to see Chris," Littimer said, doggedly. "And I came too late.
Even if I had known that I was going to meet you, I should have been here
all the same. Oh, I know what you are going to say; I know what you
think. And some day I shall break out and defy you to do your worst."

Henson smiled as one might do at the outbreak of an angry child. His eyes
flashed and his tongue spoke words that Littimer fairly cowed before. And
yet he did not show it. He was like a boy who has found a stone for the
man who stands over him with the whip. With quick intuition Henson saw
this, and in a measure his manner changed.

"You will say next that you are not afraid of me," he suggested.

"Well," Littimer replied, slowly; "I am not so much afraid of you
as I was."

"Ah! so you imagine that you have discovered something?"

Littimer apparently struggled between a prudent desire for silence and
a disposition to speak. The sneer on the face of his enemy fairly
maddened him.

"Yes," he said, with a note of elation in his voice, "I have made a
discovery, but I am not going to tell you how or where my discovery is.
But I've found Van Sneck."

A shade of whiter pallor came over Henson's face. Then his eyes took on a
murderous, purple-black gleam. All the same, his voice was quite steady
as he replied.

"I'm afraid that is not likely to benefit you much," he said. "Would you
mind handing me that oblong black book from the dressing-table? I want
you to do something for me. What's that?"

There was just the faintest suggestion of a sound outside. It was Enid
listening with all her ears. She had not been long in discovering what
had happened. Once the ghastly farcical incubus was off her shoulders she
had followed Littimer upstairs. As she passed Henson's room the drone of
voices struck on her ears. She stood there and listened. She would have
given much for this not to have happened, but everything happened for the
worst in that accursed house.

But Henson's last words were enough for her. She gathered her skirts
together and flew down the stairs. In the hall Williams stood, with a
grin on his face, pensively scraping his chin with a dry forefinger.

"Now what's the matter, miss?" he crie