or all in the one great instant. Won't you please, please,
Captain Barry, throw aside all doubts of Mr. Vandersee?"

She clasped both hands about his arm, gazed pleadingly into his dark
face, and her red lips quivered piteously.

"I'd be glad to, Mrs. Goring, only for Miss Sheldon," replied Barry, his
brain whirling again. "I have always believed in Vandersee, except at
moments like these, when I think I ought to be taken more into his
confidence. Can you wonder why I doubt, when that innocent girl vanishes
like a ghost, and we all know what kind of snake waits in the grass for
her?"

"Oh, I wish my--Mr. Vandersee--would come!" panted Mrs. Goring. "What
can I say to you, Captain? I understand, perfectly, your emotions. Yet I
can only repeat what seems to you a parrot cry, that Miss Sheldon shall
not suffer one jot at Leyden's hands, except the suffering that must
come with disillusionment. I say it again, and I swear it by the God
that shall kill me if I lie!"

Barry rumpled his hair in perplexity. He did believe this pleading
woman, usually so capable but now so piteous. But everything that had
lately happened went to make chaos more chaotic in his mind. He placed
his hand gently on the woman's shaking shoulder and soothed her:

"Yes, yes, Mrs. Goring, I believe all you say about Vandersee and am
trying to believe the rest. I want to, because I have long since ceased
to puzzle myself over your errand here or the manner of your arrival,
and only see in you a woman bravely carrying on some great struggle that
I know nothing of yet. But you ran in here five minutes ago, crying out
that Natalie had vanished--the one thing on earth to send me headlong
through the place with murder in my soul--and now you try to prevent me
doing a thing towards finding what's happened to her."

"Oh, I can't explain it, Captain," she cried, but her face was brighter
now. "I'm only a woman, too, and Natalie's disappearance shocked me,
although I had expected it. I ran in on an impulse; an impulse forced me
to try to restrain you; and I made a bad mess of it altogether, I'm
afraid. It is so utterly vital, so tremendously imperative, that Leyden
comes to no serious harm before Mr. Vandersee is ready to strike, that I
feared to let you or Mr. Little seek him out in hot temper to kill him
perhaps. But I do care about Natalie. Though I know quite well that she
will suffer no harm at Leyden's hands here, my blood curdles at the
thought of her