door?"

"Open it!" Paul observed truculently. "Watch me!"

He threw himself against the door, but it gave suddenly, and sent him
sprawling inside at Doyle's feet. He was up in an instant, squared to
fight, but he only met Jim Doyle's mocking smile. Doyle stood, arms
folded, and watched Anthony Cardew enter his house. Whatever he feared
he covered with the cynical mask that was his face.

He made no move, offered no speech.

"Is she upstairs?"

"She is asleep. Do you intend to disturb her?"

"I do," said old Anthony grimly. "I'll go first, Paul. You follow me,
but I'd advise you to come up backwards."

Suddenly Doyle laughed.

"What!" he said, "Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my humble
home, and anticipating violence! You underestimate the honor you are
doing me."

He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until the
two men had reached the top. Then he followed them. The mask had dropped
from his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it. If she talked,
he would kill her. But she knew that. She was not a fool.

Elinor lay in the bed, listening. She had recognized her father's voice,
and her first impulse was one of almost unbearable relief. They had
found her. They had come to take her away. For she knew now that she was
a prisoner; even without the broken leg she would have been a prisoner.
The girl downstairs was one of them, and her jailer. A jailer who fed
her, and gave her grudgingly the attention she required, but that was
all.

Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on the
night after her injury he had taken pains to verify his suspicions. He
had found first her little store of money, and that had angered him. In
the end he had broken open a locked trinket box and found a notebook
in which for months she had kept her careful records. Here and there,
scattered among house accounts, were the names of the radical members
of The Central Labor Council, and other names, spoken before her and
carefully remembered. He had read them out to her as he came to them,
suffering as she was, and she had expected death then. But he had not
killed her. He had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a
mad-eyed fanatic named Olga, and from that time on he visited her once
daily. In his anger and triumph over her he devised the most cunning
of all punishments; he told her of the movement's progress, of its
ingeniously contrived devilments in store, of i