r heart in her mouth. Mercifully, she
was not followed.

Again--and not once but a number of times--the sound of a motor drove
her from the path to the safe obscurity of the trees and undergrowth.
But in every such instance her apprehensions were without foundation;
the machines were mostly touring-cars or limousines beating homeward
from some late festivity.

And twice she thought to descry at a distance the grey-coated figure of
a policeman; but each time, when she had gained the spot, the man had
vanished--or else some phenomenon of light and shadow had misled her.

Minutes, in themselves seemingly endless, ran into hours while she
wandered (so heavy with fatigue that she found herself wondering how it
was that she didn't collapse from sheer exhaustion on any one of the
interminable array of benches that she passed) dragging her leaden feet
and aching limbs and struggling to hold up her hot and throbbing head.

It was long after three when finally she emerged at
One-hundred-and-tenth Street and Lenox Avenue. And here fortune proved
more kind: she blundered blindly almost into the arms of a policeman,
stumbled through her brief story and dragged wearily on his arm over to
Central Park West. Here he put her aboard a southbound Eighth Avenue
surface-car, instructing the conductor where she was to get off and then
presumably used the telephone on his beat to such effect that she was
met on alighting by another man in uniform who escorted her to the St.
Simon. She was too tired, too thoroughly worn out, to ask him how it
happened that he was waiting for her, or even to do more than give him a
bare word of thanks. As for complaining of her adventure to the
night-clerk (who stared as she passed through to the elevator) no
imaginable consideration could have induced her to stop for any such
purpose.

But one thing was clear to her intelligence, to be attended to before
she toppled over on her bed: Staff must be warned by telephone of the
attempt to steal the necklace and the reason why she had not been able
to reach his residence. And if this were to be accomplished, she must do
it before she dared sit down.

In conformance with this fixed idea, she turned directly to the
telephone after closing the door of her room--pausing neither to strip
off her gloves and remove her hat nor even to relieve her aching wrist
of the handbag which, with its precious contents, dangled on its silken
thong.

She had to refresh her mem