ory with a consultation of the directory
before she could ask for Staff's number.

The switchboard operator was slow to answer; and when he did, there
followed one of those exasperating delays, apparently so inexcusable....

She experienced a sensation of faintness and dizziness; her limbs were
trembling; she felt as though sleep were overcoming her as she stood;
but a little more and she had strained endurance to the
breaking-point....

[Illustration: Fascinated, dumb with terror, she watched

_Page 193_]

At length the connection was made. Staff's agitated voice seemed drawn
thin by an immense distance. By a supreme effort she managed to spur her
flagging faculties and began to falter her incredible story, but had
barely swung into the second sentence when her voice died in her throat
and her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth.

The telephone instrument was fixed to the wall near the clothes-closet,
the door of which framed a long mirror. This door, standing slightly
ajar, reflected to her vision the hall door.

She had detected a movement in the mirror. The hall door was
opening--slowly, gently, noiselessly, inch by inch. Fascinated, dumb
with terror, she watched. She saw the hand that held the knob--a small
hand, thin and fragile; then the wrist, then part of the arm.... A head
appeared in the opening, curiously suggesting the head of a bird, thinly
thatched with hair of a faded yellow; out of its face, small eyes
watched her, steadfastly inquisitive.

Almost mechanically she replaced the receiver on the hook and turned
away from the wall, stretching forth her hands in a gesture of pitiful
supplication....

XI

THE COLD GREY DAWN

"Well?" snapped Iff irritably. "What're you staring at?"

"You," Staff replied calmly. "I was thinking--"

"About me? What?"

"Merely that you are apparently as much cut up as if the necklace were
yours--as if you were in danger of being robbed, instead of Miss
Landis--by way of Miss Searle."

"And I am!" asserted Iff vigorously. "I am, damn it! I'm in no danger of
losing any necklace; but if he gets away with the goods, that infernal
scoundrel will manage some way to implicate me and rob me of my good
name and my liberty as well. Hell!" he exploded--"seems to me I'm
entitled to be excited!"

Staff's unspoken comment was that this explanation of the little man's
agitation was something strained and inconclu