sion of
three, led by a young woman with a bunch of keys at her girdle. The
procession halted for the opening of a massive gate in the steel grille
at the rear of the public lobby; after which, with the gate latching
itself automatically behind him, Griswold found himself in the grated
corridor facing the safety deposit vaults.

"Number three-forty-five-A, please," his companion was saying to the
young woman custodian, and he stood aside and admired the workmanship of
the complicated time-locks while the two entered the electric-lighted
vault and jointly opened one of the multitude of small safes. When Miss
Grierson came out, she was carrying a small, japanned document box under
her arm, and her eyes were shining with a soft light that was new to the
man who was waiting in the corridor. "Come with me to one of the
coupon-rooms," she said; and then to the custodian: "You needn't stay;
I'll ring when we want to be let out."

Griswold followed in mild bewilderment when she turned aside to one of
the little mahogany-lined cells set apart for the use of the
safe-holders, saw her press the button which switched the lights on, and
mechanically obeyed her signal to close the door. When their complete
privacy was assured, she put the japanned box on the tiny table and
motioned him to one of the two chairs.

"Do you know why I have brought you here?" she asked, when he was
sitting within arm's-reach of the small black box.

"How should I?" he said. "You take me where you please, and when you
please, and I ask no questions. I am too well contented to be with you
to care very much about the whys and wherefores."

"Oh, how nicely you say it!" she commended, with the frank little laugh
which he had come to know and to seek to provoke. She was standing
against the opposite cell wall with her shoulders squared and her hands
behind her: the pose, whether intentional or natural, was dramatically
perfect and altogether bewitching. "I was born to be your fairy
godmother, I think," she went on joyously. "Tell me; when you bought
your ticket to Wahaska that night in St. Louis, were you meaning to come
here to find work?--the bread-and-butter work?"

"No," he admitted; "I had money, then."

"What became of it?"

"I don't know. I suppose it was stolen from me on the train. It was in
a package in one of my suit-cases; and Doctor Farnham said----"

"I know; he told you that we had searched your suit-cases when you were
at your worst--