fear that he had seen in McGuire's fanatical gray eyes
was born of something more than these. Whatever it was that McGuire
feared, it reached further within--a threat which would destroy not his
body alone, but something more vital even than that--the very spirit
that lived within him.

Of his career, Peter knew nothing more than Sheldon, Senior, had told
him--a successful man who told nothing of his business except to the
Treasury Department, a silent man, with a passion for making money. What
could he fear? Whom? What specter out of the past could conjure up the
visions he had seen dancing between McGuire's eyes and his own?

These questions it seemed were not to be answered and Peter, as he sat
down at the supper table, put them resolutely from his mind and
addressed himself to the excellent meal provided by the housekeeper. For
the present, at least, fortune smiled upon him. The terrors of his
employer could not long prevail against the healthy appetite of
six-and-twenty.

But it was not long before Peter discovered that the atmosphere of the
room upstairs pervaded the dining room, library and halls. There were a
cook and housemaid he discovered, neither of them visible. The
housekeeper, if attentive, was silent, and the man who had opened the
front door, who seemed to be a kind of general factotum, as well as
personal bodyguard to Mr. McGuire, crept furtively about the house in an
unquiet manner which would have been disturbing to the digestion of one
less timorous than Peter.

Before the meal was finished this man came into the room and laid a
police whistle, a large new revolver and a box of cartridges beside
Peter's dish of strawberries.

"These are for you, sir," he whispered sepulchrally. "Mr. McGuire asked
me to give them to you--for to-night."

"Thanks," said Peter, "and you----"

"I'm Stryker, sir, Mr. McGuire's valet."

"Oh!"

Peter's accent of surprise came from his inability to reconcile Stryker
with the soiled shirt and the three days' growth of beard on the man
upstairs, which more than ever testified to the disorder of his mental
condition.

And as Stryker went out and his footsteps were heard no more, the
housekeeper emerged cautiously from the pantry.

"Is everything all right, Mr. Nichols?" she asked in a stage whisper.

"Right as rain. Delicious! I'm very much obliged to you."

"I mean--er--there ain't anythin' else ye'd like?"

"Nothing, thanks," said Peter, taking up the revol