hat was he going to do, this man who crouched there,
nerving himself as though for some great effort! Very soon she knew.

He stole to the limit of the protection afforded him by the door. She
saw his head turn a little sideways, and she saw his eyes fixed upon a
certain spot in the wall. Then he glanced back again toward the man
writing, as though he measured the distance between them, as though he
wished even to calculate the exact nature of the movement which it was
necessary to make. Then in the midst of her wondering came the
elucidation of these things. The man poised himself. She could see him
in the act of springing. He made a dash, hit something with his hand,
and the room was in darkness! She heard him leap across the room toward
the table, and she heard the low cry of Norris Vine as he sprang to his
feet to meet this unknown assailant. She knew very well in the darkness
which way the struggle must go. Norris Vine, slim, a hater of exercise,
unmuscular, unprepared, could have no chance against an attack
like this.

Virginia's brain moved swiftly in those few moments. She heard the
quick breath of the two men as they swayed in one another's arms, and
she did not hesitate for a moment. On tiptoe, and with all the grace and
lightness which were hers, by right of her buoyant figure and buoyant
youth, she crossed the room with swift, silent footsteps, and gathered
into her hands the roll of papers upon the table. As softly as she had
come she went. The deep sobbing breaths of the two men, the half-stifled
cries with which Vine was seeking for outside help, effectually deadened
the faint swish of her skirts and the tremor of her footsteps upon the
carpeted floor.

She came and went like a dream, and when the man, in whose arms Norris
Vine was after all but a child, finally dragged his victim across the
floor by the collar and turned up the electric light, the table towards
which he looked was bare. He dropped Vine heavily upon the floor, and
stood there rooted to the spot, gazing at the place where only a few
moments before he had seen that roll of paper. A hoarse imprecation
broke from his lips, and Norris Vine, who was still conscious though
badly winded, seeing what was amiss, sat up on the carpet and gazed too,
bewildered, at the empty table. The papers were gone! There was no sign
of them there. There was no sign of any one else in the apartment. There
was nothing to indicate that any one had entered it or le