ill you take it to the
post-office for me? It's important."

"All right. Slide."

She had put it partially under the door when a doubt crept into her
mind. That was not Briggs's voice. She made a frantic effort to draw the
letter back, but stronger fingers than hers had it beyond the door. She
clutched, held tight. Then she heard a chuckle, and found herself with a
corner of the envelope in her hand.

There were voices outside, Briggs's and Rudolph's.

"Guess that's for me."

"Like hell it is."

She ran madly up the stairs again, and tried with shaking fingers to
screw the door-hinges into place again. She fully expected that they
would kill her. She heard Briggs go out, and after a time she heard
Rudolph trying to kick in the house door. Then, when the last screw
was back in place, she heard Herman's heavy step outside, and Rudolph's
voice, high, furious, and insistent.

Had Herman not been obsessed with the thing he was to do, he might have
beaten her to death that night. But he did not. She remained in her
room, without food or water. She had made up her mind to kill herself
with the knife if they came up after her, but the only sounds she heard
were of high voices, growing lower and more sinister.

After that, for days she was a prisoner. Herman moved his bed
down-stairs and slept in the sitting-room, the five or six hours of
day-light sleep which were all he required. And at night, while he was
at the mill, Rudolph sat and dozed and kept watch below. Twice a day
some meager provisions were left at the top of the stairs and her door
was unlocked. She would creep out and get them, not because she was
hungry, but because she meant to keep up her strength. Let their
vigilance slip but once, and she meant to be ready.

She learned to interpret every sound below. There were times when the
fumes from burning food came up the staircase and almost smothered her.
And there were times, she fancied, when Herman weakened and Rudolph
talked for hours, inciting and inflaming him again. She gathered, too,
that Gus's place was under surveillance, and more than once in the
middle of the night stealthy figures came in by the garden gate and
conferred with Rudolph down-stairs. Then, one evening, in the dusk
of the May twilight, she saw three of them come, one rather tall and
military of figure, and one of them carried, very carefully, a cheap
suitcase.

She knew what was in that suitcase.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

One m