looked out.
The window was on the side of the house away from the cross street, and
she nodded her head reassuringly to herself as she noted that it gave on
a narrow strip of grass, it could not be called lawn, that separated the
Hayden-Bond mansion from the house next door; that the window was little
more than shoulder-high from the ground; and that the Avenue was within
easy and inviting reach along that little strip of grass between the two
houses.

She left the window open, and retraced her steps across the room, going
now to the littered mass of papers on the floor near the safe. She began
to search carefully amongst them. She smiled a little curiously as
she came across the plush-lined jeweler's case that had contained the
necklace, and which had evidently been contemptuously discarded by the
Cricket and his confederates; but it took her longer to find the paper
for which she was searching. And then she came upon it--a grease-smeared
advertisement for some automobile appliances, a well-defined greasy
finger-print at one edge--and thrust the paper into her pocket.

And now suddenly her heartbeat began to quicken again until its thumping
became tumultuous. She was ready now. She looked around her, using
the flashlight, and her eyes rested appraisingly on one of the great
clusters of shields and arms that hung low down on the wall between the
window and the door by which she had entered. Yes, that would do. Her
lips tightened. It would have been so easy if there had not been that
cash to account for! She could replace the necklace, but she could not
replace the cash--and one, as far as the Sparrow was concerned, was as
bad as the other. But there was a way, and it was simple enough. She
whispered to herself that it was not, after all, very dangerous, that
the cards were all in her own hands. She had only to pull down those
shields with a clatter to the floor, which would arouse some one of the
household, and as that some one reached the library door and opened
it, she would be disappearing through the window, and the necklace, as
though it had slipped from her pocket or grasp in her wild effort to
escape, would be lying behind her on the floor. They would see that
it was not the Sparrow; and there would be no question as to where the
money was gone, since the money had not been dropped. There was the
interval, of course, that must elapse between the accident that knocked
the shields from the wall and the time it wo