and the voices
came from there too, and, low-toned to begin with, were naturally
muffled into whispers by the time they reached her.

She had only, then, to step the five or six feet across the narrow hall
in order to reach Nicky Viner's door, and unless by some unfortunate
chance whoever was in that room happened to come out into the hall at
the same moment, she would--Yes, it was all right! She was trying Nicky
Viner's door now. It was unlocked, and as she opened it for the space of
a crack, there showed a tiny chink of light, so faint and meager that
it seemed to shrink timorously back again as though put to rout by the
massed blackness--but it was enough to evidence the fact that Nicky
Viner was at home. It was all simple enough now. Old Viner would
undoubtedly make some exclamation at her sudden and stealthy entrance,
but once she was inside without those in the next room either having
heard or seen her, it would not matter.

Another inch she pushed the door open, another--and then another. And
then quickly, silently, she tip-toed over the threshold and closed the
door softly behind her. The light came from the inner room and shone
through the connecting door, which was open, and there was movement from
within, and a low, growling voice, petulant, whining, as though an old
man were mumbling complainingly to himself. She smiled coldly. It was
very like Nicky Viner--it was a habit of his to talk to himself, she
remembered. And, also, she had never heard Nicky Viner do anything else
but grumble and complain.

But she could not see fully into the other room, only into a corner of
it, for the two doors were located diagonally across from one another,
and her hand, in a startled way, went suddenly to her lips, as though
mechanically to help choke back and stifle the almost overpowering
impulse to cry out that arose within her. Nicky Viner was not alone in
there! A figure had come into her line of vision in that other room,
not Nicky Viner, not any of the gang--and she stared now in incredulous
amazement, scarcely able to believe her eyes. And then, suddenly cool
and self-possessed again, relieved in a curious way because the element
of personal danger was as a consequence eliminated, she began to
understand why she had been forestalled in her efforts at Perlmer's
office when she had been so sure that she would be first upon the scene.
It was not Danglar, or the Cricket, or Skeeny, or any of the band who
had forestalle