ur Wachner was paying no attention either to his guest or to his
wife. He took up the chair on which he had been sitting, and placed it
out of the way near the door. Then he lifted the lighted lamp off the
table and put it on the buffet.

As he did so, Sylvia, looking up, saw the shadow of his tall, lank figure
thrown grotesquely, hugely, against the opposite wall of the room.

"Now take the cloth off the table," he said curtly. And his wife, gulping
down the last drops of her coffee, got up and obeyed him.

Sylvia suddenly realised that they were getting ready for something--that
they wanted the room cleared.

As with quick, deft fingers she folded up the cloth, Madame Wachner
exclaimed, "As you are not taking any coffee, Sylvia, perhaps it is time
for you now to get up and go away."

Sylvia Bailey looked across at the speaker, and reddened deeply. She felt
very angry. Never in the course of her pleasant, easy, prosperous life
had anyone ventured to dismiss her in this fashion from their house.

She rose, for the second time during the course of her short meal, to her
feet--

And then, in a flash, there occurred that which transformed her anger
into agonised fear--fear and terror.

The back of her neck had been grazed by something sharp and cold, and as
she gave a smothered cry she saw that her string of pearls had parted in
two. The pearls were now falling quickly one by one, and rolling all over
the floor.

Instinctively she bent down, but as she did so she heard the man behind
her make a quick movement.

She straightened herself and looked sharply round.

L'Ami Fritz was still holding in his hand the small pair of nail scissors
with which he had snipped asunder her necklace; with the other he was in
the act of taking out something from the drawer of the buffet.

She suddenly saw what that something was.

Sylvia Bailey's nerves steadied; her mind became curiously collected and
clear. There had leapt on her the knowledge that this man and woman meant
to kill her--to kill her for the sake of the pearls which were still
bounding about the floor, and for the comparatively small sum of money
which she carried slung in the leather bag below her waist.

L'Ami Fritz now stood staring at her. He had put his right hand--the hand
holding the thing he had taken out of the drawer--behind his back. He was
very pale; the sweat had broken out on his sallow, thin face.

For a horrible moment there floated across Sylv