quite
ordinary. "However, we can try. She seems very comfortable. It's a pity
to rouse her."

Here the prisoner in the furnace room broke out afresh. It sounded
as though he had taken a lump of coal and was attacking the lock. Mr.
Harbison followed the noise, and I could hear him arguing, not gently.

"Another sound," he finished, "and you won't get out of here at all,
unless you crawl up the furnace pipe!"

When he came back, Bella was rousing. She lifted her head with her eyes
shut and then opened them one at a time, blinked, and sat up. She didn't
see him at first.

"You wretch!" she said ungratefully, after she had yawned. "Do you know
what time it is? And that--" Then she saw Mr. Harbison and sat staring
at him.

"This is Mr. Harbison," I said to her hastily. "He--he came with Anne
and Dal and--he is shut in, too."

By that time Bella had seen how handsome he was, and she took a hair pin
out of her mouth, and arched her eyebrows, which was always Bella's best
pose.

"I am Miss Knowles," she said sweetly (of course, the court had given
her back her name), "and I stopped in tonight, thinking the house
was empty, to see about a--a butler. Unfortunately, the house was
quarantined just at that time, and--here I am. Surely there can not be
any harm in helping me to get out?" (Pleading tone.) "I have not been
exposed to any contagion, and in the exhausted state of my health the
confinement would be positively dangerous."

She rolled her eyes at him, and I could see she was making an
impression. Of course she was free. She had a perfect right to marry
again, but I will say this: Bella is a lot better looking by electric
light than she is the next morning.

The upshot of it was that the gentleman who built bridges and looked
down on society from a lofty, lonely pinnacle agreed to help one of the
most gleaming members of the aforesaid society to outwit the law.

It took about fifteen minutes to quiet the policeman. Nobody ever knew
what Mr. Harbison did to him, but for twenty-four hours he was quite
tractable. He changed after that, but that comes later in the story.
Anyhow, the Harbison man went upstairs and came down with a Bagdad
curtain and a cushion to match, and took them into the furnace room,
and came out and locked the door behind him, and then we were ready for
Bella's escape.

But there were four special officers and three reporters watching the
house, as a result of Max Reed's idiocy. Once, after t