fore Owen found courage to
open his eyes. When he did so he clutched at the instrument, eager for
the sound of a human voice.

"Hello! . . . Yes, this is Owen . . ." He glanced apprehensively over
his shoulder at the mummy. Its hand was lowered and it stood
motionless as before. He turned excitedly back to the telephone.
"It's YOU! Hicks? . . . What news? . . . . She's at Grigsby's?
What do you mean? Somebody after you? . . . Not him? . . . I
give you my word there hadn't been anything on that road for two
months. . . . What have you done? What! Nothing? You should have
called the police from Jersey. . . . All gone to pieces? . . .
Stay over there, I'll join you tonight. Yes, go back to the house
and watch. . . . What? . . . All right."

Pauline, left alone, began to regain her courage. After a few moments
she was able to stand up and move slowly about her prison room. She
tried the door and the window shutters mechanically. She searched the
room for something that might be used to batter down the door. There
was nothing. She sat on the cot and tried to think.

She sprang up again, trembling. The dry, choking smell of smoke had
reached her. Hicks's lighted cigarette had fallen among the wisps of
old wall paper in the hall.

She ran to the door. Baffled, piteous, alone, she turned--and looked
on death.

For through the cracks in the floor flashed now the golden daggers of
flame in sheaths of stifling smoke. She cowered, choking, by the outer
wall of the room.

The flame daggers grew into scimitars. The inner wall caught fire.
There was no outlet for the suffocating smoke.

She sprang to the middle of the room and seized the broken chair. With
all her might she crashed it against the door. It fell in pieces at
her feet.

She picked up a leg of the chair and, running to the window, pounded
upon the shutters. She screamed, and beat upon the shutters. It was
the rattle and crash upon the shutters that made Harry rein in his
horse before the old Grigsby house.

He saw smoke burst from the lower windows, and, battering on the locked
door, he heard her screams.

"Harry! Harry!"

It was to him she called again in her peril, as she had called before
--in the wreck of the yacht, in the den of Baskinelli, and even this
day from the rim of the runaway balloon. Always, inspired by that
call, he had found their way to safety.

He thrust the full weight of his mighty body against the door w