a
stand against the wall.

This room also had locked windows and closed shutters, but her quick wit
had enabled her to make use of that telephone.

Shouldering the receiver out of the hook, she had called Betty's number,
and, with Genevieve stooping to listen at the dangling receiver, had
called out two or three broken sentences.

Guarded as their voices had been, however, some one in the house had
been attracted by them, and the wire had been cut at some point outside
the room. E. Eliot and Genevieve came to this conclusion after having
lost Betty and failed to raise any answer to their repeated calls.
Somebody came and looked in at them through the half-open door, and,
seeing them still bound, had gone away again with a short, contemptuous
laugh.

"No matter," said E. Eliot. "Betty heard us, and the central office will
be able to trace the call."

It was because she could depend on Betty's intelligence, she went on to
say, that she had called her instead of the Remington house--for suppose
that fool Brewster-Smith woman had come to the telephone!

She and Genevieve occupied themselves with their bonds, fumbling back
to back for a while, until Genevieve had a brilliant idea. Kneeling,
she bit at the cords which held Miss Eliot's wrists until they began to
give.

* * * * *

What Betty had done intelligently was nothing to what she had done
without meaning it. She had been unkind to Pudge. Young Sheridan was in
a condition which, according to his own way of looking at it, demanded
the utmost kindness.

Following a too free indulgence in _marrons glaces_ he had been
relegated to a diet that reduced him to the extremity of desperation.

Not only had he been forbidden to eat sweets, but while his soul still
longed for its accustomed solace, his stomach refused it, and he was
unable to eat a box of candied fruit which he had with the greatest
ingenuity secured.

And that was the occasion Betty took--herself full of nervous starts and
mysterious recourse to the telephone behind locked doors--to remind him
cruelly that he was getting flabby from staying too much in the house
and to recommend a long walk for his good.

It was plain that she would stick at nothing to get her brother out of
the way, and Pudge was cut to the heart.

Oh, well, he would go for a walk, from which he would probably be
brought home a limp and helpless cripple. Come to think of it, if he
once got started