f saving
yourselves--though it's compounding a felony or something, I suppose! We
can put you in the way of replacing the heirlooms in the night, just as
they were taken away--by that secret passage you know. If you try to
play us false, and hope to get the things back, we won't have mercy a
second time. We shall find Barlow before you can warn him. And as for
his nephews----"

"Yes! _What_ about his nephews?" broke in a rough voice.

I started (only a statue could have resisted that start!) and turning my
head I saw a tall young man close behind me, in the doorway by which I'd
entered. Whether or not Mrs. Barlow had seen him, I don't know. She did
not venture to speak, but a glance showed me a gleam of malicious relief
in the eyes I had once thought limpid as a brook. If she'd ever felt any
fondness for me, it was gone. She hated and feared me with a deadly
fear. The thought shot through my brain that she would willingly sit
still and see me murdered, if she and her husband could be saved from
open shame by my disappearance.

The man in the doorway was sunburned to a lobster-red, and had features
like those of some gargoyle. He must have been eavesdropping long enough
to gather a good deal of information, for there was fury in his eyes,
and deadly decision in the set of his big jaw.

Where was Roger Fane? I wondered. Without Roger I was lost, and my fate
might never be known. Suddenly I was icily afraid--for something might
have happened to Roger. But at that same frozen instant a very strange
thing happened to me. _My thoughts flew to Sir James Courtenaye!_ I had
always disliked him--or fancied so. But he was so strong--such a giant
of a man! What a wonderful champion he would be now! What _hash_ he
would make of the Barlow twins! Quickly I controlled myself. This was
the moment when the game of Bluff (which had served me well so far)
might be my one weapon of defence.

"As for Barlow's nephews," I echoed, with false calmness, "theirs is the
principal guilt, and theirs ought to be the heaviest punishment."

The Crimson Gargoyle shut the door, deliberately, with a horrid,
purposeful kind of deliberation, and with a stride or two came close to
me. I stepped back, but he followed, towering above me with the air of a
big bullying boy out to scare the life from a little one. To give him
stare for stare I had to look straight up, my chin raised, and the
threatening eyes, the great red face, seemed to fill the world--a