week-end motoring
trips. He would take no chances. Life was worth more than one hundred
thousand pounds.

He did not glance around.

So, the minutes passed. They passed, for the most part, in ghostly
silence, sometimes broken by the hum of the traffic below, by the horn
of a cab or car. Nothing from within the house broke that nerve-racking
stillness.

If only there had been a mirror, so placed that by moving his eyes only
he could have obtained a glimpse of the wardrobe. But there was no
mirror so placed.

Faintly to his ears came the striking of a clock. He listened intently,
but could not determine if it struck the quarter, half, three-quarters,
or hour. Certainly, from the decrease of traffic in Park Lane, it must
be getting very late, he knew.

His limbs began to ache. Cautiously he changed the position of his
slippered feet. The clock in the hall began to strike. And Rohscheimer's
heart seemed to stand still.

It struck the half-hour. So it was half-past one! He had been sitting
there for an hour--an agonised hour!

What could the Unseen be waiting for?

Gradually his heart-beats grew normal again, and his keen mind got to
work once more upon the scheme for frustrating the audacious plan of
this robber who robbed from incredible motives.

An air fleet! What rot! What did he care about air fleets? One hundred
thousand pounds! But if he presented himself at the _Gleaner_ office as
soon as it opened that morning, and explained, before the editor (curse
him!) had had time to deal with his correspondence, that by an oversight
(late night; the editor, as a man of the world, would understand) he had
been thinking of a hundred and had written a hundred thousand, and also
had written too many noughts after the amount of his subscription to the
_Gleaner_ fund, what then? The editor could not possibly object to
returning him his cheque and accepting one for a thousand. A thousand
was bad enough; but a hundred thousand!

He was growing stiff again.

Two o'clock!

Beneath his eyes lay the card which read:

"If you do so once, I _may_ only warn you----"

A sudden burst of courage came to Julius Rohscheimer. Anything, he now
determined, was preferable to this suspense.

He began to turn his head.

It was a ruse, he saw it all; a ruse to keep him there, silent,
prisoned, whilst his cheque, his precious cheque, was placed in the
hands of the _Gleaner_ people.

Around he turned--and around. The corner of th