d when I didn't appreciate what he was offering, Mr.
Fry got mad. He told me he'd keep me here until I did, so I--I just went
to bed and counted on getting out overnight, somehow. I tried it and I
missed fire, and this morning he discovered that I was a girl. That's
the whole story; we've all been trying to get me out of here ever
since--and I'm still here!"

"But the trunk----" Hobart Hitchin put in doggedly.

"I was in the trunk," said Mary. "We thought I could get to Felice's
room that way, but Felice was gone, so Wilkins brought me back." She
looked at her father steadily and almost confidently. "That weird tale
about having me drugged was just to save me, dad, and maybe if the door
hadn't blown open I'd have been home about three and swearing to it.
That's all. Mr. Fry--Mr. Boller, too--have been too nice for words,"
concluded Mary, stretching a point. "There isn't a thing to blame them
for--and I never could have believed that Mr. Fry was capable of a
lovely lie like that."

Since seven that morning, at which time Mary's absence had been
discovered, Theodore Dalton had been breathing in terrible, spasmodic
gasps. Now, as he faced Anthony, he breathed deeply--breathed deeply
again--and turned Anthony's tottering world quite upside down by
suddenly thrusting out his hand.

"Well, by gad, Fry!" he bellowed. "I knew you were crazy, but I never
suspected you were man enough for that! I'd swallowed that tale almost
whole and I'd made up my mind to wipe you and your bottled mess off the
map together."

"I know," said Anthony.

"But if there's one thing that hits me right where I live," vociferated
Dalton, "it's a man who will chuck his own every earthly interest aside
to save a woman's name and--put it there, Fry! You're a man!"

A little uncertainly, because he was dazed and dizzy, Anthony grasped
the hairy hand. It was not so, because it was impossible, but--he and
Dalton were friends!

Beatrice was within a yard of her husband.

"Then there was--was nothing----" she faltered.

"There was nothing to get excited about--no," Johnson Boller said
stiffly. "Not at any time."

"Pudgy!" Beatrice said chokily, because her volatile nature was whizzing
breathlessly down from the exalted murder-state to the depths of
contrition.

"Well? What?" Johnson Boller said coldly.

"Pudgy-wudgy, can you ever forgive me?" Beatrice cried, burying her head
on his shoulder.

"I don't know," Johnson Boller said frigidly, and