st of the guests would be in the restaurant, or out
of the hotel for the evening; but there would be servants about. Clo
forced herself to descend sedately, flight after flight of stairs, not
daring to enter a lift. At last, when it seemed that she had come to
earth from the top of Jacob's ladder, the stairway ended. Timidly
following a passage that opened before her, she ventured into a wide,
important hall.

There was a cloakroom in the hall. Ladies were going into it and coming
out. Clo heard music in the distance and saw a marble balustrade. This
balustrade was for her a landmark. She knew by it that she must have
reached the story above the ground floor, and that the large corridor of
the cloakroom opened on to a gallery overlooking the main hall. She had
glanced up and admired that marble balustrade when she first entered the
hotel. She had seen also a wide marble staircase leading up to the
gallery. It must be near, she thought, but it was a way of exit to
avoid. If O'Reilly were on guard below, or even if he had merely
telephoned her description to the office, she and the stolen envelope
would be promptly nabbed in the hall below. She had dared too much to be
tamely taken now. Mirrors were let into the panels of the wall, and Clo
paused before one, pretending to straighten her hat. She wanted time to
make up her mind.

The ladies who left their wraps in this upstairs cloakroom must be
dining in private rooms on the same floor, she thought. "Out there in
the gallery their men will be waiting for them," the girl told herself.
"And maybe that's where my man is waiting for me!"

One of these ladies, opening a gold chain bag to pull out her
handkerchief, dropped a bit of paper with a number on it--Clo's
favourite number, 17. It fluttered close to her feet; she stooped and
picked it up. Common sense told her that the numbered slip was a
cloakroom check. It might mean salvation. She walked leisurely into the
cloakroom, though her nerves were a-jerk like the strings of a
jumping-jack. "My cousin has asked me to come and fetch her wrap," she
explained to a bored attendant. "There's a draught through the dining
room. This is her check."

The woman accepted it without a word. She presently produced a long wrap
of black chiffon, lined with blue. "Number seventeen. Here you are,
miss." So speaking, she removed the duplicate check, which had been
pinned to a frilled hood of the cloak. At sight of that hood a weight
lifte