They had reached the threshold of the chamber when Virginia drew back suddenly. "He told me not to dare to go that way!" she cried. "He said I’d be seen if I did. He locked me in, Mrs. Boyd—_he_ locked the door!" "I know that, too," Ann retorted, impatiently. "Didn’t I have to turn the key to get in? But we’ve _got_ to go this way. We’ve got to go down them steps like I come, and past the room where they are holding high carnival. We’ve got to chance it, but we must be quick about it. We haven’t time to stand here talking." She turned the carved brass knob and drew the shutter towards her. At the same instant she shrank back into Virginia’s arms, for the drawing-room door was wrenched open, and Masters’s voice rang out loudly in the great hall. "We will see where he bunks, won’t we, Dick? By George, the idea of an old college-chum refusing to let a man see his house! I want to look at the photographs you used to stick up on the walls, you sly dog! Oh, you’ve got them yet! You don’t throw beauties like them away when they cost a dollar apiece." "Go back to your game, boys!" Langdon commanded, with desperate coolness. "I’ll show you the house after a while. Finish your game!" "The cold-blooded scoundrel!" Ann exclaimed, under her breath. "Not a drop has passed his lips to-night, as much as he likes a dram." She closed the door gently and stood looking about the room. On the edge of the mantel-piece she saw something that gleamed in the dim lamplight, and she went to it. It was a loaded revolver. "He threatened you with this, didn’t he?" Ann asked, holding it before her with the easy clasp of an expert. "No, he didn’t do that," Virginia faltered, "but he told me if—if I made a noise and attracted their attention and caused exposure, he’d kill himself. Oh, Mrs. Boyd, I didn’t mean to come here to this room at first. I swear I didn’t. He begged me to come as far as the front door to get the money the man had brought back from Darley, then—" "Then those drunken fools drove up, and he persuaded you to hide here," Ann interrupted, her mind evidently on something else. "Oh, I understand; they played into his hands without knowing it, and it’s my private opinion that they saved you, silly child. You can’t tell me anything about men full of the fire of hell. You’d ’a’ gone out of this house at break of day with every bit of self-respect wrung out of you like water out of a rag. You’d 'a’ done that, if I hadn’t come." "Oh, Mrs. Boyd—" "Don’t oh Mrs. Boyd me!" Ann snapped out. "I know what I’m talking about. That isn’t the point. The point is getting out to the road without a row and a scandal that will ring half-way round the world. Let a couple of foul-mouthed drummers know a thing like this, and they would actually pay to advertise it in the papers. I tell you, child—" Ann broke off to listen. The door of the drawing-room seemed to be opened again, and as quickly closed.