“One hundred guineas,” roared Mr. Blatchbourne, slamming the arm of his chair with a hand like a maul. “And another two hundred for another couple of rooms which I’m afraid to enter.” Blanche made ready to die. “Once this was a gentleman’s apartment: now it is ‘A Cheviot Room.’ There’s the cipher, madam, they had the effrontery to affix. That set the seal of their approval upon this—this barbarous pleasantry.” He rose to his feet and flung clenched fists to heaven. “Oh, if I’d only been here when the blackguard came down for his cheque.” He laughed like a madman and, crossing to the hearth, stared violently upon the fire. So he stood for a moment. Then, as though to brace himself, he laid hands upon the mantelpiece. The screech of agony which instantly succeeded this action would have done any torturer credit. For one long hideous moment Mrs. Cheviot, whose knees were knocking, supposed that insanity had supervened. Then a frightful apostrophe brought the butler’s warning to her mind. “Goats and monkeys!” screamed Blatchbourne, uplifting his palms. “_I’ve done it again._” That the household had recognized the burden of the plaint was manifest. Three servants arrived at a run, bearing oil and linen with which they proceeded to minister to their injured lord. The latter, half-mad with pain, submitted blasphemously to their attention, alternately reviling his wife and cursing the house of Cheviot, root and trunk and bough, till Blanche could have fallen in her tracks. “Grievous bodily harm,” he mouthed. “That’s what it is. They’ve deposited dangerous goods. They’ve done it maliciously. They intended me to be burned. They hoped I should be burned—burned to hell. It’s a diabolical plot. They’re poisoners. First they poison the mind and then the body. They’re proffering robbery and murder, and fools all over England are buying their treacherous wares. Three hundred guineas I’ve paid to have my mind diseased and my body burned to hell.” Here a bell stammered. That no one heard it but Blanche is not surprising. Without a moment’s hesitation she slipped unobserved from the hall into a vestibule, and a moment later she was on the steps. As the chauffeur opened the door of a landaulet— “Take me to London,” she gasped, “and put me down at the Ritz.” In another minute she was flying up the broad highway. * * * * * An hour had gone by, and Titus was sitting at his table with a frown on his face. The man looked tired, as well he might. In the last ten days he had ciphered one hundred and eighty rooms. During this period he had surveyed none at all. The sowing season was past: it was time to garner the harvest—high time. The boom was cracking.