Mr. Hayley stooped, really with the innocent intention of moving the parcel out of the way. "Good gracious!" he cried. "This is a tremendous weight, Anna. What on earth have you got in there?" He was now dragging it along the floor. "Don't do that, sir," she exclaimed involuntarily. "It's fragile." "Fragile?" he repeated. "Nonsense! It must be iron or copper. What is it, Anna?" She shook her head helplessly. "I do not know. It is something I have been keeping for a friend." His face changed. He took a penknife out of his pocket, and ripped off the stout paper covering. Then, before the astonished Anna could make a movement, he very quietly pinioned her elbows and walked her towards the door giving into the hall. "Captain Joddrell?" he called out. And with a bewildered feeling of abject fear, Anna heard the quick steps of the soldier echoing down the hall. "Yes; what is it?" "I want your help over something." They were now in the hall, and Miss Forsyth, standing in the doorway of the drawing-room, called out suddenly, "Oh, Mr. Hayley, you are hurting her!" "No, I'm not. Will you please lock the front door?" Then he let go of Anna's arms. He came round and gazed for a moment into her terrified face. There was a dreadful look of contempt and loathing in his eyes. "You'd better say nothing," he muttered. "Anything you say now may be used in evidence against you!" He drew the other man aside and whispered something; then they came back to where Anna stood, and she felt herself pushed--not exactly roughly, but certainly very firmly--by the two gentlemen into the room where were the remains of the good cold luncheon which she had set out there some two hours before. She heard the key turned on her, and then a quick colloquy outside. She heard Mr. Hayley exclaim, "Now we'd better telephone to the police." And then, a moment later: "But the telephone's gone! What an extraordinary thing! This becomes, as in 'Alice in Wonderland,' curiouser and curiouser----" There was a tone of rising excitement in his quiet, rather mincing voice. Then came the words, "Look here! You'd better go outside and see that no one comes near that motor-car, while I hurry along to the place they call 'Robey's.' There's sure to be a telephone there." Anna felt her legs giving way, and a sensation of most horrible fear came over her. She bitterly repented now that she had not told Mr. Hayley the truth--that these parcels which she had now kept for three years were only harmless chemicals, connected with an invention which was going to make the fortune of a great many people, including her nephew, Willi Warshauer, once this terrible war was over.