She remained with me some short time after this, making frivolous remarks, to which I returned but brief answers. Then she left me, on the understanding that she would come to the house at ten o'clock to sign the papers, which she took with her. On reflection, I think it will be wise even now to be on my guard against her. She saw the pages of my diary, and might have seen the Will. I will put them out of her reach. The room next to this is empty, and the door is unlocked. I will go and see if I can secrete them there.... There is in that room, in an old-fashioned table, an empty drawer which might easily escape observation. There is a small key in the lock. I will deposit these pages at once in the drawer, where they will be safe for a few hours. My long agony is approaching its end. Impatiently I wait for the night. CHAPTER XLIV. CAGED. With those words the diary ended. In breathless silence, oblivious for the time of every surrounding circumstance, Frederick Holdfast perused the record of his father's last hours. What followed, after his father had secreted the papers, was clear to his mind. Mrs. Holdfast had kept her appointment at ten o'clock, accompanied by her "lawyer," who could have been no other than the villain Pelham. By a hapless fatality, the house, No. 119 Great Porter Square, had on that night but one inmate--the man who was never to see another rising sun. The landlady and her lodgers were at a wedding feast; the servant was enjoying the glories of the Alhambra, in the company of her sweetheart. Only Mr. Holdfast remained, and thus his murderers were enabled to enter and leave the house without being observed. Most likely he himself opened the street door for them. In the privacy of his room, with no witnesses near, the mask was thrown off by Mrs. Holdfast and her associate, and demands were made upon Mr. Holdfast with which he refused to comply. Whether the purpose of his visitors was murder would never now be known, but murder was accomplished before they departed, and the unhappy man was left by the wretched pair in the agonies of death. It was necessary, thereafter, for their own safety that they should not be seen in the neighbourhood of Great Porter Square, and it would have excited suspicion had they exhibited the slightest interest in the mysterious murder of a man whose body had not been identified. Before leaving their victim they had taken the precaution to empty his pockets of papers, and to remove from the room everything in writing which might have led to the identification of the body. Having made themselves safe, they left the house, and kept out of sight. But some time afterwards Mrs. Holdfast must have recalled, in conversation with Pelham, the memory of the sheets of paper covered with her husband's writing which she had seen upon the table when she had visited him; these pages were not found in his room, and they were then tormented by the idea that the writing was still in existence, and might