“You have left all where she can do the work?” whispered the miserly German, who already had the price of his treason in his pocket. “Yes,” murmured Justine. “I’ll tell you all when we meet down there.” The hoodwinked physician went out into the night, whispering: “I’ll be here at seven, on the watch.” It was but half an hour later that a man seated in August Helms’ darkened basement room opened his arms as Justine Duprez glided in. “She is sleeping like a log,” murmured the maid. “_Here is what you want._ The nurse will do her part later, and be sure that she clears out at once. I’ll keep the Doctor with me here till noon. She will get her ‘sudden telegram;’ he will be here on duty; while he is busied with the new nurse Martha will go and rob the Doctor’s office and rooms, and be soon on the sea. Then we are all covered.” The schemer’s eyes gleamed as he pocketed the paper which made his patroness an involuntary traitor to her dangerous trust. Vreeland breathed in a happy triumph. “You must not leave your rooms to-morrow. Keep in sight of the Kelly girl,” warned the Frenchwoman. “_Now I will steal away._” There were words murmured which bound the two wretches to each other, and they laughed as they pointed to the janitor’s new telegraphic instrument and telephone. “A great convenience to the patrons of the Circassia,” laughed Vreeland. He alone knew how deftly the crafty August Helms had seized upon Mrs. Willoughby’s absence of the day to effect the joining of the skilfully hidden wires tapping the lines which led to the Hanover Bank building and joined Judge Endicott’s private office to Mrs. Willoughby’s pearl boudoir. “When I have the extra instrument in my own room,” he exulted, “then if Miss Romaine Garland is not approachable I will soon find another more malleable. “But the secret firm of Endicott & Willoughby will talk into my ear when they think that the whole world is theirs. _It’s a royal plan_,” he mused. Justine’s gliding step had died away when Harold Vreeland crept out like a guilty thief. “Where shall I hide this original,” he muttered, as he disappeared in the darkness. “_I must find a place in my rooms. I cannot carry it about me._” When he had regained the Elmleaf he dared hardly breathe as he carefully examined the original document which tied up the fate of the Sugar Syndicate with that of men whose very names he feared to utter. “She is in my power at last. Her ruin is in my hands. “And now to bring her into my arms to be my fond tool and willing slave.” There was no “stock plunging” for two long weeks, as the illness of Mrs. Willoughby dragged on, and Martha Wilmot was well across the seas before the police of New York City had ceased to blunder around after the ungrateful nurse who had seemingly robbed her benefactor’s office and then decamped.