Through the opened doors of the anteroom, Justine Duprez could see the flushed face of the greedy German doctor as he conversed in a low tone with the woman whose every faculty was now on the alert. It was an hour of drawn out agony to her before the doctor hastened away, and from her window, Justine could see him being rapidly driven back to the station. And still her mistress was sternly silent. That evening the household at Lakemere was reinforced by a detective in plain clothes, who publicly assembled every inmate of the mansion house and questioned them all, for some hours, upon every movement of the two nurses who had been in charge of their mistress. A shadow of suspicion brooded over the whole _ménage_ now. Justine Duprez was now conscious of a burning gnawing at her heart. For, all day the pale-faced cripple, Mary Kelly, had been working with flying fingers at the side of Mrs. Willoughby, and the rattle of the key and the clang of the telephone bell was unceasing. The Frenchwoman’s nerves were shaken with the suspense. “Vreeland is powerless here,” mused the frightened Frenchwoman. “He forgot in his haste to tap the wires from Lakemere to the old Judge’s office, and so, all harm can be done to us now. We are only digging in the dark. We have no defense whatever. We are cut off from each other. This house is really a prison for me now.” The easy swing of Justine’s debonnair insolence would have moderated had she known that a detective promptly met Doctor Hugo Alberg at the Forty-second Street Station; that Mary Kelly’s schoolboy brother had orders not to lose sight of Vreeland in his daily wanderings, until relieved by the night detective; that the “Circassia,” too, was being watched night and day, and that even Senator James Garston was now provided with an invisible escort. For, Elaine Willoughby was fighting for life and love now, to the death. While Justine was held an unwilling listener to the detective’s cross-examinations at Lakemere, Judge Hiram Endicott was closeted below in a grave conference with Mrs. Willoughby, whereat Roundsman Dan Daly, looking sheepish enough in mufti, watched the pale-faced Mary Kelly’s slender fingers recording in shorthand all the directions of the silver-haired lawyer. It was midnight before the entire domestic force at Lakemere were allowed to separate, after volunteering an examination of all their rooms and luggage. They knew not what had been stolen, but a vague distrust of each other was now written on all their sullen faces. “This forces me to volunteer to do the same, and so, cuts off my lawsuit for damages,” snarled Justine, as she descended to find the rooms of her wearied mistress in darkness. The hastily summoned counselors had departed to New York, without the Frenchwoman even learning of their identity. And now, in her loneliness, Justine Duprez became the prey to a sudden fear.