“No use wasting time on minor details. After we got onto the balcony below, we opened the French windows, and sneaked into a big apartment,--darker than Egypt except when the light from a big electric sign down the street flashed every few seconds. We got out into the hall without rousing anybody and started down the stairs. Of course, we thought it was the elevator man pounding on the door up there,--he might have heard the muffled report if he happened to be near that floor. God was with us. We got down to the ground floor all right, but there we struck something worse than a stone wall. Two men were standing right in front of the passenger elevator. We jumped behind a curtain they have hanging there to hide the stairway. They didn't hear us. They were talking about Blechter. We knew in a second what they were. There was a cubby hole under the stairs where they keep mops and brooms and such stuff. We got in there, leaving a crack through which we could hear. After awhile the front elevator came down. We heard 'em all talking. They said he had shot himself, and they cursed their luck because they hadn't been able to take him alive. He must have been warned that they were after him. That's what they were roaring about. After a while we got out of the mop-hole and sneaked down to the basement. The doors were locked, and there were men in the engine room--a night fireman and a friend of his who was drunk and had come in to sleep it off. Somebody was walking up and down in the little court outside. We didn't dare risk a dash for it, so we hid under a pile of last summer's awnings for a couple of hours. When we couldn't stand it any longer, we decided to put on a bold front and pass ourselves off as plainclothes-men. It was dead easy. The employes about the place were scared stiff. All we had to do was to look hard at the head porter and the back elevator man, and tell 'em not to let anybody go near the storeroom for apartment E 9,--not on their lives. Here's the evening paper. You can read what it says.” CHAPTER VI |Louise Hansbury did not go out for her customary “constitutional” that morning. She arose, tired and depressed after a sleepless night. Soon after she had her breakfast,--chocolate and toast and a prescribed porridge,--she complained of a sudden and violent nausea. Mrs. Carstairs went in to see her, and was alarmed. She took the girl's temperature and then called up the doctor. “You have a fever,” she said. “You must go back to bed. It's nothing, I daresay, but we have to be on the safe side, dear.” Louise betrayed her agitation. She pleaded to be allowed to dress and go out for her walk. There were moments when actual fear lurked in her dark eyes. “I will be all right in a little while, Aunt Frieda. Don't be cross with me. I must have eaten something last night that disagreed with me. The lobster,--I ate a tiny bit of it.”