“I’m going to ask you to give that admirable old lady of yours a vacation.” Pentecost was taking care to turn away from the slightly open door to the hall while speaking. “You must see, Mr. Haworth,” he went on in a lowered voice, “that it won’t do to have her about for the next ten days. The machine,—by that I mean the one we’re taking—is going to be exposed at the time of its ‘delivery’—perhaps before. She knows it’s in that room down there; you can’t touch _her_ with any decoy. She may not understand machinery, but she’d give it away to others who did.” Haworth was silent for a moment. A great ache gripped his throat, and he finally spoke in a voice that he couldn’t quite control: “You don’t know how—how true she’s been—how kind! Why she—she’d do anything for me!” “Yes, my friend, and there’s where she’d play particular hell with us! That old dame’s no fool. And the trouble is, she’s got the idea there’s something going on here and she’s all set to protect you from it.” “Yes, yes—she’d do that!” Haworth murmured, huskily. “Not _would_—is now!” The young man looked at him suddenly. Pentecost nodded. “In the butler’s pantry there a few minutes ago,” he went on; “slid back into the kitchen as I was going to the door. When I got out there she was hustling up the back stairway. I shut the door at the bottom of the stairs and balanced a table against it. You’ll hear it fall if she tries to push the door open. Only way she can get down is by the main stairway out here. Don’t think she’d care to try a window.” Haworth was so amazed he couldn’t speak. “You must see what this means to our end of it,” Pentecost went on. “We’ve got to put up big money in advance and incur enormous expenses before there’s any return, and here’s this old lady in a position to wreck the whole damned layout if she can get her nose into it—and that’s what she’s working for.” “What—what do you want me to do?” “Keep her out of the house until the machine’s delivered.” The young man was silent, staring uneasily before him. In a moment or two Pentecost resumed: “I admire that old lady and I’ve got things laid out for her later where she’ll come in delightfully. But for eleven days she’ll have to disappear—or we must. It’s one or the other, Mr. Haworth. We can’t risk money on a chance like that.” Haworth nodded. “I’ll attend to it!” he said, hoarsely. “Right. And there’s only one thing more to speak of—the butler.” “Butler——” Haworth repeated, surprised. “The old lady’s going. You ought to have some one here to attend to you. Also, we’d like a man in the house to look out for our interests. Why not combine the two? A butler—a general servant—who’ll take care of you, and on our side see that no one tampers with the lock of that small room in the basement, and a few little things like that.” “Will you send some one?” “Not quite that, Mr. Haworth. I know just the man for the job, but I’d like you to get him yourself and leave us out of it.”