"I'm Miss Whitford. We're engaged to be married. It's very important that I see him." "Yes, Miss, I know." The man was perfectly well aware that his master wanted of all things to avoid a meeting with her. For some reason or other, Bromfield was in a state of collapse this morning the valet could not understand. The man's business was to protect him until he had recovered. But he could not flatly turn his master's fiancee out of the apartment. His eye turned to Whitford and found no help there. He fell back on the usual device of servants. "I don't really think he can see you, Miss. The doctor has specially told me to guard against any excitement. But I'll ask Mr. Bromfield if--if he feels up to it." The valet passed into what was evidently a bedroom and closed the door behind him. There was a faint murmur of voices. "I'm going in now," Beatrice announced abruptly to her father. She moved forward quickly, before Whitford could stop her, whipped open the door, and stepped into the room. Her father followed her reluctantly. Clarendon, in a frogged dressing-gown, lay propped up by pillows. Beside the bed was a tray, upon which was a decanter of whiskey and a siphon of soda. His figure seemed to have fallen together and his seamed face was that of an old man. But it was the eyes that held her. They were full of stark terror. The look in them took the girl's breath. They told her that he had undergone some great shock. He shivered at sight of her. "What is it, Clary?" she cried, moving toward him. "Tell me--tell me all about it." "I--I'm ill." He quaked it from a burning throat. "You were all right, yesterday. Why are you ill now?" He groaned unhappily. "You're going to tell me everything--everything." His fascinated, frightened eyes clung to this straight, slim girl whose look stabbed into him and shook his soul. Why had she come to trouble him this morning while he was cowering in fear of the men who would break in to drag him away to prison? "Nothing to tell," he got out with a gulp. "Oh, yes, you have. Are you ill because of what happened at Maddock's?" He tried to pull himself together, to stop the chattering of his teeth. "N-nonsense, my dear. I'm done up completely. Delighted to see you and all that, but--Won't you go home?" His appealing eyes passed to Whitford. "Can't you take her away?" "No, I won't go home--and he can't take me away." Her resolution was hard as steel. It seemed to crowd inexorably upon the shivering wretch in the frogged gown. "What is it you're so afraid to tell me, Clarendon?" He quailed at her thrust. "What--what do you mean?" She knew now, beyond any question or doubt, that he had been present when "Slim" Jim Collins had been killed. He had seen a man's life snuffed out, was still trembling for fear he might be called in as a party to the crime. "You'd better tell me before it's too late. How did you and Clay Lindsay come to go to that den?"