Not a sound came from behind the door. They stood directly under the oil lamp. In its shadow, and from the slight vantage of the five steps, Megan, watching the upturned faces of the group below, saw in them some indefinable change as if the Doctor's movement had stirred in them a necessity for action. She knew she and the Doctor would never be allowed to come down the steps, get into their car and drive off,--not without some other event, perhaps a mere trifle, coming to change the course of the accumulating determination of the group. The Doctor knew this too, but he only stood looking down at them with an expression of intense thoughtfulness. "I don't think there is any one inside; they must be gone," murmured Megan. The Doctor did not answer. "Maybe they are dead," added Megan. The Doctor shook his head. He rapped on the door once more, and raised his voice to a shout, "Miss Reed! Miss Reed!" Suddenly the door opened before them. They stepped inside and it was closed behind them with a firm and reassuring bang. They stood in complete blackness in which Megan heard heavy breathing and felt the nearness of human bodies. "Just a moment," a whisper sounded close to her ear. There was the scratch of a match and a nimbus of yellow light appeared on the dark in which, as in a fluid, was caught the small, lined face of a woman with large pale eyes. It was the redoubtable Miss Reed, who would not take any advice and whose obstinacy had brought them all to this predicament. She held a candle in her hand. Behind her stood another woman, a sturdy, sandy-haired girl, stout and asthmatic. It was she whose breathing Megan had heard. Miss Reed looked at them a moment and then exclaimed in a singularly sweet, low voice: "Oh, Doctor Strike, is this really you? How like you to come, how like you!" The Doctor nodded and said brusquely: "I have Miss Davis with me." His air of good-fellowship had vanished, he looked sterner than Megan had ever seen him. Miss Reed smiled gently at Megan and said, turning to her companion: "This is Miss Minton. I am sorry we have no lights, but we didn't want to provide a target and besides the electricity is cut off. We have been staying in the back of the house. That is why we didn't open the first time you called. We came as soon as we could." She apologized as if she had said, "The butter is not so fresh to-day." "Are you all here?" asked the Doctor. "Only Miss Minton and myself and five Russian children. The rest were all taken away by Chinese friends. I couldn't find refuge for the others so I stayed with them, and Miss Minton very generously preferred to stay with me." The stout girl, breathing heavily, nodded in corroboration of this. "Won't you come into the parlor? It opens into the court, we'll be more comfortable there."