"Depend on me," I answered him. "We must be careful. Wait! Just let me review these facts. The first move must be for us to send Margaret back into the house. Do you suppose your wife knows she is out of it?" "I don't believe so," said he. "I watched the window all the time we were taking Margaret into this limousine. The curtains never moved." "Good!" I cried. "Now, Miss Murchie, listen to what I say. How often does your mistress call you during the day?" "Every three or four hours, I think, sir." "Very well. Take this umbrella and go back. Use Mr. Estabrook's key. Enter as quietly as possible. Say nothing to any one. If your mistress should allow more than five hours to go by without calling you, go to her door and knock. If there is no answer, telephone my office. You mustn't allow a second of delay. It will mean danger." Estabrook listened to these instructions with staring eyes. "You know something!" he cried. "Tell me!" I shook my head, opened the door, and the old servant, getting out, went waddling off across the street, her dress flapping in the wet wind. "Come, Mr. Chauffeur!" I said to him. "You are to spend the night with me. To-morrow--" "To-morrow?" "Exactly," said I brusquely. "And what then?" "To-morrow I shall search for truth lying hidden among blades of grass!" said I. "In the mean time all the sleep I can pile into you may count more than you know!" I had spoken with a note of authority because each moment I feared that he would become stubborn. I feared that, taking offense at my theories, he would reject my services and plunge into some folly at the moment when a most delicate balance between good and evil, life and death, safety and danger, might be overthrown on the side of terrible calamity. I was thankful when he once more showed himself tractable by climbing on the driver's seat and turning our course homeward. It was the small hours of morning that found me under the lamp in my study, giving the distracted young man a narcotic. When his head was nodding, he struggled once to open his eyes. "I don't understand--anything--blades of grass--or anything," he asserted sleepily, as I closed his door. Exhaustion had brought its childlike petulance, but I knew that drowsiness would do its work, and that he was now safely stowed away for at least ten hours. He would not interfere with my plans before noon. For a few moments that night I sat on the edge of my own bed. "What if I am right?" I whispered to myself. "What a drama! What a peep into the unexplored corners of our souls!" I went to the window. An early milk cart clattered along the thoroughfare with a figure nodding on its seat. When the mud-spattered white horse had reached a circle of light shed from the lamp on the street corner, the figure arose and, looking up at the stars in the rifts of the sky, pulled off and folded a rubber coat. The storm had blown away.