She lifted it out of a lower drawer, and put it in her lap. The smallest key fitted the lock at the first attempt. The lid came up and.... Perhaps it is not altogether discreditable that one should temporarily forget one's compunctions in the long-deferred moment of triumph. The girl uttered a little cry of joy. Crash!--the front door down-stairs had been slammed. She was on her feet in a breath, faint with fear. Yet not so overcome that she forgot her errand, her success. As she stood up she dropped the despatch-box back into the drawer, without a sound, and, opening her hand-bag, stuffed something into it. No time to do more: a dull rumble of masculine voices was distinctly, frightfully audible in the stillness of the house: voices of men conversing together in the inner vestibule. One laughed, and the laugh seemed to penetrate her bosom like a knife. Then both strode across the tiling and began to ascend, as was clearly told her by footsteps sounding deadened on the padded carpet. Panic-stricken, she turned to the student lamp and with a quick twirl and upward jerk of the chimney-catch extinguished the flame. A reek of smoke immediately began to foul the close, hot air: and she knew that it would betray her, but was helpless to stop it. Besides, she was caught, trapped, damned beyond redemption unless ... unless it were not Maitland, after all, but one of the other tenants, unexpectedly returned and bound for another flat. Futile hope. Upon the landing by the door the footsteps ceased; and a key grated in the wards of the lock. Blind with terror, her sole thought an instinctive impulse to hide and so avert discovery until the last possible instant, on the bare chance of something happening to save her, the girl caught up her skirts and fled like a hunted shadow through the alcove, through the bed-chamber, thence down the hall toward the dining-room and kitchen offices. The outer door was being opened ere she had reached the hiding-place she had in mind: the trunk-closet, from which, she remembered remarking, a window opened upon a fire-escape. It was barely possible, a fighting chance. She closed the door, grateful that its latch slipped silently into place, and fairly flung herself upon the window, painfully bruising her soft hands in vain endeavor to raise the sash. It stuck obstinately, would not yield. Too late, she remembered that she had forgotten to draw the catch--fatal oversight! A sob of terror choked in her throat. Already footsteps were hurrying down the hall; a line of light brightened underneath the door; voices, excitedly keyed, bandied question and comment, an unmistakable Irish brogue mingling with a clear enunciation which she had but too great reason to remember. The pair had passed into the next room. She could hear O'Hagan announcing: "No wan here, sor." "Then it's the dining-room, or the trunk-closet. Come along!"