I don’t mind admitting that if I’d had two practicable legs, I’d have come clean out of bed in one jump. As it was I sat up and took out my suppressed activity in thinking. The name that had been whispered was not the one by which I had been baptized, nor even the familiar nickname which almost every one calls me by, but a private diminutive which Judy and Punch sometimes used as a mark of affection. I’ve been sleeping, since I’ve been too clumsy to get up and down-stairs on crutches, in a little room on the ground floor which my gardener and his wife used to use for a dining-room. The floor of it is hardly above the ground level, and the open window is low enough for any one bigger than a child to look through, or for that matter, climb in at. So there was nothing unnatural about the whisper, weird as the effect of it had been. When it was repeated an instant later, I answered in a low voice, “Come around to the front door and I’ll let you in.” I thought it was Punch come down to report some new and exciting development that he couldn’t wait till morning to tell me. Donovan slept up-stairs in a little room over the kitchen, the remotest room in the cottage. I’d had a bell put in to summon him by. My gardener and his wife, who was my cook, had moved out after the fire to the second story of my garage. So if I could move quietly enough not to disturb my nurse, my nocturnal visitor’s errand could remain as confidential as he seemed to wish it to be. I switched on the reading lamp in my living-room as I passed through; then cautiously unlocked and opened the door. Two people were standing on the door-step, but neither of them was the caller I had expected. One of them was Judy, and the other was Bill Grant. I don’t think, though, that I was especially surprised. Down in the bottom of my mind I must have guessed a good deal more, during the past two days, than I had allowed myself to admit. All the same I felt pretty blank for a minute. I just stood there in the doorway and balanced myself upon my crutches. My paralysis seemed to have infected them too, for neither of them moved nor spoke. At last I said, “You’d better come in.” “Do you want us to?” Judy asked very quietly. “Yes, of course,” I told her, and on the words I swung myself back out of the doorway. “Come into the living-room,” I added, “and we’ll shut the door, and then perhaps it won’t be necessary to let Donovan in on it.” Bill made me follow Judy inside, and it was he who closed both doors--more quietly than I could have done. I didn’t ask what they were doing or were planning to do. There is no mistaking the sort of adventure upon which this pair were about to embark. “Sit down,” I said, “and tell me all about it.” My voice was coming to life a little, but it was hardly satisfactory, even to me, and I wasn’t surprised at Judy’s question. “Are you on our side? Because there’s no use sitting down and talking unless you are.”