"You don' t'ink she gone?" he stammered. "Why should we think she has gone?" Laurie tried to grin at him. "Perhaps she's merely taking an automobile ride, or an early train for a day in the country. Certainly nothing here looks as if she had gone away for good. People usually pack, don't they?" Sam dropped his eyes. His face, human till now, took on its familiar, sphinxlike look. He followed "Mist' Devon" into the elevator in silence, and started the car on its downward journey. But as his passenger was about to depart with a nod, Sam presented him with a reflection to take away with him. "She didn' _look_ lak no lady what was goin' on no excu'sion," he muttered, darkly. Laurie rushed back to his rooms with pounding heart and on the way opened and read at a glance his first note from Doris. It was written in pencil, seemingly on a scrap of paper torn from the pad he had seen on her desk. Long Island, I _think_. An old house, on the Sound, somewhere near Sea Cliff. Remember your promise. _No police._ That was all there was to it. There was no address, no signature, no date. The writing, though hurried, was clear, beautiful, and full of character. In his rooms, he telephoned the garage for his car, and read and reread the little note. Then, still holding it in his hand, he thought it over. Two things were horribly clear. Shaw's "plan" had matured. He had taken Doris away. And--this was the staggering phase of the episode--she seemed to have gone willingly. At least she had made no protest, though a mere word, even a look of appeal from her, would have enlisted Sam's help, and no doubt stopped the whole proceeding. Why hadn't she uttered that word? The answer to this, too, seemed fairly clear. Doris had become a fatalist. She had ceased to hide or fight. She was letting things go "his way," as she had declared she would do. Down that dark avenue she had called "his way" Laurie dared not even glance. His mind was too busy making its agile twists in and out of the tangle. Granting, then, that she had gone doggedly to meet the ultimate issue of the experience, whatever that might be, she had nevertheless appealed to him, Laurie, for help. Why? And why did she know approximately where she was to be taken? Why? Why? Why? Again and again the question had recurred to him, and this time it dug itself in. Despite his love for her (and he fully realized that this was what it was), despite his own experience of the night before, he had hardly been able to accept the fact that she was, must be, in actual physical danger. When, now, the breath of this realization blew over him, it checked his heart-beats and chilled his very soul. In the next instant something in him, alert, watchful, and suspicious, addressed him like an inner voice.