"I can't stand it." "Can't stand it?" He repeated her words almost absently. His eyes were on a stocky figure moving among the trees below. It kept in constant motion and, he observed with pleasure, it occasionally stamped its feet and swung its arms as if suffering from the cold. "I can't stand this situation." "Then we must clear it up for you." He spoke reassuringly, his eyes still on the active figure. "Is that one of our keepers, down there?" She nodded. "He has instructions to watch the front entrance and windows. There's another man watching the rear." "He didn't watch very closely," he reminded her. "See how easily I got in." He studied the moving figure. "Doris," he said slowly, "I'd bet a thousand dollars against one doughnut that if I walked out of the house and up to that fellow, he'd run like a rabbit. I don't know why I think so, but I do." She shook her head. "Oh, no, he wouldn't!" "What makes you think he wouldn't?" "Because I heard Shaw give him his orders for just that contingency." Her companion took this in silence. "May I ask what they were?" he said at last. "No, I can't tell you." "I hope he hasn't a nice little bottle of chloroform in his overcoat pocket, or vitriol," murmured Laurie, reflectively. "By the way," he turned to her with quickened interest, "something tells me it's long after lunch-time. Is there any reason why we shouldn't eat?" She smiled. "None whatever. The ice-box contains all the things a well regulated ice-box is supposed to hold. I overheard Shaw and his secretary discussing their supplies." "Good! Then we'll release Mother Fagin long enough to let her cook some of them." He strolled to the bedroom door. On a chair facing it the woman sat and gazed at him with her fierce eyes. "Would you like a little exercise?" he politely inquired. There was no change of expression in the hostile face. "Because if you would," he went on, "and if you'll give me your word not to cry out, give any kind of alarm or signal, or start anything whatever, I'll take that bandage off your mouth, and let you cook lunch for us and for yourself." The fierce eyes set, then wavered. He waited patiently. At last the head nodded, and he expeditiously untied the bandage. "The very best you've got, please," he instructed. "And I _hope_ you can cook. If you can't, I'll have to do it myself. I'm rather gifted that way." "I can cook," avowed the old woman, sullenly. "Good work! Then go on your joyous way. But if you feel an impulse to invite into your kitchen any of the gentlemen out in the grounds, or to release the secretary, restrain it. They wouldn't like it in here. They wouldn't like it at all." A strange grimace twisted the woman's sardonic features. He interpreted it rightly. "I'm glad you agree with me," he said. "Now, brook-trout, please, and broiled chickens, and early strawberries and clotted cream." She looked at him with a return of the stoic expression that was her habitual one.