"Now listen to the man!" exclaimed Rosalie. "And ain't it man for you! Right off, first meeting, I told you enough to put me in jail and now you won't trust me!" Blake seemed to see the logic of what she said. "I have cause to trust you," he said, "and I hope you don't think that I am afraid of the personal danger. It's just that you're asking me to do something which--will, which people like me don't do." "So anxious to be a gentleman that you forgit to be a man!" remarked Rosalie with asperity. "Now you listen to me. I've told you that she's held two materializing seances for Robert H. Norcross, haven't I? I've told you it is crooked materialization--even if there was such a thing as real cabinet spooks, which there ain't--because I found the ceiling trap an' the apparatus long ago. And if Mrs. Markham is playin' fake materializing with old Norcross as a dope, what does it come to? Obtainin' money, an' big money, under false pretenses! That's enough to put her behind the bars. So what risk do you take even if you _are_ caught? She'll be more anxious than you to keep it away from the papers and the police. And Norcross! He'll break his collar-bone to shut it up!" Half persuaded, he clutched at his sense of honor. "But it's a sneaking trick--Annette would call it that." "Yes, an' ain't it a sneakin' trick to hire a housekeeper to be a spy?" Rosalie hurled back. "Seems to me you draw a fine line between doin' your own dirty work an' havin' it done!" At this plain statement of the case, Blake smiled for the first time that morning. "I suppose you're right," he said. "A good officer never sends a man where he wouldn't go himself. I'm rather sorry I started now." The dominant thought in all the complex machinery of Rosalie's mind was: "And you'll be sorrier before this night's over, boy." But her voice said: "I knew you'd see it that way. Now listen and git this carefully: You're to wear a big ulster and old hat and soft-soled shoes--don't forget that. You're to come to the back door at a quarter to nine--exactly. Us servants receive our callers at the back door. Norcross will be in the parlor at half past, Annette will be in her room, the other help will be out, Ellen and all. Mrs. Markham takes no chances--not even with that fool girl--when she's got Norcross. She's given Ellen theater tickets. That's how careful she is about little things. You can see how clear the coast will be. I'm goin' to bring you straight to my room like a visitor. You walk soft!" "But how about that electric bell?" he asked. "I disconnected it this morning at the trap with my manicure scissors an' a hairpin," replied Rosalie, triumphantly.