There was no need of words. They had talked out the smallest detail of Rosalie's plot, even to mapping the location of the furniture. Inch by inch, objection after objection, she had conquered his cautions and scruples; had persuaded him that the dramatic method was the best method. When Blake entered the house, nothing was left to chance except the question whether Norcross would miss his engagement to "sit" with Mrs. Markham. Rosalie settled that. From the front windows, she had observed the green limousine automobile waiting by the curbing outside; through her open registers she had caught the murmur of conversation. So even Rosalie, whose tongue ran by custom in greased grooves, found nothing to say until the little mantel clock tapped three times to announce a quarter to the hour. It brought Blake to his feet with such a jerk that Rosalie shook both her hands at him by way of caution. At the door she stopped a second, put her lips to his ear. "I don't have to tell you to be brave, boy," she said. "But keep your head and don't git independent. You do what I say!" She touched his side pocket, which bulged. "An' not too brash with that!" she added. "Revolvers is good for bluffs but bad for real business!" Blake nodded. And for the second time they crept down the silent, padded halls to those apartments above Mrs. Markham's alcove library. They approached, then, not the closet door, but the door leading to that boudoir which he had seen once before through Rosalie's hole in the wall paper. Rosalie applied a key, turned it with infinite caution, opened the door, motioned him in. The room appeared as before. The light burned low over the white desk; the portières hung close. Rosalie pointed to the rounded, further end of the room--the space where he had seen the ghostly thing which was Annette disappear through the floor. That floor space was bare; a rug, rolled up, rested against the further wainscot. Blake took it in, and smiled at Rosalie as though to say, "everything is ready I see!" Then for a minute they stood immobile, listening. A murmur of conversation came up from below, and in the room behind the portières someone was breathing, lightly, regularly. Rosalie touched his arm and beckoned. Moving without sound, they lifted the portières, stepped within. No light inside that room, except the low radiance from a prone figure by the outer wall. It seemed at first that this ghost of Annette lay suspended between heaven and earth. Blake's mind put down the awe which was stealing over his senses. His eyes sharpened until he could make out a few details. At the right, dimly suggested, was a disordered bed. Annette lay on a couch. The robes swathed her from head to foot, but the veil over her face was parted as though to give her air. Her eyes were closed; her arms, with something strained and stretched in their attitude, lay along her sides. And now Rosalie had her lips at his ear. "Quick!" she said.