"Well, I promised not to tell it to any one," vowed Miss L'Estrange in her best soubrette manner, "and I'll be as good as my word, since I never break a promise when my word is once passed. I'll just write it down on a piece of paper, and drop it on the floor by accident, and then if anybody should happen to notice it and pick it up without my seeing, that will be no business of mine." She rose, walked to a desk, and went through this pantomime in all seriousness. The address was dropped on the carpet, and David "happening" to notice it, picked it up behind Miss Ermyn L'Estrange's unconscious back. It had on it the number of a house near Hanover Square; and in another moment David had pressed the lady's hand, and was gone, crying: "I'll come again!" "Not even a word of thanks," said Miss L'Estrange to herself, as she looked after his flying back: "'Blow, blow, thou winter's wind.'" David leaped into his waiting cab, and was off across London. Light was still in Van Hupfeldt's quarters, and Van Hupfeldt himself, at the moment when David rang, was poring over the last words of the diary of her who had been part of his life. He was livid with fear at the knowledge just learned for certain from the written words, that there were still hidden in the flat a photograph of him, and his last letter to Gwendoline, when he heard an altercation between his man Neil and another voice outside. A moment later he heard Neil cry out sharply, and then he was aware of a hurried step coming in upon him. The first thought of his secretive nature was the diary, and, with the trepidations of a miser surprised in counting his gold, he hustled it into a secret recess of the bureau near which he had been reading. He had hardly done this when he stood face to face with David. At that moment Van Hupfeldt's face seemed lit with a lunacy of affright, surprise, and rage. David, with his hat rather drawn over his eyes, and with a frowning severity, said: "I want four things of you--the diary, the key of my flat which you have in your possession, those certificates, and Mrs. Mordaunt's address." A scream went out from Van Hupfeldt: "Neil! the police!" "Quite so," said David; "but before the police come, do as I say, or I shall kill you." Van Hupfeldt could hardly catch his breath sufficiently to speak. A man so wholly in the grip of terror it was painful to see. David understood him to say: "Man, I warn you, my heart is weak." "Heart weak?" growled David. "That's what you say? Well, then, keep cool, and let me have my way. We must wrangle it out now somehow. You have the police on your side for the moment, and I stand alone--" Now the outer door was heard to slam; for Neil had run out to summon help. "I'm not acting on my own behalf," said David, "but for the sake of a girl whose life, I feel sure, you are going to make bitter. She cares nothing for you--" "How dare you!" came in a hoarseness of concentrated passion from Van Hupfeldt's bosom.