"This is a fine cock-and-bull story," I calmly declared. "But just how are you going to make me believe it?" "You don't have to believe it," was her impassive answer. "I'm only telling you what you demanded to know." "To know, yes--but how am I to know?" She raised her hand with a movement of listless resignation. "If you go to the top drawer of that dresser you will see my photograph in a silver frame next to one of my husband. That will show you at a glance." For just a moment it flashed through me as I crossed the room that this might be a move to give her time for some attempted escape. But I felt, on second thought, that I was master enough of the situation to run the risk. And here, at least, was a point to which she could be most definitely pinned down. "The other drawer," she murmured as my hand closed on the fragile ivory-tinted knob. I moved on to the second drawer and opened it. I had thrust an interrogative finger down into its haphazard clutter of knick-knacks, apparently thrown together by a hurried and careless hand, when from the other end of the room came a quick movement which seemed to curdle the blood in my veins. It brought me wheeling about, with a jump that was both grotesque and galvanic. I was just in time to see the figure that darted out through the suddenly opened door of the clothes-closet. I found myself confronted by a man, a thin-lipped, heavy-jawed man of about thirty-five, with black pinpoint pupils to his eyes. He wore a small-rimmed derby hat and a double-breasted coat of blue cheviot. But it was not his clothes that especially interested me. What caught and held my attention was the ugly, short-barreled revolver which was gripped in the fingers of his right hand. This revolver, I noticed, was unmistakably directed at me as he advanced into the room. I could not decide which was uglier, the blue-metaled gun or the face of the man behind it. "Get back against that wall," he commanded. "Then throw up your hands. Get 'em up quick!" I had allowed her to trap me after all! I had even let myself half-believe that pleasant myth of the slumbering husband in the next room. And all the while she was guarding this unsavory-looking confederate who, ten to one, had been slinking about and working his way into a wall-safe even while I was wasting time with diverting but costly talk. And with that gun-barrel blinking at me I had no choice in the matter--I was compelled to assume the impotent and undignified attitude of a man supplicating the unanswering heavens. The woman turned and contemplated the newcomer, contemplated him with a fine pretense of surprise. "_Hobbs,_" she cried, "_how did you get here?_" "You shut up!" he retorted over his shoulder. "What are you doing in this house?" she repeated, with a sustained show of amazement. "Oh, I'll get round to _you_, all right, all right," was his second rejoinder.