"Someone coming down the stairs," Venner whispered. "Didn't you hear a voice? I believe it is the girl in white again." Surely enough, looking upward, they could see the slim white figure creeping down the stairs. The girl was crooning some little song to herself as she came along. She turned into the drawing-room and called aloud to the cripple in the chair. With an oath on his lips, Fenwick motioned her away. CHAPTER XIV MASTER OF THE SITUATION "What have you come back here for?" Fenwick demanded. "You said you were tired, and that you were going to bed, long ago." The girl looked dreamily about her; it was some little time before she appeared to appreciate the significance of Fenwick's question. She was more like one who walks in her sleep than a human being in the full possession of understanding. "I don't know," she said, helplessly. She rubbed her eyes as if there had been mist before them. "I was so tired that I lay on the bed without undressing, and I fell fast asleep. Then I had a dream. I dreamed that all the miserable past was forgotten, and that Charles was with me once more. Then he seemed to call me, and I woke up. Oh, it was such a vivid dream, so vivid, that I could not sleep again! I was so restless and anxious, that I made up my mind to come downstairs, and, as I was passing a door just now, it opened, and the face of Charles looked out. It was only for a moment, then two men behind him dragged him back and the door closed once more." "A foolish fancy," Fenwick growled. "It was not," the girl cried almost passionately. "I tried the door a moment later, and it was locked. I tell you that Charles is in that room. I cannot go to bed again until I am certain of the truth. Oh, why do you keep me in suspense like this?" "Mad," Fenwick muttered. "Mad as a March hare. Why don't you send her to an asylum?" "She is not mad," the cripple said in a curiously hard voice. "Something tells me that she has made a discovery. You rascal, is it possible that you have Charles Evors under this roof?" Fenwick laughed, but there was something uneasy and strained about his mirth. He glanced defiantly at the cripple, then his eyes dropped before the latter's steady gaze. "Why should I worry about Evors?" he asked. "The man is nothing to me, and if by chance--" The rest of Fenwick's sentence was drowned in a sudden uproar which seemed to break out in a room overhead. The tense silence was broken by the thud of heavy blows as if someone were banging on a door, then came muttered shouts and yells of unmistakable pain. Hastily Fenwick rose from his seat and made in the direction of the door. He had hardly advanced two steps before he found himself confronted with the rim of a silver-plated revolver, which the cripple was holding directly in the line of his head.