But she struggled with every step, throwing out her right arm and bringing it into contact with everything she could strike. She did this so regularly that it seemed as if she had a purpose in it, though what it was, was by no means clear. She was carried up a pair of stairs and put in a room again, and, as before, seated in a chair. “There,” said a voice that she recognized as that of the brown-bearded man, “I reckon you’ll stay here for a while.” Ida lifted her hands, which had been left free, and tore the bandage from her eyes. She was not in the same room, and it was lighted so well that she could see that she had made no mistake in supposing that one of the men was the one who had traveled from New York at midday with her, and that the other was the tough who had, in accosting her, induced her to enter the dark hallway. She had not spoken a word. “She’s game,” said the tough. “I should say so,” replied the other. “But we’ll take some of the gameness out of her before we get through with her.” The two withdrew, locking and bolting the doors behind them, leaving Ida alone in the dark to think over her strange plight, and whether her telegram would reach Chick, and, if it did, if Chick would find her. CHAPTER XIX. A DASHING RESCUE. It was after midnight before Nick and Chick reached the streets of Philadelphia. Before they drew into the station, Nick had said: “We’ll waste no time, but go directly to the neighborhood in which Ida was to do her work.” “If it’s not in the main streets, the people will have been asleep these two hours,” said Chick. “All the same,” said Nick, “if Ida is in trouble, as we believe, I don’t know the girl if she won’t find some way of letting us know where she is, if we get into our neighborhood.” So it was that when they left the station, they followed the route that had been taken by her earlier in the afternoon, getting off the car at exactly the same corner that she had done. Here Nick stopped a moment, to think of the memorandum he had given Ida as his guide to their further movements. “Chief,” said Chick, “if we are now on the ground where Ida has been working, we ought to be careful how we move around, for fear some one will drop to us.” “You are right about that, Chick,” said Nick, leading the way down the street—the same one Ida had gone. As he got opposite a house, about the middle of the block, he stopped short, and said, in a low tone, to Chick: “That’s the house Ethel Romney left to go to New York, where she met her death.” “The old home of Blanche Constant, then?” asked Chick. “Yes,” replied Nick. “I only know it by the fact that this is the street and that is the number.” At that moment there was a noise, as if the door of the house was being opened, made distinct by the silence which reigned in the street. The two detectives immediately slipped into concealment of the first doorway, and watched.