“We know all that is going on. We have your daughter. You have the required sum of money. If you will bring about an exchange, we will do our part. Your fancy detective must work with you, or at least refrain from working against you, or there can be no deal. You may drop the package over the cliff, exactly as directed before, at midnight on Friday. Unless you accomplish this, in strict accordance with our orders, you will lose both the money and your child. One divergence from our directions and your daughter will be done away with. You can see we have no other way out. This is our last letter, and our final offer. Take it or leave it. Enclosed is a note from your daughter to prove that we are telling you the truth.” And enclosed was a small slip of paper on which was written, “Mother, do as they tell you. Betty.” “Is that your daughter’s writing?” Wise asked, as he passed the little note to Minna. “Yes,” she whispered, trembling so violently and turning so white, that Zizi flew to her side, and induced her to take a sip of coffee. “Brace up, now, dear,” Zizi said, “you’ll need all your strength and all your pluck. And cheer up, too. If that’s from Betty, she’s alive, and if she’s alive, we’ll get her! Bank on that!” Zizi’s strong young voice and encouraging smile did as much as the coffee to invigorate and cheer the distracted mother, and Rod Granniss, said, “Sure! that’s Betty’s own writing,—no forgery about that! Now, Mr Wise, what next?” “Next, is to find out how that note got into this house,” said Pennington Wise. “I locked up myself last night,—I listened but I heard no intruder’s footstep, and I know no outside door or window was opened. It was,—it _must_ have been an inside job. Kelly!” “Yes, sir.” “Where were you all night?” “In my bed, sir. On the third floor of the house.” “Oh, pouf! I know it wasn’t you, Kelly, you could no more have engineered this letter than you could fly to the moon! And Hannah, I suppose was in her bed, too. I’ve no wish to question the servants,—they had nothing to do with it.” “It was the kidnappers, then?” Zizi asked, softly. “It was the kidnappers,” Wise said. “They,—or he,—came into this house by some secret way, which we have got to find. They, or their agent, came in night before last to steal that money from the safe. Foiled in that attempt, they have returned to their ransom scheme, hoping to get the money that way. They are desperate, and,—I don’t know, Mrs Varian but that we’d better——” “Oh, Penny,” Zizi cried, “don’t throw away all that money——” “What is that sum,—any sum,—in comparison with getting my child?” cried Minna, so excited as to be with difficulty warding off a hysterical attack. “But you wouldn’t get her,” Zizi asserted, positively. “First, they’d never get the money,—thrown down in the darkness like that,—it’s too uncertain. And, if they did, they wouldn’t return Betty,—I know they wouldn’t.”