“I don’t think it would be wise to make a disturbance----” he said coolly. “I think Miss Mather will admit my generosity to herself and to you when I say that I’ve only to raise my voice and have half a dozen men up here in a moment.” Doris clutched him fearfully by the arm, thinking of Cyril. “You’d not do that----?” Hammersley laughed dryly. “There’s no danger,” he said. “No,” returned Rizzio with a touch of his old magnificence. “There is no danger of that--the reasons are obvious.” As he moved toward the window Hammersley touched him lightly on the arm. “I warn you, Rizzio,” he said in a low concentrated tone, “that you’re playing a dangerous hand. I should punish you--but other agencies----” Rizzio halted. “Yes, other agencies----” he replied significantly. He bowed in the girl’s direction and sitting on the window-sill he threw his feet outside. “I bid you good night.” And carefully feeling for his footing he slowly descended. Cyril Hammersley followed him to the window, and Doris took a step in his direction, when her thinly slippered foot touched something in the wooden floor--something which slid upon the polished surface from the shadow into the moonlight. Instinctively she glanced down and then started--scarcely restraining a gasp. There, unmistakable in the shape and color for so many hours graven on her mind, was a yellow packet of Riz-la-Croix cigarette papers. She glanced at Cyril, who was closing the casement window, then stooped and, picking up the packet, fled noiselessly into her room and quickly locked the door. CHAPTER VIII EVIDENCE Inside her own room she stood for a moment tremulously in the dark, fingering the guilty thing in her hands as she had fingered the other one--the one she had destroyed. Or hadn’t she destroyed it? For a moment the thought came to her that Cyril had practiced some trick upon her when they had knelt before the fire, substituting other papers for the ones that were to be burned. But that was impossible. The papers had not touched his fingers. He it was who had made a hole for them in the fire, but her fingers had thrust the original papers into the glowing coals. She turned the packet over and over in her fingers, glancing at the closed door that separated her from Cyril. Another message! It must be. She pulled the curtains at the window and then moving quietly to the bed, lit the candle on the night-stand. Another packet of Riz-la-Croix, new like the other, with its tiny thin rubber band. She opened it quickly and scanned its pages, finding what she sought without difficulty. The writing was not in the same hand. It was rounder and less minute, covering in all seven pages, and it was written carelessly as if the writer had been in a hurry. Cyril’s own handwriting it seemed. The purport of its message was the same.