She crept softly into the living room, closed and locked the window through which she had heard him go, and wondered whether it had been left unfastened or he had forced the catch. But that could wait till morning. She locked the living-room door on the hall side, for further safety, and returned to her room, determined to have additional bolts and bars attached here and there the next day.
Then she remembered the house was not hers, and though she might suggest she could not dictate.
Hours she lay awake, thinking it all over. In the security of her own room, she felt no fear and the dawn had begun to show before she slept.
"He's a crazy man," she told herself, finally, just as, at last, slumber came to her. "But it's queer the same mania attacked two people at the same time."
Next day she told Lucille Darrel the story.
"No, I don't think he was crazy," Miss Darrel said, "I think he's an agent of that other man, and they wanted to find out if you had given the first man the right pin. You see, when you made the second man—what's his name, Ashton?——"
"Yes, and the first was Pollock."
"Well, when Pollock doubted that you'd given him the right pin, he sent Ashton to find out, and then when you were so clever as to fool Ashton so fully, he thought you had been frightened into it, at last."
"But what do they want the pin for?"
"Just as Pollock said; to add to a collection of such things. You know that dime and pin joke is in all the papers. Everybody knows about it."