"Nor have you reason to be, if you give up the pin quietly; otherwise, you will find yourself in a sorry predicament."
"I haven't the pin with me," declared Iris, feeling the falsehood justifiable in the circumstances.
"I regret to contradict a lady, but I don't believe you."
The man was masked, but Iris recognized his voice and form and she well knew it was the man who had intruded upon her in her aunt's room that night, and she was sure it was the man who had instigated the kidnapping and search by Flossie. Moreover, she realized it was the man she had seen in Chicago.
She felt an anxiety to detain him and somehow to get him in the grip of the law, but she could think of no way to do that.
She dared not take the pin from her belt, for his eyes were upon her, and the dusk, though deepening, left sufficient light for him to observe her movements.
"Now, look here," he said, speaking more roughly, "there's no Flossie here. You don't want me to take all the pins you have in your clothing, do you?"
This suggestion, and the threatening tone of the man, frightened Iris more than all that had gone before. She was not afraid of physical violence, something in the man's manner precluded that, but she sensed his desperate determination to secure the pin, and she knew he would search her clothing for it, if she refused to hand it over.
Also, she knew there was small use in trying to fool him. Since Stone had verified the fact that there was something about that special pin that made it of value, since this man had tried devious ways to get it, and since she was absolutely at his mercy, the outlook was pretty black.
A vague hope that Fleming Stone would come to her rescue was not well founded, for how could he know that the car that carried her off had turned into that little woodland road?