“As members of the same lo—”
“What can that have meant?” she mused. “Is it the word 'lodge'?”
She read on, where the letter was whole again:
“I must ask you to reconsider your actions. Let me hear from you by the twenty-third or—”
Again was that mystifying and tantalizing tear. Viola hastily searched among the other letters, hoping the missing pieces might be found.
“I simply must see what it meant,” she said. “I wonder if they can be in another part of the safe? I'm going to look!”
She started for her bath robe, and, at that moment, with a suddenness that unnerved her, there came a knock on her door.
CHAPTER XVII. OVER THE TELEPHONE
Viola's first movement was of concealment—to toss over the scattered letters on her desk a lace shawl she had been wearing earlier in the evening. Then satisfied that should the unknown knocker prove to be some one whom she might admit—her Aunt Mary or one of the maids—satisfied that no one would, at first glance, see the letters which might mean nothing or much, Viola asked in a voice that slightly trembled: