"Quiet!" warned the man in the mask, and kneeling by the safe door, resumed the delicate manipulation which had been so startlingly interrupted. He turned the combination swiftly and deftly, his side-face pressed against the unyielding steel, his ear listening intently to the fall of the tumblers that chattered like elfin castenets.
Harry sat silent and moveless, sharply conscious of the cold ring against his temple. Whither had his besotted flight carried him? To some distant city, into another state perhaps, where he now figured in a coarse and desperate adventure that might end anywhere, in some shameful expose which he could not foresee. In whose house was he? Whose money was it these nightly prowlers intended? And what ironic demon had beckoned him here to play this passive part in the despoiling?
There was suddenly a sharp click, a turn of the nickelled handle, and on mute hinges the safe-door opened. "So!" said the man in the mask, complacently. He began to pull open drawers and ransack pigeon-holes, his fingers passing deftly through the papers they contained.
On the instant there was a muffled sound in the hall outside—a door swinging to, and voices.
"S-s-s!" The low hiss was an incarnate menace. The man by the safe swung the steel door to, but without closing its lock, and snapped off the lights. The room fell into thick darkness. Harry felt, rather than heard, that the other had swiftly entered the alcove, and drawn the portière into place. His companion had made no sound, but the aching circlet bit hard again into Harry's temple, with a warning as sharp as it was silent.
The door opened, there was a groping footstep, then the lights went up, and a woman's voice, clear and imperious, mingled with the lower answers of the obsequious servant who had shown her in—a familiar voice at which Harry's blood seemed to grow still in his veins:
"No matter how late he is, I will wait. You say he is at his office—is it so near as that? Yes, I think you may send for him—no, wait—that telephone on the desk! Could I speak with him? No—I think after all I would rather wait. What number did you say? 'Seven-thirty-two Sumner?' Thank you. Then if he does not come soon, I will call him up. Thank you—no, I want nothing."
Harry repressed an impulse to cry aloud. A thin streak of light showed between the edges of the silken hanging, through which the man in the mask was peering, and for a slender instant, under the crook's elbow, he could see into the room. The slender figure standing there under the chandelier was Echo Allen!
She was in a dark travelling dress and wore a light veil through which her profile looked strained and white. The unexpected sight of her intensified the haggard pain of heart which had come back to Harry with his awakening, and this was staggered by the knowledge that they two were together in this unknown dwelling.
The door closed upon the servant. Behind the portière the red-rimmed eyes peered questioningly into the eyelet holes of the black mask. They said as plainly as speech, "There is only the woman. Why not make for the open—now?" But the other was an older hand. The room had but the single door and the servant might be standing on the other side. Grim danger lurked in hue and cry, and there was always the chance that the woman might weary of waiting and go. He had a liking for the long chance. He shook his head.