"Where are you going?" Rachel cried.
"To my father's. He's written me several times saying that I may come home if I'll leave Alexander; and I'm going to leave him and I'm never coming back either." A sob caught Annie's breath as she strove to button her glove.
Rachel took the wrist and fastened the glove. "But you're not going to leave him now when he's in such trouble about his mother, are you?"
"Yes I am. I offered to go with him this morning when he got word of her illness, but he wouldn't let me. He said I'd always been hateful about her and I shouldn't trouble her now she was dying. He insulted me;" and stooping, Annie picked up the suit-case. "Please let me pass," she said with dismal dignity. "You don't know what you're talking about when you advise me to stay with him. I'm no use to him, he shows that every day; and why shouldn't I live comfortable? Besides," she added, and she glanced about her apprehensively, "I'm afraid here."
Hastening down the passageway, she entered Emil's workroom and pointed through the skylight:
"They've been spying down here with a telescope ever since Alexander left early this morning to see what he's working on."
The neighbouring office building was very tall and in one of the upper windows the round eye of a telescope was to be seen.
"They manufacture organs themselves," Annie explained, "and first one and then another of them has been hanging around here for a long time. Now it's a fair-haired man with a pock-marked face and sometimes it's a little black Jew. They always have some excuse; but I've warned Alexander."
"Why don't you cover up things?" Rachel interrupted her, and divesting the couch of its Bagdad covering, she threw it over the metal plate, strings and sounding-board of the piano which stood on the floor.
Annie cast a glance over her shoulder. "You'd better cover up those wires that pass through the wall," she said, "they're connected with the battery and that's what they're crazy to find out about."