“Good luck to you!” he said. “And you'd better get a better face on you than that. It's enough to send you up, on suspicion!”
She hardly heard him. She began to run, and again she said over and over her little inarticulate prayer. She knew the Spencer house. More than once she had walked past it, on Sunday afternoons, for the sheer pleasure of seeing Graham's home. Well, all that was over now. Everything was over, unless—
The Spencer house was dark, save for a low light in the hall. A new terror seized her. Suppose Graham saw her. He might not believe her story. He might think it a ruse to see his father. But, as it happened, Clayton had sent the butler to bed, and himself answered the bell from the library.
He recognized her at once, and because he saw the distress on her face he brought her in at once. In the brief moment that it required to turn on the lights he had jumped to a sickening conviction that Graham was at the bottom of her visit, and her appearance in full light confirmed this.
“Come into the library,” he said. “We can talk in there.” He led the way and drew up a chair for her. But she did not sit down. She steadied herself by its back, instead.
“You think it's about Graham,” she began. “It isn't, not directly, that is. And my coming is terrible, because it's my own father. They're going to blow up the munition plant, Mr. Spencer!”
“When?”
“To-night, I think. I came as fast as I could. I was locked in.
“Locked in?” He was studying her face.
“Yes. Don't bother about that now. I'm not crazy or hysterical. I tell you I heard them. I've been a prisoner or I'd have come sooner. To-day they brought something—dynamite or a bomb—in a suit-case—and it's gone to-night. He took it—my father.”