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“It hurts–it pinches! You’ve bound me too tightly,” murmured the prisoner, as involuntarily she strained against the pull of the trussings.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” whispered Miss Smith. “I’ll ease you in just a second.” But despite her promise she made no immediate move to do so. Instead she concerned herself with lifting the collaret of bells off over Mrs. Hadley-Smith’s head and bestowing it upon the rounded shoulders of the girl. As she brought the jingling harness down in its place her hands lingered for one fleeting space where a heavy, quaint, old-fashioned gold locket–an heirloom that might have come down from a grandmother’s days–was dangling from a gold chain that encircled the girl’s neck. Apparently she caught a finger in the chain and before she could free it she had given a sharp tug at the chain, thereby lifting the locket from where it rested against the white flesh of its wearer’s throat.

“I–I’m afraid I can’t play,” Miss Ballister almost gasped out the words; then drawing in her breath with a sharp catch: “This room–it’s so warm. I feel a bit faint, really I do. Please untie me. I shan’t be able to go on.” Her voice, though pitched still in a low key, was sharpened with a nervous entreaty.

“I will of course if you really do feel badly,” said Miss Smith. Then an inspiration seemed to come to her. Her eyes sparkled.

“Oh,” she said, “I’ve a beautiful idea! We’ll play an April Fools’ joke on them. We’ll make them all think you still are here and while they’re dodging about trying to keep away from you we’ll slip away together and be at the other end of the house.” By a gesture of one hand and with a finger of the other across her lips to impress the need of secrecy, she brought Mrs. Hadley-Smith into the little conspiracy.

“Don’t blindfold yourself, Claire,” she whispered. “You must help Miss Ballister and me to play a joke on the others. You are to keep the bells rattling after we are gone. See? This way.”

With that she shifted the leathern loop from about Miss Ballister’s neck and replaced it over Mrs. Hadley-Smith’s head which bent forward to receive it. Smiling in appreciation of the proposed hoax the widow took a step or two.

“Watch!” whispered Miss Smith in Miss Ballister’s ear. “See how well the trick works. There–what did I tell you?”

For instantly all the players, deceived by the artifice, were falling back, huddling away from the fancied danger zone as Mrs. Hadley-Smith went toward them. In the same instant Miss Smith silently had opened the nearest door and, beckoning to Miss Ballister to follow her, was tiptoeing softly out into the empty hall. The door closed gently behind them.

Miss Ballister laughed a forced little laugh. She turned, presenting her back to Miss Smith.

“Now untie me, please do.” In her eagerness to be free she panted out the words.

“Surely,” agreed Miss Smith. “But I think we should get entirely away, out of sight, before the bells stop ringing and the hoax begins to dawn on them. There’s a little study right here at the end of the hall. Shall we go there and hide from them? I’ll relieve you of that handkerchief then.”

“Yes, yes; but quickly, please!” Miss Ballister’s note was insistent; you might call it pleading, certainly it was agitated. “Being tied this way gives one such a trapped sort of feeling–it’s horrid, really it is. I’ll never let any one tie my hands again so long as I live. It’s enough to give one hysterics–honestly it is.

“I understand. Come on, then.”

With one hand slipped inside the curve of the other’s elbow Miss Smith hurried her to the study door masked beneath the broad stairs, and opening it, ushered her into the inner room.

It contained an occupant: a smallish man with mild-looking gray eyes, who at their entrance rose up from where he sat, staring steadily at them. At sight of the unexpected stranger Miss Ballister halted. She uttered a shocked little exclamation and recoiled, pulling away from her escort as though she meant to flee back across the threshold. But her shoulders came against the solid panels.