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The door so soon had been shut behind her, cutting off retreat.

“Well?” said the stranger.

Miss Smith stood away from the shrinking figure, leaving it quite alone.

“This is the woman,” she said, and suddenly her voice was accusing and hard. “The stolen paper is in that necklace she is wearing round her neck.”

For proof of the truth of the charge Mullinix had only to look into their captive’s face. Her first little fit of distress coming on her so suddenly while she was being bound had made her pale. Now her pallor was ghastly. Little blemishes under the skin stood out in blotches against its dead white, and out of the mask her eyes glared in a dumb terror. She made no outcry, but her lips, stiff with fright, twisted to form words that would not come. Her shoulders heaved as–futilely–she strove to wrench her arms free. Then quickly her head sank forward and her knees began to bend under her.

“Mind–she’s going to faint!” warned Mullinix.

Both of them sprang forward and together they eased the limp shape down upon the rug. She lay there at their feet, a pitiable little bundle. But there was no compassion, no mercifulness in their faces as they looked down at her.

Alongside the slumped form Miss Smith knelt down and felt for the clasp of the slender chain and undid it. She pressed the catch of the locket and opened it, and from the small receptacle revealed within, where a miniature might once have been, she took forth a tightly folded half sheet of yellow parchment paper, which had it been wadded into a ball would have made a sphere about the size of the kernel of a fair-sized filbert.

Mullinix grasped it eagerly, pressed it out flat and took one glance at the familiar signature, written below the close-set array of seemingly meaningless and unrelated letters.

“You win, young lady,” he said, and there was thanksgiving and congratulation in the way he said it. “But how did you do it? How was it done?”

She looked up from where she was casting off the binding about the relaxed hands of the unconscious culprit.

“It wasn’t hard–after the hints you gave me. I made up my mind yesterday that the paper would probably be hidden in a piece of jewelry–in a bracelet or under the setting of a ring possibly; or in a hair ornament possibly; and I followed that theory. Two tests that I made convinced me that Madame Ybanca was innocent; they quite eliminated Madame Ybanca from the equation. So I centred my efforts on this girl and she betrayed herself soon enough.”

“Betrayed herself, how?”

“An individual who has been temporarily deprived of sight will involuntarily keep his or her hands upon any precious object that is concealed about the person–I suppose you know that. And as I watched her after I had blindfolded her—-“

“After you had what?”

“Blindfolded her. Oh, I kept my promise,” she added, reading the expression on his face. “There was no force used, and no violence. She suffered herself to be blindfolded–indeed, I did the blinding myself. Well, after she had been blindfolded with a thick silk handkerchief I watched her, and I saw that while with one hand she groped her way about, she kept the other hand constantly clutched upon this locket, as though to make sure of the safety of something there. So then I was sure; but I was made doubly sure by her actions while I was tying her hands behind her. And then, after I had her tied and helpless, I could experiment further–and I did–and again my experiment convinced me I was on the right track.”

“Yes–but tying her hands–didn’t she resist that?”

“No; you see, she let me tie her hands too. It was a part of a game. They all played it.”

“Some of the others were blinded, eh?”

“All of them were; every single one of them was. They still are, I imagine, providing my cousin is doing her part–and I am sure she is. There’ll be no suspicion of the truth, even after their eyes are unhooded. Claire has her explanations all ready. They’ll miss this girl of course and wonder what has become of her, but the explanation provides for that: She was taken with a sudden indisposition and slipped away with me, not wishing to spoil the fun by staying on after she began to feel badly. That’s the story they’ll be told, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t accept it as valid either. See! She’s coming to.”

“Then I’ll get out and leave you to attend to her. Keep her here in this room until she’s better, and then you may send her back to her hotel. You might tell her that there is to be no prosecution and no unpleasant notoriety for her if only she keeps her mouth shut about all that’s happened. Probably she’ll be only too glad to do that, for I figure she has learned a lesson.”

“You won’t want to question her, then, after she has been revived?”

“It’s quite unnecessary. I have the other ends of the case in my hands. And besides I must go outside to meet our dear friend Geltmann when he arrives. He should be driving up to the house pretty soon–I had a telephone message five minutes ago telling me to expect him shortly. So I’m going out to break some sad news to him on the sidewalk. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s starting to-night on a long, long trip; a trip that will take him clear out of this country–and he won’t ever, ever be coming back.

“But I’ll call on you to-morrow, if I may–after I’ve seen to getting him off for the West. I want to thank you again in behalf of the Service for the wonderful thing you’ve done so wonderfully well. And I want to hear more from you about that game you played.”

“I’ll do better than that,” she promised: “I’ll let you read about it in a book–an old secondhand book, it is; you saw it yesterday. Maybe I can convert you to reading old books; they’re often full of things that people in your line should know.”

“Lady,” he said reverently, “you’ve made a true believer of me already.”