“Do you suppose she really is deaf?” asked Gladys.  “She seemed to hear that sound.”

“Maybe she heard it,” said Nyoda, “and then again she may have felt the vibrations.  Who do you suppose has come?”

They spent the evening in a thrill of expectation, but were undisturbed.  Without lighting the lights they stood looking at the stars through the openings in the trellis.  At last Nyoda turned from the window and snapped on the switch.  As she did so she noticed that the elevator cage had been up and was just going down.  As it sank out of sight she saw that the occupant was a man.  Soon afterward they heard the throb of the motor again and then the sound of a car driving away.

“Where did you put the red ties?” asked Gladys the next morning.

“I didn’t take them,” said Nyoda.  The ties had disappeared from the chair overnight.

From sheer nervousness Nyoda began twisting up her felt outing hat in her hands.  As she did so she came upon something hard in the inside of the crown.  Investigating she drew out her Wohelo knife.  “I had forgotten I had it in there,” she said.  “I put that pocket in my hat just for fun and slipped the knife in to see if it would go in.”

Why is it that a knife in one’s hand inspires a desire to cut something?  Nyoda immediately began examining the room for a possible means of escape with the aid of the knife.  Opening the window, she inspected the setting of the bars closely.  They were set only into the wooden window sill.  “Gladys,” she whispered excitedly, “I believe we can cut the wood away from these bars and push them out.”

“And what then?” asked Gladys.

“Jump,” said Nyoda.  “Jump into the lake and swim away.”

Not daring to make any attempt in the daytime for fear of the mysteriously silent visits of the deaf-mute, who never came at any regular time, they waited until after dark, and then Gladys sat close beside the elevator shaft, watching for the slightest indication of the approaching car.  Nyoda meanwhile hacked away at the window casing, cutting and splitting it away from the bars.  She worked feverishly for several hours and succeeded in freeing the ends of three of the bars, which would be enough to let them through.  Just then Gladys gave a warning hiss.  The elevator cord was moving.  Nyoda drew the shade down over the window and closed the purple curtains over it, and both girls jumped into bed and pulled the covers over them.  They had undressed so as to avert suspicion.  The next moment the elevator door opened silently, but whether it moved up or down or side wise they could not make out, and the deaf-mute stepped into the room.  Guided by a flash-light, she picked up Gladys’s red petticoat from the chair and departed as silently as she had come.  As soon as the elevator had sunk out of sight the girls were back at work again.  Throwing all her weight against the bars, Nyoda bent them out and upward, the wood that held them at the top splintering with the strain.  Then, leaning out, she began to cut away the trellis, which was in the way.  It was built out from the sill and had no supports on the ground, and the vines which were on it came around the corner of the house.