“Well?”

“‘Bill Gregg?’ she says.  ‘I don’t remember any such name!’

“That took the wind out of me.  I only had enough left to say:  ’The gent that was writing those papers to the correspondence school to you from the West, the one you sent your picture to and—­’

“‘Sent my picture to!’ she says and looks as if the ground had opened under her feet.  ‘You’re mad!’ she says.  And then she looks back over her shoulder as much as to wish she was safe back in her house!”

“D’you know why she looked back over her shoulder?”

“Just for the reason I told you.”

“No, Bill.  There was a gent standing up there at a window watching her and how she acted.  He’s the gent that kept her from writing to you and signing her name.  He’s the one who’s kept her in that house.  He’s the one that knew we were here watching all the time, that sent out the girl with exact orders how she should act if you was to come out and speak to her when you seen her!  Bill, what that girl told you didn’t come out of her own head.  It come out of the head of the gent across the way.  When you turned your back on her she looked like she’d run after you and try to explain.  But the fear of that fellow up in the window was too much for her, and she didn’t dare.  Bill, to get at the girl you got to get that gent I seen grinning from the window.”

“Grinning?” asked Bill Gregg, grinding his teeth and starting from his chair.  “Was the skunk laughing at me?”

“Sure!  Every minute.”

Bill Gregg groaned.  “I’ll smash every bone in his ugly head.”

“Shake!” said Ronicky Doone.  “That’s the sort of talk I wanted to hear, and I’ll help, Bill.  Unless I’m away wrong, it’ll take the best that you and me can do, working together, to put that gent down!”

Chapter Nine

A Bold Venture

But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer, how, above all, to make sure that he was really the power controlling Caroline Smith, were problems which could not be solved in a moment.

Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea.  “We’ve waited a week to see her; now that we’ve seen her let’s keep on waiting,” he said, and Ronicky agreed.

They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged for such a length of time that it was impossible to keep it as strictly as it had been observed before.  Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long watching and the shock of the disappointment of that day, went completely to pieces and in the early evening fell asleep.  But Ronicky Doone went out for a light dinner and came back after dark, refreshed and eager for action, only to find that Bill Gregg was incapable of being roused.  He slept like a dead man.