“And I understand perfectly that you have passed out of childhood into young womanhood, and that is a dreamy time for a girl.  Her body is formed at last, but her mind is only half formed.  There is a pleasant mist over it.  Very well, I don’t wish to brush the mist away.  If I did that I would take half that charm away from you—­that elusive incompleteness which Fragonard and Watteau tried to imitate, Heaven knows with how little success.  No, I shall always let you live your own life.  All that I ask for, my dear, are certain meeting places.  Let us establish them before it is too late, or you will find one day that you have married an old man, and we shall have silent dinners.  There is nothing more wretched than that.  If it should come about, then you will begin to look on me as a jailer.  And—­”

“Don’t!”

“Ah,” said he very tenderly, “I knew that I was feeling toward the truth.  You are shrinking from me, Ruth, because you feel that I am too old.”

“No, no!”

Here a hand pounded heavily on the door.

“The idiots have found something,” said the man of the sneer.  “And now they have come to talk about their cleverness, like a rooster crowing over a grain of corn.”  He raised his voice.  “Come in!”

And Ronicky Doone heard a panting voice a moment later exclaim:  “We’ve got him!”

Chapter Twelve

The Strange Bargain

Ronicky drew his gun and waited.  “Good,” said the man of the sneer.  “Go ahead.”

“It was down in the cellar that we found the first tracks.  He came in through the side window and closed it after him.”

“That dropped him into the coal bin.  Did he get coal dust on his shoes?”

“Right; and he didn’t have sense enough to wipe it off.”

“An amateur—­a rank amateur!  I told you!” said the man of the sneer, with satisfaction.  “You followed his trail?”

“Up the stairs to the kitchen and down the hall and up to Harry’s room.”

“We already knew he’d gone there.”

“But he left that room again and came down the hall.”

“Yes.  The coal dust was pretty well wiped off by that time, but we held a light close to the carpet and got the signs of it.”

“And where did it lead?”

“Right to this room!”

Ronicky stepped from among the smooth silks and pressed close to the door of the closet, his hand on the knob.  The time had almost come for one desperate attempt to escape, and he was ready to shoot to kill.

A moment of pause had come, a pause which, in the imagination of Ronicky, was filled with the approach of both the men toward the door of the closet.

Then the man of the sneer said:  “That’s a likely story!”

“I can show you the tracks.”

“H’m!  You fool, they simply grew dim when they got to this door.  I’ve been here for some time.  Go back and tell them to hunt some more.  Go up to the attic and search there.  That’s the place an amateur would most likely hide.”