“I don’t have to tell you to be brave, boy,” she said.  “But keep your head and don’t git independent.  You do what I say!”

She touched his side pocket, which bulged.  “An’ not too brash with that!” she added.  “Revolvers is good for bluffs but bad for real business!”

Blake nodded.  And for the second time they crept down the silent, padded halls to those apartments above Mrs. Markham’s alcove library.  They approached, then, not the closet door, but the door leading to that boudoir which he had seen once before through Rosalie’s hole in the wall paper.  Rosalie applied a key, turned it with infinite caution, opened the door, motioned him in.  The room appeared as before.  The light burned low over the white desk; the portieres hung close.  Rosalie pointed to the rounded, further end of the room—­the space where he had seen the ghostly thing which was Annette disappear through the floor.  That floor space was bare; a rug, rolled up, rested against the further wainscot.  Blake took it in, and smiled at Rosalie as though to say, “everything is ready I see!” Then for a minute they stood immobile, listening.  A murmur of conversation came up from below, and in the room behind the portieres someone was breathing, lightly, regularly.  Rosalie touched his arm and beckoned.  Moving without sound, they lifted the portieres, stepped within.

No light inside that room, except the low radiance from a prone figure by the outer wall.  It seemed at first that this ghost of Annette lay suspended between heaven and earth.  Blake’s mind put down the awe which was stealing over his senses.  His eyes sharpened until he could make out a few details.

At the right, dimly suggested, was a disordered bed.  Annette lay on a couch.  The robes swathed her from head to foot, but the veil over her face was parted as though to give her air.  Her eyes were closed; her arms, with something strained and stretched in their attitude, lay along her sides.

And now Rosalie had her lips at his ear.

“Quick!” she said.

Blake crept to Annette’s side and spoke in a low tone.

“Annette, this is I—­Walter, your lover.  You belong to me.  I revoke no other commands, but you are to listen to me also and do as I tell you.  Answer me first.  You have been commanded to rise when you hear music?”

As by the miracle of one speaking in normal tones out of sleep, Annette answered: 

“Yes.”

“Speak low.  You have been commanded to enter the other room then, turn out the light, lift a trap, let down a rope ladder, descend it, and say certain things?”

“Yes.”  The tone was less than a whisper.

“Have you been given anything special to say to-night—­has anything been impressed upon you?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“After the rest, I am to say:  ’Robert, they tell me that the great danger is near.  They give me a message which I do not understand—­“Declare that dividend tomorrow.”  You do not know the awful things which will come if you do not.’”