“Her honorable rainy coat,” said Onoye, pointing to the fated blue mackintosh.

“Mary, what shall I say?” asked Billie in a low voice.  “I don’t know what to do.”

“Ask them questions,” said Mary.

From Onoye they gathered that Miss Brown had arrived soon after Mr. Campbell had left the house, and had gone straight to her room.  She was very tired, she said, and would lie down until lunch time.  Then she had gone to the library.  Just before the storm they had tried to go in and close the shutters, but had found the door locked.

Billie formed a resolution to protect Nancy no matter what was to pay.

“It wasn’t the real Miss Brown,” she announced firmly.  “It was some one dressed like her.  The real Miss Brown is far away from here in the mountains.”

The two Japanese women withdrew presently, and if they felt any curiosity about Nancy’s strange appearance at the villa, they were careful to hide it.

The storm lasted all night and many times the two girls lying side by side on Billie’s bed were prepared for the house to fall on top of them or to be carried away on the wind like chips of wood.  But toward morning the wind died down and while the rain continued to flood the earth, they knew the worst was over.  Billie drew back the bolts of their storm shutters and the fresh air came pouring in to revive their drooping spirits.

“Mary,” she said, creeping back to bed, “I’ll never believe it was Nancy.  No, never, never.”

At last they went to sleep, and when they waked the rain had ceased altogether.  The lawn in front of the house was a muddy lake and many trees lay prone on the ground.  It was a scene of devastation that greeted Mr. Campbell as he hurried home at daylight in a ’riksha.  He had dispatched a messenger in the night, paying a large fee, to see if the girls were safe at home and had spent the night in Tokyo with Mr. Buxton.

It was not until much later in the day that Billie plucked up courage to inform her father of what had happened.

“Why on earth didn’t you tell me about it immediately?” he exclaimed.  “The best way to settle that, is to telegraph to Cousin Helen right off.”

But with the “Comet” in town and Komatsu in the mountains this was not so easy to manage, and it looked as if Mr. Campbell would have to walk back to Tokyo.  He had got half way down the drive, in fact, when a messenger appeared running at full speed as fast as a horse; such is the endurance of a Japanese runner.  He had been sent with a telegram from Mr. Campbell’s office, but it had been written in Japanese and had to be translated.

Mr. Campbell hurried back to the house and called Onoye: 

“Read this for me if you can,” he ordered.

Onoye looked at the strange script a long time.  Then she read slowly: 

“’O’Nainci San gone Tokyo.  No honorable telling before for why she make those journey—­’”