Bella’s courage revived at that, and she said yes, there were windows, plenty of them, only she didn’t see how she could get out.  And I said she would have to get out, because I was playing Bella in the performance, and I didn’t care to have an understudy.  Then the situation dawned on her, and she sat down and laughed herself weak in the knees.  Of course she wanted to stay, then, and see the fun out.  But I was firm; she would have to go, and I told her so.  Things were complicated enough without her.

Well, we looked funny, no doubt, Bella in a Russian pony automobile coat over the black satin she had worn at the Clevelands’ dinner, and I in cream lace, the skirt gathered up from the kitchen floor, with Bella’s ermine pelerine around my bare shoulders, and dishes and overturned chairs everywhere.

Bella knew more about the lower regions of her ex-home than I would have thought.  She opened a door in a corner and led the way through a narrow hall past the refrigerating room, to a huge, cemented cellar, with a furnace in the center, and a half-dozen electric lights making it really brilliant.

“Get a chair,” Bella said over her shoulder, excitedly.  “I can get out easily here, through the coal hole.  Imagine my—­”

But it was my turn to grip Bella.  From behind the furnace were coming the most terrible sounds, rasping noises that fairly frayed the silk of my nerves.  We stood petrified for an instant.  Then Bella laughed.  “They are not all gone,” she said carefully.  “Some one is asleep there.”

We tiptoed to where we could see around the furnace, and, sure enough, some one was asleep there.  Only, it was not one of the servants; it was a portly policeman, with a newspaper and an empty plate on the floor on one side, and a champagne bottle on the other.  He had slid down in his chair, with his chin on his brass buttons, and his helmet had rolled a dozen feet away.  Bella had to clap her hand over her mouth.

“Fairly caught!” she whispered.  “Sartor Resartus, the arrester arrested.  Oh, Jim and his flawless service!”

But after we got over our surprise, we saw the situation was serious.  The policeman was threatening to awaken.  Once he stopped snoring to yawn noisily, and we beat a hasty retreat.  Bella switched off the lights in a hurry and locked the door behind us.  We hardly breathed until we were back in the kitchen again, and everything quiet.  And then Jimmy called my name from up above somewheres.

“I am going to call him down, Bella,” I said firmly.  “Let him help you out.  I’m sure I don’t see why I should have all this when the two of you—­”

“Oh, no, no!  Surely, Kit, you wouldn’t be so cruel!” she whispered pleadingly.  “You know what he would think.  He—­oh, Kit, let them all get settled for the night, and then come down, like a dear, and help me out.  I know loads of ways—­honestly I do.”

“If I leave you here,” I debated, “what about the policeman?”