He said nothing when he saw Bella, for which I was grateful.  She was sitting at the table, with her arms in front of her, and her head buried in them.  And then I saw she was asleep.  Her hat and veil were laid beside her, and she had taken off her coat and draped it around her.  She had rummaged out a cold pheasant and some salad, and had evidently had a little supper.  Supper and a nap, while I worried myself gray-headed about her!

“She—­she came in unexpectedly—­something about the butler,” I explained under my breath.  “And—­she doesn’t want to stay.  She is on bad terms with—­with some of the people upstairs.  You can see how impossible the situation is.”

“I doubt if we can get her out,” he said, as if the situation were quite ordinary.  “However, we can try.  She seems very comfortable.  It’s a pity to rouse her.”

Here the prisoner in the furnace room broke out afresh.  It sounded as though he had taken a lump of coal and was attacking the lock.  Mr. Harbison followed the noise, and I could hear him arguing, not gently.

“Another sound,” he finished, “and you won’t get out of here at all, unless you crawl up the furnace pipe!”

When he came back, Bella was rousing.  She lifted her head with her eyes shut and then opened them one at a time, blinked, and sat up.  She didn’t see him at first.

“You wretch!” she said ungratefully, after she had yawned.  “Do you know what time it is?  And that—­” Then she saw Mr. Harbison and sat staring at him.

“This is Mr. Harbison,” I said to her hastily.  “He—­he came with Anne and Dal and—­he is shut in, too.”

By that time Bella had seen how handsome he was, and she took a hair pin out of her mouth, and arched her eyebrows, which was always Bella’s best pose.

“I am Miss Knowles,” she said sweetly (of course, the court had given her back her name),"and I stopped in tonight, thinking the house was empty, to see about a—­a butler.  Unfortunately, the house was quarantined just at that time, and—­here I am.  Surely there can not be any harm in helping me to get out?” (Pleading tone.) “I have not been exposed to any contagion, and in the exhausted state of my health the confinement would be positively dangerous.”

She rolled her eyes at him, and I could see she was making an impression.  Of course she was free.  She had a perfect right to marry again, but I will say this:  Bella is a lot better looking by electric light than she is the next morning.

The upshot of it was that the gentleman who built bridges and looked down on society from a lofty, lonely pinnacle agreed to help one of the most gleaming members of the aforesaid society to outwit the law.

It took about fifteen minutes to quiet the policeman.  Nobody ever knew what Mr. Harbison did to him, but for twenty-four hours he was quite tractable.  He changed after that, but that comes later in the story.  Anyhow, the Harbison man went upstairs and came down with a Bagdad curtain and a cushion to match, and took them into the furnace room, and came out and locked the door behind him, and then we were ready for Bella’s escape.