He made no move, offered no speech.

“Is she upstairs?”

“She is asleep.  Do you intend to disturb her?”

“I do,” said old Anthony grimly.  “I’ll go first, Paul.  You follow me, but I’d advise you to come up backwards.”

Suddenly Doyle laughed.

“What!” he said, “Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my humble home, and anticipating violence!  You underestimate the honor you are doing me.”

He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until the two men had reached the top.  Then he followed them.  The mask had dropped from his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it.  If she talked, he would kill her.  But she knew that.  She was not a fool.

Elinor lay in the bed, listening.  She had recognized her father’s voice, and her first impulse was one of almost unbearable relief.  They had found her.  They had come to take her away.  For she knew now that she was a prisoner; even without the broken leg she would have been a prisoner.  The girl downstairs was one of them, and her jailer.  A jailer who fed her, and gave her grudgingly the attention she required, but that was all.

Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on the night after her injury he had taken pains to verify his suspicions.  He had found first her little store of money, and that had angered him.  In the end he had broken open a locked trinket box and found a notebook in which for months she had kept her careful records.  Here and there, scattered among house accounts, were the names of the radical members of The Central Labor Council, and other names, spoken before her and carefully remembered.  He had read them out to her as he came to them, suffering as she was, and she had expected death then.  But he had not killed her.  He had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a mad-eyed fanatic named Olga, and from that time on he visited her once daily.  In his anger and triumph over her he devised the most cunning of all punishments; he told her of the movement’s progress, of its ingeniously contrived devilments in store, of its inevitable success.  What buildings and homes were to be bombed, the Cardew house first among them; what leading citizens were to be held as hostages, with all that that implied; and again the Cardews headed the list.

When Doctor Smalley came he or the Russian were always present, solicitous and attentive.  She got out of her bed one day, and dragging her splinted leg got to her desk, in the hope of writing a note and finding some opportunity of giving it to the doctor.  Only to discover that they had taken away her pen, pencils and paper.

She had been found there by Olga, but the girl had made no comment.  Olga had helped her back into bed without a word, but from that time on had spent most of her day on the upper floor.  Not until Doyle came in would she go downstairs to prepare his food.