“Is that you, Conniston?”

It was McDowell.  The discovery gave him a distinct shock.  What could the Inspector be doing up at the Shack in his absence?  Besides, there was an imperative demand in the question that shot at him over the wire.  McDowell had half shouted it.

“Yes, it’s I,” he said rather feebly.

“I’m down-town, stocking up on some cigars.  What’s the excitement?”

“Don’t ask questions but hustle up here,” McDowell fired back.  “I’ve got the surprise of your life waiting for you!”

Keith heard the receiver at the other end go up with a bang.  Something had happened at the Shack, and McDowell was excited.  He went out puzzled.  For some reason he was in no great hurry to reach the top of the hill.  He was beginning to expect things to happen—­too many things—­and in the stress of the moment he felt the incongruity of the friendly box of cigars tucked under his arm.  The hardest luck he had ever run up against had never quite killed his sense of humor, and he chuckled.  His fortunes were indeed at a low ebb when he found a bit of comfort in hugging a box of cigars still closer.

He could see that every room in the Shack was lighted, when he came to the crest of the slope, but the shades were drawn.  He wondered if Wallie had pulled down the curtains, or if it was a caution on McDowell’s part against possible espionage.  Suspicion made him transfer the box of cigars to his left arm so that his right was free.  Somewhere in the darkness Conniston’s voice was urging him, as it had urged him up in the cabin on the Barren:  “Don’t walk into a noose.  If it comes to a fight, fight!”

And then something happened that brought his heart to a dead stop.  He was close to the door.  His ear was against it.  And he was listening to a voice.  It was not Wallie’s, and it was not the iron man’s.  It was a woman’s voice, or a girl’s.

He opened the door and entered, taking swiftly the two or three steps that carried him across the tiny vestibule to the big room.  His entrance was so sudden that the tableau in front of him was unbroken for a moment.  Birch logs were blazing in the fireplace.  In the big chair sat McDowell, partly turned, a smoking cigar poised in his fingers, staring at him.  Seated on a footstool, with her chin in the cup of her hands, was a girl.  At first, blinded a little by the light, Keith thought she was a child, a remarkably pretty child with wide-open, half-startled eyes and a wonderful crown of glowing, brown hair in which he could still see the shimmer of wet.  He took off his hat and brushed the water from his eyes.  McDowell did not move.  Slowly the girl rose to her feet.  It was then that Keith saw she was not a child.  Perhaps she was eighteen, a slim, tired-looking, little thing, wonderfully pretty, and either on the verge of laughing or crying.  Perhaps it was halfway between.  To his growing discomfiture she came slowly toward him with a strange and wonderful look in her face.  And McDowell still sat there staring.