Down the road past where we had turned, before a pretty little shingle house, the taxicab chauffeur stopped.  One of the bullets had taken effect on him and his shoulder was bleeding.  But the worst, as he seemed to think it, was that another shot had given him a flat tire.

He jumped out and looked up the road whence he had come.  No one was following.  Still, he was worried.  He went around to look at the tire.  But he was too weak now from loss of blood.  It had been nerve and reserve force that had carried him through.  Now that the strain was off, he felt the reaction to the full.

Just then the doctor and his driver, whom the valet had already summoned to Del Mar’s, came speeding down the road.  The doctor saw the chauffeur fall in a half faint, stopped his car and ran to him.  The chauffeur had kept up as long as he could.  He had now sunk down beside his machine in the road.

A moment later they picked him up and carried him into the house.  There was no acting about his hurts now.  In the house they laid the man down on a couch and the doctor made a hasty examination.

“How is he?” asked one of the kind Samaritans.

“The wound is not dangerous,” replied the physician, “but he’s lost a lot of blood.  He cannot be moved for some time yet.”

. . . . . . .

We talked about nothing else at Dodge Hall after dressing for dinner but the strange events over at Del Mar’s and what had followed.  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that we would never be left over night in peaceful possession of the plan which both Elaine and I decided ought on the following day to be sent to Washington.

Accordingly I cudgelled my brain for some method of protecting both ourselves and it.  The only thing I could think of was a scheme once adopted by Kennedy in another case.  How I longed for him.  But I had to do my best alone.

I had a small quick shutter camera that had belonged to Craig and just as we were about to retire, I brought it into the living-room with a package I had had sent up from the village.

“What are you going to do?” asked Elaine curiously.

I assumed an air of mystery but did not say, for I was not sure but that even now some one was eavesdropping.  It was not late, but the country air made us all sleepy and Aunt Josephine, looking at the clock, soon announced that she was going to retire.

She had no sooner said good-night than Elaine began again to question me.  But I had determined not to tell her what I was doing, for if my imitation of Kennedy failed, I knew that she would laugh at me.

“Oh, very well,” she said finally in pique, “then, if you’re going to be so secret about it, you can sit up alone—­there!”

She flounced off to bed.  Sure as I could be at last that I was alone, I opened the package.  There were the tools that I had ordered, a coil of wire and some dry cells.  Then I went to the table, unlocked the drawer and put the plan in my pocket.  I had determined that whether the idea worked or not, no one was to get the plan except by overcoming me.