“She must have been pretty well done up by her experience,” he said apologetically, catching my eye.  “I was wondering if—­Hello—­ oh, Miss Dodge—­I—­er—­I—­er—­just called up to see if you were all right.”

Craig was very much embarrassed, but also very much in earnest.

A musical laugh rippled over the telephone.  “Yes, I’m all right, thank you, Mr. Kennedy—­and I put the package you sent me into the safe, but—­”

“Package?” frowned Craig.  “Why, I sent you no package, Miss Dodge.  In the safe?”

“Why, yes, and the safe is all covered with moisture—­and so cold.”

“Moisture—­cold?” he repeated quickly.

“Yes, I have been wondering if it is all right.  In fact, I was going to call you up, only I was afraid you’d think I was foolish.”

“I shall be right over,” he answered hastily, clapping the receiver back on its hook.  “Walter,” he added, seizing his hat and coat, “come on—­hurry!”

A few minutes later we drove up in a taxi before the Dodge house and rang the bell.

Jennings admitted us sleepily.

. . . . . . . .

It could not have been long after we left Miss Dodge late in the afternoon that Susie Martin, who had been quite worried over our long absence after the attempt to rob her father, dropped in on Elaine.  Wide-eyed, she had listened to Elaine’s story of what had happened.

“And you think this Clutching Hand has never recovered the incriminating papers that caused him to murder your father?” asked Susie.

Elaine shook her head.  “No.  Let me show you the new safe I’ve bought.  Mr. Kennedy thinks it wonderful.”

“I should think you’d be proud of it,” admired Susie.  “I must tell father to get one, too.”

At that very moment, if they had known it, the Clutching Hand with his sinister, masked face, was peering at the two girls from the other side of the portieres.

Susie rose to go and Elaine followed her to the door.  No sooner had she gone than the Clutching Hand came out from behind the curtains.  He gazed about a moment, then moving over to the safe about which the two girls had been talking, stealthily examined it.

He must have heard someone coming, for, with a gesture of hate at the safe itself, as though he personified it, he slipped back of the curtains again.

Elaine had returned and as she sat down at the desk to go over some papers which Bennett had left relative to settling up the estate, the masked intruder stealthily and silently withdrew.

“A package for you, Miss Dodge,” announced Michael later in the evening as Elaine, in her dainty evening gown, was still engaged in going over the papers.  He carried it in his hands rather gingerly.

“Mr. Kennedy sent it, ma’am.  He says it contains clues and will you please put it in the new safe for him.”

Elaine took the package eagerly and examined it.  Then she pulled open the heavy door of the safe.