Was this actually the escaped prisoner?  Was this the man who, according to instructions in the cipher, was to be marked for death at the hands of the German Government’s secret agents in America?

And, if this truly were the same man, was he safe, at least for the present, now that the cipher letter had been intercepted before it had reached Herman Lauffer?

Hour after hour, lying deep in her armchair before the fire, Miss Erith crouched a prey to excited conjectures, not one of which could be answered until the man in the Samaritan Hospital had recovered consciousness.

Suppose he never recovered consciousness.  Suppose he should die—­

At the thought Miss Erith sprang from her chair and picked up the telephone.

With fast-beating heart she waited for the connection.  Finally she got it and asked the question.

“The man is dying,” came the calm answer.  A pause, then:  “I understand the patient has just died.”

Miss Erith strove to speak but her voice died in her throat.  Trembling from head to foot, she placed the telephone on the table, turned uncertainly, fell into the armchair, huddled there, and covered her face with both hands.

For it was proving worse—­a little worse than the loss of the Great Secret—­worse than the mere disappointment in losing it—­worse even than a natural sorrow in the defeat of an effort to save life.

For in all her own life Miss Erith had never until that evening experienced the slightest emotion when looking into the face of any man.

But from the moment when her brown eyes fell upon the pallid, dissipated, marred young face turned upward on her knees in the car—­in that instant she had known for the first time a new and indefinable emotion—­vague in her mind, vaguer in her heart—­yet delicately apparent.

But what this unfamiliar emotion might be, so faint, so vague, she had made no effort to analyse....  It had been there; she had experienced it; that was all she knew.

It was almost morning before she rose, stiff with cold, and moved slowly toward her bedroom.

Among the whitening ashes on her hearth only a single coal remained alive.

CHAPTER III

TO A FINISH

The hospital called her on the telephone about eight o’clock in the morning: 

“Miss Evelyn Erith, please?”

“Yes,” she said in a tired voice, “who is it?”

“Is this Miss Erith?”

“Yes.”

“This is the Superintendent’s office, Samaritan, Hospital, Miss Dalton speaking.”

The girl’s heart contracted with a pang of sheer pain.  She closed her eyes and waited.  The voice came over the wire again: 

“A wreath of Easter lilies with your card came early—­this morning.  I’m very sure there is a mistake—­”

“No,” she whispered, “the flowers are for a patient who died in the hospital last night—­a young man whom I brought there in my car—­Kay McKay.”