organised.

[Pg 55]

Suddenly she heard her husband's voice. He was approaching Elsinore Avenue from one of the nearby streets, and he was singing, with physiological interruptions, "Tipperary," a song he had cultivated of late to annoy his political rival, an American of German birth and terrific German sympathies. He was walking quickly, as top-heavy men sometimes will.

She drew back and crouched. To make her presence known would be to turn over the burglar to her husband and detain the essential victim from the dining-room table.

She saw the shadow dodge behind a tree. Balfame appeared almost abruptly in the light shed by the street lamp in front of his gate; and then it seemed to her that she had held her breath for a lifetime before her ears were stunned by a sharp report, her eyes blinked at a spurt of fire, before she heard David Balfame give a curious sound, half moan, half hiccough, saw him clutch at the gate, then sink to the ground.

She was hardly conscious of running, far more conscious that some one else was running—through the orchard and toward the back fence.

Hours later, it seemed to her, she was in the kitchen closing the door behind her. Something curious had happened in her brain, so trained to orderly routine that it seldom prompted an erratic course.

She should have run at once to her husband, and here she was inside the house, and once more listening intently. It was the fancied sound that swung her[Pg 56] consciousness back to its balance. She went to the front of the back stairs and called sharply:

[Pg 56]

"Frieda!"

There was no answer.

"Frieda," she called again. "Did you hear anything? I thought I heard some one trying to open the back door."

Again there was no answer.

Then, her lip curling at the idea of Frieda's return on Saturday night at eight o'clock, she went rapidly into the dining-room, carried the glass containing the lemonade into the kitchen, rinsed it thoroughly, and put it away.

It was not until she reached her room that it occurred to her that she should have ascertained whether or not the key was on the inside of the rear hall door.

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