What on earth could _she_ be wanting, that could have turned up so unexpectedly in the half-hour since he had left her and that wouldn't keep till morning?

Abruptly he became aware that the air in the room was stiflingly close.

And he had left the windows open when he went out; he knew that he wasn't mistaken about that; and now they were closed, the shades drawn tight!

This considered in connection with the open door that had been locked, and the heated desk-lamp that should have been cold, he couldn't avoid the conclusion that somebody had been in his rooms, an unlawful trespa.s.ser, just a few minutes before he came in--possibly the very man who had rushed past him in such violent haste at the front door.

He jumped up and turned on all the lights in the room. A first, hasty glance about showed him nothing as it had not been when he had left six hours or so ago--aside from the front windows, of course. Mechanically, thinking hard and fast, he went to these latter and opened them wide.

The possibility that the intruder might still be in the rooms--in his bedroom, for instance--popped into his head, and he went hurriedly to investigate. But there wasn't anybody in the back-room or the bath-room.

Perplexed, he examined the rear windows. They were closed and locked, as when he had left. Opening them, he peered out and down the fire-escape; he had always had a notion that anybody foolish enough to want to burgle his rooms would find it easy to effect an entrance via the fire-escape, whose bottom rung was only eight feet or so above the level of the backyard. And now, since the Twenty-ninth Street houses had been torn down, lending access easy via the excavation, such an attempt would be doubly easy.

But he had every evidence that his rooms hadn't been broken into by any such route; although--of course!--an astute burglar might have thought to cover up his tracks by relocking the windows after he had entered. On the other hand, the really wise marauder would have almost certainly left them open to provide a way of escape in emergency.

Baffled and wondering, Staff returned to his study. An examination of the hall-closet yielded nothing illuminating. Everything was undisturbed, and there wasn't room enough therein for anybody to hide.

He shut the closet door and reviewed the study more carefully. Not a thing out of place; even that wretched bandbox lay where he had kicked it, with a helpless, abused look, the dented side turned pitifully to the light--much like a street beggar exposing a maimed limb to excite public sympathy.

He struggled to think: what did he possess worth stealing? Nothing of any great value: a modest collection of masculine jewelry--stick-pins and the like; a quant.i.ty of clothing; a few fairly good pictures; a few rare books. But the merest cursory examination showed that these were intact, one and all. What cash he had was all upon his person. His desk, where the lamp had been lighted, held nothing valuable to anybody other than himself: ma.n.u.scripts, account books, some personal papers strictly non-negotiable. And these too proved undisturbed.

Swinging round from the desk, he rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands, and lapsed into the most profound of meditations; through which he arrived at the most amazing discovery of all.

Very gradually his eyes, at first seeing not what they saw, focussed upon an object on the floor. Quite excusably he was reluctant to believe their evidence. Eventually, however, he bent forward and picked up the thing.

It lay in his hand, eloquently absurd--in his study!--a bow of violet-coloured velvet ribbon, cunningly knotted, complete in itself.

From its reverse, a few broken threads of silk hung, suggesting that it had been originally sewn upon a gown, or some other article of dress, from which it had been violently torn away.

The thing was so impossible--preposterous!--that he sat as if stunned, eyes a-stare, jaw dropping, wits bemused; until abruptly roused by the sharp barking of a taxicab horn as it swung round the corner of Fourth Avenue and the subsequent grumble of its motor in the street below.

Thrusting the velvet knot into his pocket he ran down and opened the front door just as Alison gained the top of the brownstone steps.

He noticed that her taxicab was waiting.

Still in her shimmering, silken, summery dinner-gown of the earlier evening, a light chiffon wrap draped round her shoulders, she entered the vestibule, paused and stood smiling mischievously into his grave, enquiring eyes.

"Surprised you--eh, Staff?" she laughed.

"Rather," said he, bending over her hand and wondering at her high spirit of gaiety so sharply in contrast with her determined and domineering humour of a few hours since. "Why?" he asked, shutting the outside door.

"Just wanted to see you alone for a few moments; I've something to say to you--something very important and surprising.... But not down here."

"I beg your pardon," he said contritely. He motioned toward the stairs: "There's no elevator, but it's only one flight up ..."

"No elevator! Heavens!" she cried in mock horror. "And this is how the other half lives!"

She caught up her skirts and ran up the stairs with footsteps so light that he could hear nothing but the soft, continuous murmuring of her silken gown.

"Genius," he said, ironic, as he followed her--"Genius frequently needs a lift but is more often to be found in an apartment without one. Permit me"--he flung wide the door to his study--"to introduce you to the garret."

"So this is where you starve and write!"

Alison paused near the centre of the room, shrugging her wrap from her shoulders and dropping it carelessly on the table. He saw her shoot swift glances round her with bright, prying eyes.

"I'm afraid I'm not enough of a genius to starve," he said; "but anyway, here's where I write."

"How interesting!" she drawled in a tone that conveyed to him the impression she found it anything but that. And then, a trace sharply: "Please shut the door."

He lifted his brows in surprise, said "Oh?" and turning back did as bid. At the same time Alison disposed herself negligently in a capacious wing-chair.

"Yes," she took up his monosyllable; "it's quite as important as all that. I don't wish to be overheard. Besides," she added with nonchalant irrelevance, "I do want a cigarette."

Silently Staff found his metal cigarette-safe and offered it, put a match to the paper roll held so daintily between his lady's lips, and then helped himself.

Through a thin veil of smoke she looked up into his serious face and smiled bewitchingly.

"Are you thrilled, my dear?" she asked lightly.

"Thrilled?" he questioned. "How?"

She lifted her white, gleaming shoulders with an air of half-tolerant impatience. "To have a beautiful woman alone with you in your rooms, at this hour o' night ... Don't you find it romantic, dear boy? Or aren't you in a romantic mood tonight? Or perhaps I'm not sufficiently beautiful ...?" She ended with a charming little petulant moue.

"You know perfectly well you're one of the most beautiful women in the world," he began gravely; but she caught him up.

"One of--?"

"To me, of course--you know the rest: the usual thing," he said. "But you didn't come here to discuss your charms--now did you?"

She shook her head slightly, smiling with light-hearted malice. "By no means. But, at the same time, if I've a whim to be complimented, I do think you might be gallant enough to humour me."

But he was in anything but a gallant temper. Mystery hedged his thoughts about and possessed them; he couldn't rid his imagination of the inexplicable circ.u.mstances of the man who had broken into his rooms to steal nothing, and the knot of velvet ribbon that had dropped from nowhere to his study floor. And when he forced his thoughts back to Alison, it was only to feel again the smart of some of the stinging things she had chosen to say to him that night during their discussion of his play, and to be conscious of a certain amount of irritation because of the effrontery of her present pose, a.s.suming as it did that he would eventually bend to her will, endure all manner of insolence and indignity, because he hoped she would marry him.

Something of what was pa.s.sing through his mind as he stood mute before her, she read in his look--or intuitively divined.

"Heavens!" she cried, "you're as temperamental as a leading-man. Can't you accept a word or two of criticism of your precious play without sulking like--like Max does when I make up my mind to take a week's rest in the middle of the season?"

"Criticise as much as you like," he said; "and I'll listen and take it to heart. But I don't mind telling you I'm not going to twist this play out of all dramatic semblance at your dictation--or Max's either."

For a moment their glances crossed like swords; he was conscious from the flicker in her eyes that her temper was straining at the leash; and his jaw a.s.sumed a certain look of grim solidity. But the outbreak he expected did not come; Alison was an artiste too consummate not to be able to control and mask her emotions--even as she did now with a quick curtaining of her eyes behind long lashes.

"Don't let's talk about that now," she said in a soft, placating voice.

"That's a matter for hours of business. We're getting farther and farther away from my errand."

"By all means," he returned pleasantly, "let us go to that at once."

"You can't guess?" She unmasked again the battery of her laughing eyes.

He shook his head. "I'll give you three guesses."

He found the courage to say: "You didn't come to confess that I'm in the right about the play?"