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rather amusing after she had sent it—had deceived him.

He had come back to see her, Patricia, and he had not come with love!

She recalled the sentence in Buzzy’s recent letter which embodied the opinion of the friend who had seen Harley in Napier. “Tony says Jimmy went mad when he found the body of Joan and the other woman; and, ever since, he has been on the border-line, and any little thing might send him of the deep-end again. Don’t tell Grace that.”

Patricia knew, beyond doubt, that her crazily-worded telegram had sent him off the deep-end. By a tragic accident it had reached him before the others, and now he was outside the door, crouching like a wild animal, listening, waiting to enter the house and destroy the woman whom his mad brain conceived to be without a soul.

She fancied she heard him breathing!

For one moment she contemplated flight. The back door offered escape. Then she remembered Grace.

Harley might slay in the dark. He might kill Grace, believing it to be herself, Patricia.

A sudden courage came to her, a reckless disregard for the danger which threatened.

She threw her hat and coat aside, dropped her suitcase upon the carpet, switched on the light with her right hand and threw the door wide open with her left.

Harley stood upon the threshold, coatless, hatless, shoeless, his left hand raised stealthily to insert a key in the lock, his right hand holding the automatic before him threateningly.

Patricia did not ery out. She had known what to expect. The alteration in his appearance, due to grief and semi-starvation, alone shocked her.

“Come in,” she invited softly, stepping aside easily, as though the occasion were in no way extra-ordinary.