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Show though you don't resemble hirn in the least rather, I fancy, your mother." "You knew my mother?" Lydia asked eagerly. "No. 'Won't you sit down? No ; Tad Craven has always been a continued bachelor in everybody's esteem since I've known him. Is it true he means to marry again?" "Yes," said I.ydia ; and opening her wrist bag produced Craven's note. "No please don't rise," interrupted Mrs. Ellsworihy, crossing to her. "Mr. Craven mentioned this over the. wire. I'arc'on " Taking a chair beside the reading lamp, she opened and scanned the message mes-sage with careless interest. A nod continued con-tinued evident foreknowledge of its contents. Folding the note abstractedly. abstracted-ly. Mrs. Ellsworthy seeiued for some moments preoccupied. Hut Peter Traft had claims not long j to bo disregarded, and presently Lydia stirred restlessly, with an inquiring look ready for the eyes that her hostess then lifted from the carpet. "You've met this ah Mrs. Merri-lecs, Merri-lecs, no doubt?" Mrs. Kilswortby queried unexpectedly. "Is she thou such a beauty as they say?" "She's very beautiful," Lydia returned, re-turned, "and I'm very fond of Ivor. But, if you don't mind, Mrs. Ellsworthy, I have another appointment; iu fact, with Mrs. Merrilees and my father " "Oh. I beg your pardon, my dear." Mrs. Ellsworthy assumed a convincing look of contrition. "So thoughtless of me. I quite forgot to tell you: Mr. Craven wants you to wait for him here, rather than keep the appointment at the Margrave." The Margrave again ! "The riaza," Lydia corrected absently; absent-ly; then in a breath remembered. "I'm sorry," she said, rising, "but I can't wait. If daddy's coming here, he'll get the answer from you personally ; so there's no need," here Mrs. Ellsworthy Ellswor-thy rose in her turn. "And I left a friend waiting in the taxi." "A friend?" It was none of Mrs. Ellsworthy's affair, af-fair, but quite automatically Lydia answered, an-swered, "Mr. Traft." "But really hadn't you better wait? I'm sure Mr. Craven won't be long 4 now." Mrs. Ellsworthy was moving slowly toward the door, as if she didn't really expect her objection to avail, an effect heightened by her manner, which continued con-tinued to be perfect, lacking anything but gracious interest. Lydia, however, was quite settled in hor determination to wait no longer. Craven could lose nothing by being obliged to follow her to the Plaza ; and anyway, in all fairness, she owed his wishes little consideration he who was little enough considerate to her and below in the taxi all earthly happiness hap-piness waited. "I'm sorry," she repeated mechanically. mechanic-ally. "You're very kind; but I really don't think" At this point she was interrupted by a shrill-tongued electric bell downstairs. down-stairs. Mrs. Ellsworthy started nervously, nerv-ously, eyed the girl fugitively with what seemed a trace of doubt, and darted toward the door. "The telephone !" she said indistinctly. indistinct-ly. "Forgive me if I" Her hand caught the knob as if thoughtlessly ; but the slam of the door cut short her words emphatically enough to have wakened her to appreciation, appre-ciation, had her act been really thoughtless. For an Instant Lydia paused in amazement. The thing was incredible, preposterous, outrageous ! None the less the door remained obdurately ob-durately shut, mutely testifying that the incredible was an accomplished fact With a little cry of indignation the girl tried the knob. It turned freely, but without engaging the latch. Infuriated, Infuri-ated, she caught it with both hands, braced a knee against the wall, and pulled with all the strength of her lithe and vigorous young body; but failed to budge the door by so much as a hair's breadth. And the only discoverable keyhole was in the knob Itself a thin, irregular slit for n combination latchkey, latch-key, lacking which the door, once closed, could never be opened, but only hewed or battered down. Examination proved the room a veritable stronghold. It had only the one door. The sashes of the two windows win-dows were guarded with locks require ing a key; through the panes closed steel blinds with hasps and padlocks were to be seen. There was not a bell button on the walls; and the telephone on the desk yielded no response to the girl's manipulation of the receiver hook evidently an extension cut olT from the main line. At length Lydia yielded to the Inevitable, Inevit-able, sat down, composed herself to the best of her ability, and strove to lit sumo reasonable explanation to t lilt atrocious and high-handed net. There was but three : She was the victim of a nightmare. Mrs. Ellsworthy was insane. Or else Craven had never meant her to restore the necklace to Mrs. Merrilees Merri-lees ! Bending forward, an elbow digging into lier l.nee, hi r chin clipped between 1 . 1 1 1 1 i-l : I -s at"! palm, tier mouth iiiulin-eiis. iiiulin-eiis. her eyes MiinlileriiiL'. a hot spot in f :)! che );. mot ionl' ss. Lydia brooded. (To I;k ;u."i'iNt;i':iAj f SHEEP'S CLOTHING 1 By LOUIS JOSEPH VAKCE I I - Author of - I "THE LONE WOLF," "THE BRASS BOWL." I Copyright fey I 1. Jf Jh Loaif Joieph Vtnce Tv JJ CHAPTER XV Continued. 17 It certainly looked all right: no question ques-tion about that woman being straight goods. Of course Lydia might have been decent enough to write a more explicit ex-plicit excuse to "Dear Peter" instead of "Dear Mr. Traft;" but, then, a correspondence cor-respondence card conveyed through the hands of a third person with whom the dear girl couldn't feel well acquainted acquaint-ed "Where to, sir?" Peter came out of morose reverie to find himself hesitating beside the taxi. "I'll be darned if I do !" Peter replied hotly. "What's that?' "Oh, beg pardon no offense was thinking. Just wait, please." Peter threw himself back into the cab, slamming slam-ming the door, "llotten fix," he grumbled. grum-bled. "Why, she said she'd come back." Regarding the note critically, he enunciated enun-ciated a somber doubt, "Don't believe she wrote you. It's all a plant." The handwriting was unmistakably that of a woman of culture. How was he to say it wasn't Lydia's hand, who had never seen a scrap of it? He would have kissed it, could he have been sure. Through the forward window he commanded a perspective of the southerly south-erly sidewalk as far as to Madison avenue, ave-nue, where a surface car, swinging uptown, up-town, hesitated with grinding brakes, and then rumbled on. - A moment later the shadowy shape of a man darted across the street and toward the taxicab, and Peter recognized recog-nized Craven's characteristic gait. But for that he wouldn't have known the man, who was all but disguised to eyes that had never beheld him out of dress clothes after nightfall Craven wearing wear-ing a bowler with a shabby, flapping raincoat, at a midnight hour, was a sight unprecedented. Peter sat up. Barely in time a devious devi-ous thought engaged his fancy, and he acted on it promptly. Ready to his hand rested the mouthpiece of a flexible flex-ible speaking tube, ending in a fixed earpiece close by the chauffeur's head. "Five dollars," Peter said distinctly into the mouthpiece, "if you don't let on I'm inside, in case this man questions." ques-tions." The chauffeur didn't even signify he had heard, so positive became his immobility im-mobility at sound of those magic syllables, syl-lables, "Five dollars." Hastily Peter dragged his overcoat across the bosom of his shirt and crowded himself Into the corner nearest near-est the curb. Bearing out his premonition, Craven stopped to speak to the chauffeur and the eavesdropper cursed bitterly to hear no more than the confused grumble of their voices. Then without the least warning the car shot away at a round pace westward. west-ward. Simmering with profanity, Peter seized the speaking tube to bellow a demand for incontinent halt ; but on second thought permitted the car to round into Madison avenue before he gave the order. Again at pause, this time halfway down the avenue block, the cab ejected an infuriated fare. "What the blank did you do that for?" "Why in blank shouldn't I?" the chauffeur demanded as hotly. "You told me not to let on, didn't you? Here come through with that five !" Choking, Peter found his money, disbursed. dis-bursed. "How did it happen?" "Why the old gink says, did I bring a young lady and was I waitin' for her, and I says yes, an' he slips me three bones the clock says two-forty and says to clenr out, I won't be needed. And what did you want me to do about that, seein' you didn't want him to know you was inside?" "Oh, all right," said Peter wearily. "You did precisely the right thing. Only I didn't quite understand." He eyed perplexedly the colored lights of a drug store across the way. "Well, what's the good word now, boss? If you're done with me, I'm on my way." "No," Peter insisted, "I'm keeping you. Run across the block and wait just out of sight on Park avenue. I'll walk back." Buttoning topcoat to chin and sacrificing sacri-ficing his Bond .street topper to the elements, Peter trudged hack to Seventy-sixth street, then eastward pist number 9S, regarding the house aggres-sively. aggres-sively. It looked down on him now, he thought defiantly, with a touch of contemptuous con-temptuous pity for his impotence io read the riddle of its staid, uncommunicative uncommuni-cative walls. Embittered, he walked on to Park avenue, and found his chartered car at the appointed place. Pausing beside it. and ignoring the chauffeur's well-meant advance, (stimulated by the romantic ; notion that this swell young guy was j tryin' t) beat it with the old duffer's daughter, and had stubbed his toe iu the geta-vay), Peter painfully e..,-ogi-tated the inevitable com-lusien that the only thing ho could do was wait and watch. He comforted himself a little with the cold assurance that Craven was now with his daughter. Whatever old Tad's shortcomings, Peter couldn't believe he would suffer a hair of Lydia's innocent head to be harmed. Only What the deuce was keeping the two of them there so long? Then abruptly a second taxicab swung round one of Park avenue's scrubby little ovals of grass and shrubbery, shrub-bery, slid into Seventy-sixth street, checked briefly in front of OS, dis-j dis-j charged two passengers, and slipped j away toward Madison avenue. Peter recognized something familiar in the association of a long and slender figure with one short and stout ish, as the two dodged hastily into the basement area of number 9S and disappeared. "Musical comedy rogues," mused the perturbed young man : "the tall thin scoundrel and the short fat sharper ; Messrs. Southpaw Smith and Gordon, of course. What in thunder Confound it ! she must be all right ! Craven would never let anything happen to her." He began to fume impotently. No good trying the front door again. Then he thought of consulting Quoin by telephone, and had started back through Seventy-sixth street toward the corner drug store, when a taxicab shot round from the avenue, passed at a sharp clip, and immediately slid to as smart a stop, while the door swung open and a man, jumping out, hailed sharply : "Peter !" "Quoin thank heaven ! now in the name of wonder " "Found Craven had left the Great Eastern, taxied back to the Margrave, got the address Miss Craven gave from the carriage porter. Luckily you made such a sensation bolting after her taxi that it had fixed the number in the fellow's fel-low's memory. Now what's up?" Briefly Peter detailed the inconclusive inconclu-sive and unsatisfactory circumstances of his vigil. "In through the basement, you say?" Quoin pondered this darkly. "Looks like a move to trick somebody Craven, Cra-ven, at a guess. Come along." , Grasping Peter's arm, the detective trotted him rapidly back toward number num-ber 98. "What are you going to do?" '"Let developments guide us." "You mean to try to get in?" "No: I mean to get in," Quoin corrected cor-rected grimly. "How'll you make 'em admit you?" "Don't know precisely, as yet. But we're going to find out something we're going to see Miss Craven and get her personal assurance she's all right, or raise the deuce of a row in this quiet neighborhood. Not only that, but I'm still pining for a chat with Craven." Cra-ven." They were ascending the brownstone steps. Quoin rang imperatively. "Stand back a moment," he suggested. suggest-ed. "Let me do the talking." Peter had barely time to withdraw to one side when the woman of the house came out through the vestibule and hurriedly opened the outer door. As it opened Quoin entered. Peter heard him say pleasantly "Good evening, eve-ning, Mrs. Ellsworthy," and after that a sort of strangled gasp from the woman. wom-an. A moment later, Quoin moving on, Peter saw her clearly. She had fallen back against the closed door, blanched and trembling, destitute now of every shred of her amiable self-possession of half an hour earlier. Her eyes were fixed in terror on Quoin's face. She made an effort to speak, but evoked only a dry, rasping rasp-ing sound. "You're not ill, I trust, Mrs. Ellsworthy?" Ells-worthy?" There was a sardonic inflection In Quoin's voice that seemed to Peter a trifle unnecessary. "I thought," she gasped, and gulped, "I thought you were the doctor." "Otherwise you wouldn't have let me in, I presume? Is there anything really serious the matter?" "Craven " the woman panted. Quoin started with horror. "Craven !" he iterated ; then, controlling himself, "I was afraid something of the sort. You've phoned for 'a doctor, you say? While we're waiting let me have a look at the poor devil." CHAPTER XVI. "I am Mrs. Ellsworthy yes," said the woman with the agreeable voice who answered Lydia's ring. "Won't you come in?" And when Lydia had crossed the threshold Mrs. Ellsworthy shut the vestibule door and looked the girl over with smiling interest. "Miss Craven, I presume?" "You were expecting me?" "Your father telephoned sometime ago. Would you mind stepping upstairs?" up-stairs?" "But I have merely a message " "Yes, my dear, I know; but do let me consider it in comfort. upstairs." Under the soft glow of the electric dome Mrs. Ellsworthy's smile and the gracious inclination of her head that ir.vitod Lydia anew to ascend the stairway stair-way v.itc alike q'Ute irresistible. Lylia found no excuse for refusing; so subdued sub-dued her iiapat:e;.ee. as-inted with a ;n'rm:ir. end preceded her hostess up t he staircase. "I'm really delighted to know you. Miss Craven. Yes straight ahead, if you please. Hut I do need more light to see you by." Entering the designated loom, Mrs. Ell-worthy touched ;1 wall sv.Iieh, adding add-ing the illumination of an eleen-olier to the subdued glow of the reading lamp on a de'-k, and paused to review ih" l';;1 with her kindly and engaging glanee. "I've known your father for many years," she afhrmed, nodding; "and you've much of his charm, my dear, |