Instinctively she raised her little gloved hand and patted her hair.
"I'm ready," she said, unsteadily.

"One extra second to make your will," I added, stunned by her
self-possession.

"I--I have nothing to leave--nobody to leave it to," she said,
smiling; "I am ready."

I took that extra second myself for a lightning course in reflection
upon effects and consequences.

"It's silly, it's probably murder," I said, "but you're engaged! Now
we must run for it!"

And that is how I came to engage the services of Miss Helen Barrison
as stenographer.




XIV


At noon on the second day I disembarked from the train at Citron City
with all paraphernalia--cage, chemicals, arsenal, and stenographer; an
accumulation of very dusty impedimenta--all but the stenographer. By
three o'clock our hotel livery-rig was speeding along the beach at
False Cape towards the tall lighthouse looming above the dunes.