traces. I will come here to-morrow evening and furnish you with
everything that you shall need and give you full and exact
instructions in every particular. These details you must execute
with the greatest care, as they will be vitally essential to the
success of my plan."

Through it all Walcott had been silent and motionless. Now he
arose, and in his face there must have been some premonition of
protest, for Mason stepped back and put out his hand. "Sir," he
said, with brutal emphasis, "not a word. Remember that you are
only the hand, and the hand does not think." Then he turned around
abruptly and went out of the house.


III


The place which Samuel Walcott had selected for the residence of
Nina San Croix was far up in the northern suburb of New York. The
place was very old. The lawn was large and ill kept; the house, a
square old-fashioned brick, was set far back from the street, and
partly hidden by trees. Around it all was a rusty iron fence. The
place had the air of genteel ruin, such as one finds in the
Virginias.

On a Thursday of November, about three o'clock in the afternoon, a
little man, driving a dray, stopped in the alley at the rear of the
house. As he opened the back gate an old negro woman came down the
steps from the kitchen and demanded to know what he wanted. The
drayman asked if the lady of the house was in. The old negro