we are being watched. I was probably followed here. The Ella is
still in the river, with only a watchman on board. We want you to
go there to-night, if you can."

"To the Ella?"

She was feeling in her pocketbook, and now she held out to me an
envelope addressed in a sprawling hand to Mr. Turner at his hotel.

"Am I to open it?"

"Please."

I unfolded a sheet of ruled note-paper of the most ordinary variety.
It had been opened and laid flat, and on it, in black ink, was a
crude drawing of the deck of the Ella, as one would look down on it
from aloft. Here and there were small crosses in red ink, and,
overlying it all from bow to stern, a red axe. Around the border,
not written, but printed in childish letters, were the words: "NOT
YET. HA, HA." In a corner was a drawing of a gallows, or what
passes in the everyday mind for a gallows, and in the opposite corner
an open book.

"You see," she said, "it was mailed downtown late this afternoon.
The hotel got it at seven o'clock. Marshall wanted to get a
detective, but I thought of you. I knew--you knew the boat, and
then--you had said--"

"Anything in all the world that I can do to help you, I will do,"
I said, looking at her. And the thing that I could not keep out