had preceded us, and as her own car shot out from the station
platform we leisurely walked down and entered another bearing the
number she had given Kennedy.

We seemed to be expected at the house. Hardly had we been admitted
through the door from the porte-cochere, than we were led through
a hall to a library at the side of the house. From the library we
entered another door, then down a flight of steps which must have
brought us below an open courtyard on the outside, under a rim of
the terrace in front of the house for a short distance to a point
where we descended three more steps.

At the head of these three steps was a great steel and iron door
with heavy bolts and a combination lock of a character ordinarily
found only on a safe in a banking institution.

The door was opened, and we descended the steps, going a little
farther in the same direction away from the side of the house.
Then we turned at a right angle facing toward the back of the
house but well to one side of it. It must have been, I figured out
later, underneath the open courtyard. A few steps farther brought
us to a fair-sized, vaulted room.




V

THE PHANTOM CIRCUIT