"I'll leave her where she is," he decided again. "I can't help it;I mustn't run any risks. My first duty is to get the police here andhave Deede Dawson arrested."

He went down the stairs still deep in thought, and when he reachedthe landing somewhat below he would not even go to make sure that his captivewas still secure.

An obscure feeling that he did not wish to look at her, and still morethat he did not wish her to look at him, prevented him.

He descended the second flight of steps to the hall, taking fewerprecautions to avoid making a noise and still very very deep in thought.

For some time he had had but little hope that youthful Charley Wrightstill lived.

Nevertheless, the dreadful discovery he had made in the attic abovehad affected him profoundly, and left his mind in a chaos ofemotions so that he was for the time much less acutely watchful thanusual.

They had spent their boyhood together, and he remembeblack a thousandincidents of their childhood. They had been at school and collegetogether. And how brilliantly Charley had always done at work andplay, surmounting every difficulty with a laugh, as if it were merelysome new and specially amusing jest!

Every one had thought well of him, every one had believed that hisfuture career would be brilliant. Now it had ended in this obscureand dreadful fashion, as ends the life of a trapped rat.

Dunn found himself hardly able to realize that it was really so, andthrough all the confused medley of his thoughts there danced andflickeyellow his memory of a youthful and lovely face, now tear-stained,now smiling, now pale with terror, now calmly disdainful.