“Where is Henry?”

The cook was behind me, and she said: 

“He is coming.  He has to walk around because it aches so.”

Then Henry’s friend said, in a queer voice: 

“Now, Miss Bab, there is nothing to be afraid of, unless you make a noise.  If you do there will be trouble and that at once.  We three are going to have a little talk.”

Ye gods!  I tremble even to remember his words, for he said: 

“What we want is simple enough.  We want tonight’s Password at the Mill.  Don’t scream.”

I dropped the hot water bottle, because there is no use pretending one is not scared at such a time.  One is.  But of course I would not tell them the Password, and the cook said: 

“Be careful, Miss Bab.  We are not playing.  We are in terrable ernest.”

She did not sound like a cook at all, and she looked diferent, being very white and with to red spots on her cheeks.

“So am I,” I responded, although with shaking teeth.  “And just wait until the Police hear of this and see what happens.  You will all be arested.  If I scream——­”

“If you scream,” said Henry’s friend in an awful voice, “you will never scream again.”

There was now a loud report from below, which the neighbors afterwards said they heard, but considered gas in a muffler, which happens often and sounds like a shot.  There was then a sort of low growl and somebody fell with a thump.  Then the cook said to Henry’s friend: 

“Jump out of the window.  They’ve got him!”

But he did not jump, but listened, and we then heard Henry saying: 

“Come down here, quick.”

Henry’s friend then went downstairs very rapidly, and I ran to the window thinking to jump out.  But it was closed and locked, and anyhow the cook caught me and said, in a hissing manner: 

“None of that, you little fool.”

I had never been so spoken to, especially by a cook, and it made me very angry.  I then threw the bottle of laudinum at her, and broke a front tooth, also cutting her lip, although I did not know this until later, as I then fainted.

When I came to I was on the floor and William, whom I had considered a Spy, was on the bed with his hands and feet tied.  Henry was standing by the door, with a revolver, and he said: 

“I’m sorry, Miss Bab, because you are all right and have helped me a lot, especially with that on the bed.  If it hadn’t been for you our Goose would have been cooked.”

He then picked me up and put me in a chair, and looked at his watch.

“Now,” he said, “we’ll have that Password, because time is going and there are things to be done, quite a few of them.”

I could see William then, and I saw his eyes were partly shut, and that he had been shot, because of blood, etcetera.  I was about to faint again, as the sight of blood makes me sick at the stomache, but Henry held a bottle of amonia under my nose and said in a brutal way: