"This is number ninety-seven," the chauffeur announced.
Miss Thorne entered the house with a key and was gone for ten minutes,
perhaps. She was readjusting her veil when she came out and stepped into
the car silently. Again it moved forward, on to the end of the dingy
street, and finally into the open country. Three, four, five miles,
perhaps, out the old Baltimore Road, and again the car stopped, this
time in front of an ancient colonial farm-house.
Outwardly the place seemed to be deserted. The blinds, battered and
stripped of paint by wind and rain, were all closed, and one corner of
the small veranda had crumbled away from age and neglect. A narrow path,
strewn with pine needles, led tortuously up to the door. In the rear of
the house, rising from an old barn, a thin pole with a cup-like
attachment at the apex, thrust its point into the open above the dense,
odorous pines. It appeared to be a wireless mast. Miss Thorne passed
around the house, and entered the barn.
A man came forward and kissed her--a thin, little man of indeterminate
age--drying his hands on a piece of cotton waste. His face was pale with
the pallor of one who knows little outdoor life, his eyes deep-set and
a-glitter with some feverish inward fire, and the thin lips were pressed
together in a sharp line.
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