Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

“Selling?” She hesitated, and then laughed. “I’d forgotten your old stock. Do what you like, Jim. I don’t understand stocks and shares. Never worry about them.”

“No.” His grip tightened as she attempted to withdraw her hand. “Kit. Isn’t it possible for you to stay after tomorrow? Can’t you wire for an extension of your holiday?”

She shook her head. “My dear old thing, Barker’s bank never gives extensions of holidays to its feminine employees. If I’m not back by Monday morning there’ll be a run on the bank, and one of the Big Five will be wiped out of existence.”

His face clouded. “That’s pretty rotten, isn’t it? And we’ve had such a gorgeous time. Like waking up from a dream. I shan’t like Bordington when you’re gone.”

She was trembling slightly. They had been pals all through the ten days behind them, chatting on all kinds of subjects except this one, and — somehow — the ten days, to her, at least, had been the happier for it. If ever she might look back on them and name them as happy in the light of that knowledge she so steadfastly withheld from him.

Looking up into his face she was conscious of something within her — stirring slowly, so that she wanted to run and hide her eyes.

She said, very steadily: “Jim, will you leave go of my hand?”

He stared at her earnestly. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

They walked across the meadow together, and neither spoke until they reached the lodge gates of Bordington Park. There Kitty smiled.

“You’re ever so fine, Jim. I’ll see you to-morrow.”

“Of course.” He spoke absently, his eyes devouring her.

He stood and watched her as she swung down the road; but she did not look back. She dared not.

There were many strange people who would have been very surprised to have seen Kit Willis’s eyes in those moments; for they were filled with tears.

Chapter IV Night Work Interrupted

Bordington Manor showed dark against a dark, starless sky — a black mass, hunched high, edged by battlements, with a dull gleam of glass showing here and there as the night’s faint light touched tall, mullioned windows.

In the shadow of the wall, a darker shadow moved — silent, swift, decisive. It reached a long window, coming to the ground from the full height of the lower story, and there it stayed for a moment. There was a barely audible click, and the swift shadow had vanished.

Inside, despite the blackness of the place, the shadow moved with unerring precision, as though the whole of the great mansion’s interior was familiar. Up the broad staircase, to the left along the picture-hung gallery, to the left again toward the house front, and so to the door of the study.

The door offered little resistance. It was opened — and pushed gently close — within a few seconds. A thin, pencil-like ray of light plunged into the heart of the room’s darkness, arched around swiftly, and settled on the face of a safe let into the right-hand wall.

The light went out.

The shadow was at the safe, eyes closed, ear pressed to the cold, hard surface, slim fingers slowly turning the knob of the combination, ears and nerves tautened for the sliding of the wards.

It was a splendid safe, but it had to cope with a matchless safe-breaker. For fifteen minutes its perfectly balanced mechanism refused to betray itself by sound or “touch;” but at last super-acute senses and hearing triumphed and the safe surrendered.

With the opening of the ponderous door, the safe-breaker drew a deep, gasping breath and sat down. The strain and the concentration had been tremendous, and every nerve in the lithe, taut body was vibrating.

It was when the reaction was passing that there came a movement at the door, a click, and the room was flooded with light. In the doorway was Lord Bordington, and in his hand was a pistol.

“Stand perfectly still,” he said, for the burglar had leaped to her feet. “A woman, eh?”

He stepped forward, and indicated a chair. “Sit down there and lay your hands palm downward on the tabletop where I can see them. Right.” He scanned the safe swiftly. Obviously, nothing had been disturbed.

“Just in time, it seems.” He surveyed his prisoner curiously. “You’re a very clever girl — too clever and too pretty to be doing this sort of work. You opened that by ear and touch, eh?”

“Yes.” She was perfectly at her ease.

“What’s your name?”

Her lips closed tightly. Bordington smiled. “That’s not in keeping, is it? Anybody with your brains shouldn’t boggle at a point like that. What is it?”

“Willis — Kathleen Willis.”

Bordington frowned. “I don’t remember it.” He was trying to recollect if, in his official capacity, he had ever encountered the name among those of the few notorious criminals likely to be capable of opening his safe.

“You wouldn’t. This is the first time I’ve been caught.” A sudden urgency showed in her eyes. “I suppose there’s no chance of your remembering that tag about the qualities of mercy?”

“Shakespeare, eh?” He laughed quietly, although his eyes were haggard. “No. Mercy is the doctrine of the foolish.”