Chapter XXVIII: A Meeting

As Meredith Vedant had halted, fear-stricken, paralyzed with terror at her startling discovery in the lonely attic, a sudden flash of lightning from the rising storm blazed down through the windows overhead, and for a second illuminated the face of the prostrate prisoner.

It was Ormsby Grail!

Instantly her trepidation, the swooning weakness she had felt coming over her, was gone, swallowed up, like her feminine apprehensions in coming to the place, in a greater emotion.

He was in danger. He was bound and helpless. He needed her aid. Hurriedly she flung herself down beside him, and wrenched away the gag from his lips, meanwhile calling on him breathlessly to tell her what had happened.

But he made no answer. His head rolled from side to side at her touch.

She drew back with a gasp. Was he dead? But no; a long-drawn sigh, and the beating of his heart as she laid her ear to his chest, reassured her on that point.

Still, he was insensible, injured--perhaps fatally. He must have proper aid and attention at once; and where could she get it in this house, which was only too evidently dominated by his enemies and hers?

For a moment her head drooped helplessly; then, with quick recollection, she sprang to the wireless instrument.

Feverishly she twisted the knobs, and sent in call after call to the post; but her only response was an ear-splitting crackling and snapping. There was too much electricity in the air; the “static” was baffling her.

Still, useless though she knew the attempt to be, she kept on sending the call, until at last she was interrupted by the sound of a mutter behind her, and, turning, saw, in the lightning flashes, Grail halfway up on one elbow.

“That chemist is crazy”--his words came jerkily--“that wasn’t what he said it was; that was a picric-acid compound, and the Russians are adepts with picric. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

The girl sprang toward him. “Ormsby! Ormsby!” she cried, slipping her arm under him and supporting his head on her shoulder. “Tell me you are not badly hurt!”

But he paid no heed. His befogged brain had room only for the calculations upon which he was engaged.

“I understand the trick about the typewriting, too, now,” he went on. “In case the explosive failed to work, they had another come-back. By imitating the defects of Schilder’s typewriter, and using his letterhead, they could always, as a last resource, throw suspicion on him. I’ll bet, though, the woman was responsible for that touch, Cato; she is just the sort to----”

He halted suddenly, realizing, as his wits cleared, that it was not Cato’s strong arm supporting him, nor Cato’s gruff voice so beseechingly imploring him.

He raised his head bewilderedly to see, and a kindly flash of lightning showed him her face.

“Meredith!” he exclaimed. “Are you a prisoner, too?”

“No, no!” she cried. “I am here to help you, if I can. But tell me first that you are not hurt?”

“Hurt?” he scoffed, although as a matter of fact his head was still dazed and ringing from the blow it had received. “Help me loosen this strap about my feet, and I’ll show you how little I am hurt.”

Then, while she relieved him of his remaining bonds, and assisted him to stand, he drew from her the story of how she had happened to come to his rescue.

“My dear girl,” he murmured tenderly, and although neither of them could tell just how it happened, another moment found them in each other’s arms.