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 sticking up through the snow. Joan Daisy knelt and looked rearward in time to see the other car make the turn after her and Mr. Clarke and the man he knew. The unlighted machine was going very fast and skidded only a little so it gained a good deal.

"Yes," said Mr. Clarke's voice distinctly; and Joan Daisy realized that he had been looking back and was informing the driver that the other car turned after them.

"I guess so," replied the driver in a voice which told that he guessed no longer, but was sure that the unlighted car pursued with ugliest purpose; for Baretta's reputed method of ridding himself of persons dangerous to him, was to shoot from a car; and Joan Daisy, kneeling and looking back, knew it.

She realized that it had been in the driver's mind when he had avoided the straight road to the city upon which Baretta would have expected them; she found meaning in the remark that Oliver, left at the lonely house, might be the one in luck; she believed that Baretta and Zenn, with other gunmen, were in that black car and that their purpose was to shoot through the curtains into this car and kill her and Mr. Clarke and the driver. Baretta would leave no witness.

She clung with strained hands to the back of the seat, and her heart half choked her with its throbbing, but, queerly, she looked back as if upon a terror approaching another, as if a frightful thing was to be done to some one else, not to herself. It seemed a different order of occurrence from any which could happen to her; it was the sort of death of which one read often and heard report but always it had been visited upon some one else.

"Get down," said Mr. Clarke's voice; and he brought her to herself. She, Joan Daisy Royle, the witness for Ket and who would be the witness against Baretta—she