The Man from Brodney's

THE SHIPS THAT PASS

The next morning was rainy. A quick, violent storm had rushed up from the sea during the night.

Chase, after a sleepless night, came down and, without waiting for his breakfast, hurried out upon the gallery overlooking the harbour. Genevra was there before him, pale, wistful, heavy-eyed—standing in the shelter of a huge pilaster. The wind swept the thin, swishing raindrops across the gallery on both sides of her position. He came up from behind. She was startled by the sound of his voice saying "good-morning."

"Hollingsworth," she said drearily, "do you believe he will come to-day?"

"He?" he asked, puzzled.

"My uncle. The yacht was to call for me not later than to-day."

"I remember," he said slowly. "It may come, Genevra. The day is young."

She clasped his hand convulsively, a desperate revolt in her soul.

"I almost hope that it may not come for me!" she said, her voice shaking with suppressed emotion.

"I am not so selfish as to wish that, dear one," he said, after a moment of inconceivable ecstasy in which his own longing gave the lie to the words which followed.

"It will not come. I feel it in my heart. We shall die here together, Hollingsworth. Ah, in that way I may escape the other life. No, no! What am I saying? Of course I want to leave this dreadful island—this dreadful, beautiful, hateful, happy island. Am I not too silly?" She was speaking rapidly, almost hysterically, a nervous, flickering smile on her face.

"Dear one," he said gently, "the yacht will come. If it should not come to-day, my cruisers will forestall its mission. As sure as there is a sea, those cruisers will come." She looked into his eyes intently, as if afraid of something there. "Oh, I'm not mad!" he laughed. "You brought a cruiser to me one day; I'll bring one to you in return. We'll be quits."

"Quits?" she murmured, hurt by the word.

"Forgive me," he said, humbled.

"Hollingsworth," she said, after a long, tense scrutiny of the sea, "how long will you remain on this island?"

"Perhaps until I die—if death should come soon. If not, then God knows how long."

"Listen to me," she said intensely. "For my sake, you will not stay long. You will come away before they kill you. You will! Promise me. You will come—to Paris? Some day, dear heart? Promise!"

He stared at her beseeching face in wide-eyed amazement. A wave of triumphant joy shot through him an instant later. To Paris! She was asking him—but then he understood! Despair was the inspiration of that hungry cry. She did not mean—no, no!

"To Paris?" he said, shaking his head sadly. "No, dearest one. Not now. Listen: I have in my bag upstairs an offer from a great American corporation. I am asked to assume the management of its entire business in France. My headquarters would be in Paris. My duties would begin as soon as my contract with Sir John Brodney expires. The position is a lucrative one; it presents unlimited opportunities. I am a comparatively poor man. The letter was forwarded to me by Sir John. I have a year in which to decide."

"And you—you will decline?" she asked.

"Yes. I shall go back to America, where there are no princesses of the royal blood. Paris is no place for the disappointed, cast-off lover. I can't go there. I love you too madly. I'd go on loving you, and you—good as you are, would go on loving me. There is no telling what would come of it. It will be hard for me to—to stay away from Paris—desperately hard. Sometimes I feel that I will not be strong enough to do it, Genevra."

"But Paris is huge, Hollingsworth," she argued, insistently, an eager, impelling light in her eyes. "We would be as far apart as if the ocean were between us."

"Ah, but would we?" he demanded.

"It is almost unheard-of for an American to gain entrée to our—to the set in which—well, you understand," she said, blushing painfully in the consciousness that she was touching his pride. He smiled sadly.

"My dear, you will do me the honour to remember that I am not trying to get into your set. I am trying to induce you to come into mine. You won't be tempted, so that's the end of it. Beastly day, isn't it?" He uttered the trite commonplace as if no other thought than that of the weather had been in his mind. "By the way," he resumed, with a most genial smile, "for some queer, un-masculine reason, I took it into my head last night to worry about the bride's trousseau. How are you going to manage it if you are unable to leave the island until—well, say June?"

She returned his smile with one as sweetly detached as his had been, catching his spirit. "So good of you to worry," she said, a defiant red in her cheeks. "You forget that I have a postponed trousseau at home. A few stitches here and there, an alteration or two, some smart summer gowns and hats—Oh, it will be so simple. What is it? What do you see?"

He was looking eagerly, intently toward the long, low headland beyond the town of Aratat.

"The smoke! See? Close in shore, too! By heaven, Genevra—there's a steamer off there. She's a small one or she wouldn't run in so close. It—it may be the yacht! Wait! We'll soon see. She'll pass the point in a few minutes."

Scarcely breathing in their agitation, they kept the glasses levelled steadily, impatiently upon the distant point of land. The smoke grew thicker and nearer. Already the citizens of the town were rushing to the pier. Even before the vessel turned the point, the watchers at the château witnessed a most amazing performance on the dock. Half a hundred natives dropped down as if stricken, scattering themselves along the narrow pier. For many minutes Chase was puzzled, bewildered by this strange demonstration. Then, the explanation came to him like a flash.

The people were simulating death! They were posing as the victims of the plague that infested the land! Chase shuddered at this exhibition of diabolical cunning. Some of them were writhing as if in the death agony. It was at once apparent that the effect of this manifestation would serve to drive away all visitors, appalled and terrified. As he was explaining the ruse to his mystified companion, the nose of the vessel came out from behind the tree-covered point.

An instant later, they were sending wild cries of joy through the château, and people were rushing toward them from all quarters.

The trim white thing that glided across the harbour, graceful as a bird, was the Marquess's yacht!

It is needless to describe the joyous gale that swept the château into a maelstrom of emotions. Every one was shouting and talking and laughing at once; every one was calling out excitedly that no means should be spared in the effort to let the yacht know and appreciate the real situation.

"Can the yacht take all of us away?" was the anxious cry that went round and round.

They saw the tug put out to meet the small boat; they witnessed the same old manoeuvres; they sustained a chill of surprise and despair when the bright, white and blue boat from the yacht came to a stop at the command from the tug.

There was an hour of parleying. The beleaguered ones signalled with despairing energy; the flag, limp in the damp air above the château, shot up and down in pitiful eagerness.

But the small boat edged away from close proximity to the tug and the near-by dock. They spoke each other at long and ever-widening range. At last, the yacht's boat turned and fled toward the trim white hull.

Almost before the startled, dazed people on the balcony could grasp the full and horrible truth, the yacht had lifted anchor and was slowly headed out to sea.

It was unbelievable!

With stupefied, incredulous eyes, they saw the vessel get quickly under way. She steamed from the pest-ridden harbour with scarcely so much as a glance behind. Then they shouted and screamed after her, almost maddened by this final, convincing proof of the consummate deviltry against which they were destined to struggle.

Chase looked grimly about him, into the questioning, stricken faces of his companions. He drew his hand across his moist forehead.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said seriously and without the faintest intent to jest, "we are supposed to be dead!"

There was a single shriek from the bride of Thomas Saunders; no sound left the dry lips of the other watchers, who stood as if petrified and kept their eyes glued upon the disappearing yacht.

"They have left me here to die!" came from the stiffened lips of the Princess Genevra. "They have deserted me. God in heaven!"

"Look!" cried Chase, pointing to the dock. Half a dozen glasses were turned in that direction.

The dying and the dead were leaping about in the wildest exhibition of gleeful triumph!

The yacht slipped into the unreachable horizon, the feathery cloud from its stack lying over against the leaden sky, shaped like a finger that pointed mockingly the way to safety.

White-faced and despairing, the watchers turned away and dragged themselves into the splendid halls of the building they had now come to regard as their tomb. Their voices were hushed and tremulous; they were looking at the handwriting on the wall. They had not noticed it there before.

Saunders was bravely saying to his distracted wife, as he led her down the marble hall:

"Don't give up the ship, dear. My word for it, we'll live to see that garden out Hammersmith way. My word for it, dear."

"He's trying so hard to be brave," said Genevra, oppressed by the knowledge that it was her ship that had played them false. "And Agnes? Look, Hollingsworth! She is herself again. Ah, these British women come up under the lash, don't they?"

Lady Deppingham had thrown off her hopeless, despondent air; she was crying out words of cheer and encouragement to those about her. Her eyes were flashing, her head was erect and her voice was rich with inspiration.

"And you?" asked Chase, after a moment. "What of you? Your ship has come and gone and you are still here—with me. You almost wished for this."

"No. I almost wished that it would not come. There is a distinction," she said bitterly. "It has come and it has disappointed all of us—not one alone."

"Do you remember what it was that Saunders said about having lived only a week, all told? The rest was nothing."

"Yes—but you have seen that Saunders still covets life in a garden at Hammersmith Bridge. I am no less human than Mr. Saunders."

All day long the islanders rejoiced. Their shouts could be plainly heard by the besieged; their rifles cracked sarcastic greetings from the forest; bullets whistled gay accompaniments to the ceaseless song: "Allah is great! Allah is good!"

No man in the despised house of Taswell Skaggs slept that night. The guard was doubled at all points open to attack. It was well that the precaution was taken, for the islanders, believing that the enemy's force had been largely reduced by the polluted water, made a vicious assault on the lower gates. There was a fierce exchange of shots and the attackers drew away, amazed, stunned by the discovery that the beleaguered band was as strong and as determined as ever.

At two in the morning, Deppingham, Browne and Chase came up from the walls for coffee and an hour's rest.

"Chase, if you don't get your blooming cruiser here before long, we'll be as little worth the saving as old man Skaggs, up there in his open-work grave," Deppingham was saying as he threw himself wearily into a chair in the breakfast room. They were wet and cold. They had heard Rasula's minions shouting derisively all night long: "Where is the warship? Where is the warship?"

"It will come. I am positive," said Chase, insistent in spite of his dejection. They drank their coffee in silence. He knew that the others—including the native who served them—were regarding him with the pity that one extends to the vain-glorious braggart who goes down with flying colours.

He went out upon the west gallery and paced its windswept length for half an hour or more. Then, utterly fagged, he threw himself into an unexposed chair and stared through tired eyes into the inscrutable night that hid the sea from view. The faithless, moaning, jeering sea!

When he aroused himself with a start, the grey, drizzly dawn was upon him. He had slept. His limbs were stiff and sore; his face was drenched by the fine rain that had searched him out with prankish glee.

The next instant he was on his feet, clutching the stone balustrade with a grip of iron, his eyes starting from his head. A shout arose to his lips, but he lacked the power to give it voice. For many minutes he stood there, rooted to the spot, a song of thanksgiving surging in his heart.

He looked about him at last. He was alone in the gallery. A quaint smile grew in his face; his eyes were bright and full of triumph. After a full minute of preparation, he made his way toward the breakfast room, outwardly as calm as a May morning.

Browne and Deppingham were asleep in the chairs. He shook them vigorously. As they awoke and stared uncomprehendingly at the disturber of their dreams, he said, in the coolest, most matter-of-fact way:

"There's an American cruiser outside the harbour. Get up!"

IN THE SAME GRAVE WITH SKAGGS

Down in the village of Aratat there were signs of a vast commotion. Early risers and the guards were flying from house to house, shouting the news. The citizens piled from their couches and raced pell-mell into the streets, unbelieving, demoralised. With one accord they rushed to the water front—men, women and children. Consternation was succeeded by utter panic. Rasula's wild shouts went unheeded. He screamed and fought to secure order among his people, but his efforts were as nought against the storm of terror that confronted him.

Outside the harbour lay the low, savage-looking ship. Its guns were pointed directly at the helpless town; its decks were swarming with white-clothed men; it was alive and it glowered with rage in its evil eyes.

The plague was forgotten! The strategy that had driven off the ships of peace was lost in the face of this ugly creature of war. No man grovelled on the dock with the convulsions of death; no man hearkened to the bitter, impotent words of the single wise man among them. Rasula's reign of strategy was ended.

Howling like a madman, he tried to drive the company's tug out to meet the sailors and urge them to keep away from the pest-ridden island. It was like pleading with a mountain avalanche.

"They will not fire! They dare not!" he was shrieking, as he dashed back and forth along the dock. "It is chance! They do not come for Chase! Believe in me! The tug! The tug! They must not land!" But others were raging even more wildly than he, and they were calling upon Allah for help, for mercy; they were shrieking maledictions upon themselves and screaming praises to the sinister thing of death that glowered upon them from its spaceless lair.

The crash of the long-unused six-pounder at the château, followed almost immediately by a great roar from one of the cruiser's guns, brought the panic to a crisis.

The islanders scattered like chaff before the wind, looking wild-eyed over their shoulders in dread of the pursuing cannon-ball, dodging in and out among the houses and off into the foothills.

Rasula, undaunted but crazed with disappointment, stuck to his colours on the deserted dock. He cursed and raved and begged. In time, two or three of the more canny, realising that safety lay in an early peace offering, ventured out beside him. Others followed their example and still others slunk trembling to the fore, their voices ready to protest innocence and friendship and loyalty.

They had heard of the merciless American gunner and they knew, in their souls, that he could shoot the island into atoms before nightfall.

The native lawyer harangued them and cursed them and at last brought them to understand, in a feeble way, that no harm could come to them if they faced the situation boldly. The Americans would not land on British soil; it would precipitate war with England. They would not dare to attempt a bombardment: Chase was a liar, a mountebank, a dog! After shouting himself hoarse in his frenzy of despair, he finally succeeded in forcing the men to get up steam in the company's tug. All this time, the officers of the American warship were dividing their attention between land and sea. Another vessel was coming up out of the misty horizon. The men on board knew it to be a British man-of-war! At last steam was up in the tug. A hundred or more of the islanders had ventured from their hiding places and were again huddled upon the dock.

Suddenly the throng separated as if by magic, opening a narrow path down which three white men approached the startled Rasula. A hundred eager hands were extended, a hundred voices cried out for mercy, a hundred Mohammedans beat their heads in abject submission.

Hollingsworth Chase, Lord Deppingham and a familiar figure in an ill-fitting red jacket and forage cap strode firmly, defiantly between the rows of humble Japatites. Close behind them came a tall, resolute grenadier of the Rapp-Thorberg army.

"Make way there, make way!" Mr. Bowles was crying, brandishing the antique broadsword that had come down to Wyckholme from the dark ages. "Stand aside for the British Government! Make way for the American!"

Rasula's jaw hung limp in the face of this amazing exhibition of courage on the part of the enemy. He could not at first believe his eyes. Hoarse, inarticulate cries came from his froth-covered lips. He was glaring insanely at the calm, triumphant face of the man from Brodney's, who was now advancing upon him with the assurance of a conqueror.

"You see, Rasula, I have called for the cruiser and it has come at my bidding." Turning to the crowd that surged up from behind, cowed and cringing, Chase said: "It rests with you. If I give the word, that ship will blow you from the face of the earth. I am your friend, people. I would you no harm, but good. You have been misled by Rasula. Rasula, you are not a fool. You can save yourself, even now. I am here as the servant of these people, not as their master. I intend to remain here until I am called back by the man who sent me to you. You have----"

Rasula uttered a shriek of rage. He had been crouching back among his cohorts, panting with fury. Now he sprang forward, murder in his eyes. His arm was raised and a great pistol was levelled at the breast of the man who faced him so coolly, so confidently. Deppingham shouted and took a step forward to divert the aim of the frenzied lawyer.

A revolver cracked behind the tall American and Rasula stopped in his tracks. There was a great hole in his forehead; his eyes were bursting; he staggered backward, his knees gave way; and, as the blood filled the hole and streamed down his face, he sank to the ground—dead!

The soldier from Rapp-Thorberg, a smoking pistol in his hand, the other raised to his helmet, stepped to the side of Hollingsworth Chase.

"By order of Her Serene Highness, sir," he said quietly.

"Good God!" gasped Chase, passing his hand across his brow. For a full minute there was no sound to be heard on the pier except the lapping of the waves. Deppingham, repressing a shudder, addressed the stunned natives.

"Take the body away. May that be the end of all assassins!"

The King's Own came alongside the American vessel in less than an hour. Accompanied by the British agent, Mr. Bowles, Chase and Deppingham left the dock in the company's tug and steamed out toward the two monsters. The American had made no move to send men ashore, nor had the British agent deemed it wise to ask aid of the Yankees in view of the fact that a vessel of his own nation was approaching.

Standing on the forward deck of the swift little tug, Chase unconcernedly accounted for the timely arrival of the two cruisers.

"Three weeks ago I sent out letters by the mail steamer, to be delivered to the English or American commanders, wherever they might be found. Undoubtedly they were met with in the same port. That is why I was so positive that help would come, sooner or later. It was very simple. Lord Deppingham, merely a case of foresightedness. I knew that we'd need help and I knew that if I brought the cruisers my power over these people would never be disturbed again."

"My word!" exclaimed the admiring Bowles.

"Chase, you may be theatric, but you are the most dependable chap the world has ever known," said Deppingham, and he meant it.

The warships remained off the harbour all that day. Officers from both ships were landed and escorted to the château, where joy reigned supreme, notwithstanding the fact that the grandchildren of the old men of the island were morally certain that their cause was lost. The British captain undertook to straighten out matters on the island. He consented to leave a small detachment of marines in the town to protect Chase and the bank, and he promised the head men of the village, whom he had brought aboard the ship, that no mercy would be shown if he or the American captain was compelled to make a second visit in response to a call for aid. To a man the islanders pledged fealty to the cause of peace and justice: they shouted the names of Chase and Allah in the same breath, and demanded of the latter that He preserve the former's beard for all eternity.

The King's Own was to convey the liberated heirs, their goods and chattels, their servants and their penates (if any were left inviolate) to Aden, whither the cruiser was bound. At that port a P. & O. steamer would pick them up. One white man elected to stay on the island with Hollingsworth Chase, who steadfastly refused to desert his post until Sir John Brodney indicated that his mission was completed. That one man was the wearer of the red jacket, the bearer of the King's commission in Japat, the undaunted Mr. Bowles, won over from his desire to sit once more on the banks of the Serpentine and to dine forever in the Old Cheshire Cheese.

The Princess Genevra, the wistful light deepening hourly in her blue-grey eyes, avoided being alone with the man whom she was leaving behind. She had made up her mind to accept the fate inevitable; he had reconciled himself to the ending of an impossible dream. There was nothing more to say, except farewell. She may have bled in her soul for him and for the happiness that was dying as the minutes crept on to the hour of parting, but she carefully, deliberately concealed the wounds from all those who stood by and questioned with their eyes.

She was a princess of Rapp-Thorberg!

The last day dawned. The sun smiled down upon them. The soft breeze of the sea whispered the curse of destiny into their ears; it crooned the song of heritage; it called her back to the fastnesses where love may not venture in.

The château was in a state of upheaval; the exodus was beginning. Servants and luggage had departed on their way to the dock. Palanquins were waiting to carry the lords and ladies of the castle down to the sea. The Princess waited until the last moment. She went to him. He was standing apart from the rest, coldly indifferent to the pangs he was suffering.

"I shall love you always," she said simply, giving him her hand. "Always, Hollingsworth." Her eyes were wide and hopeless, her lips were white.

He bowed his head. "May God give you all the happiness that I wish for you," he said. "The End!"

She looked steadily into his eyes for a long time, searching his soul for the hope that never dies. Then she gently withdrew her hands and stood away from him, humbled in her own soul.

"Yes," she whispered. "Good-bye."

He straightened his shoulders and drew a deep breath through compressed nostrils. "Good-bye! God bless you," was all that he said.

She left him standing there; the wall between them was too high, too impregnable for even Love to storm.

Lady Deppingham came to him there a moment later. "I am sorry," she said tenderly. "Is there no hope?"

"There is no hope—for her!" he said bitterly. "She was condemned too long ago."

On the pier they said good-bye to him. He was laughing as gaily and as blithely as if the world held no sorrows in all its mighty grasp.

"I'll look you up in London," he said to the Deppinghams. "Remember, the real trial is yet to come. Good-bye, Browne. Good-bye, all! You may come again another day!"

The launch slipped away from the pier. He and Bowles stood there, side by side, pale-faced but smiling, waving their handkerchiefs. He felt that Genevra was still looking into his eyes, even when the launch crept up under the walls of the distant ship.

Slowly the great vessel got under way. The American cruiser was already low on the horizon. There was a single shot from the King's Own: a reverberating farewell!

Hollingsworth Chase turned away at last. There were tears in his eyes and there were tears in those of Mr. Bowles.

"Bowles," said he, "it's a rotten shame they didn't think to say good-bye to old man Skaggs. He's in the same grave with us."

A TOAST TO THE PAST

The middle of June found the Deppinghams leaving London once more, but this time not on a voyage into the mysterious South Seas. They no longer were interested in the island of Japat, except as a reminiscence, nor were they concerned in the vagaries of Taswell Skaggs's will.

The estate was settled—closed!

Mr. Saunders was mentioned nowadays only in narrative form, and but rarely in that way. True, they had promised to visit the little place in Hammersmith if they happened to be passing by, and they had graciously admitted that it would give them much pleasure to meet his good mother.

Two months have passed since the Deppinghams departed from Japat, "for good and all." Many events have come to pass since that memorable day, not the least of which was the exchanging of £500,000 sterling, less attorneys' and executors' fees. To be perfectly explicit and as brief as possible, Lady Deppingham and Robert Browne divided that amount of money and passed into legal history as the "late claimants to the Estate of Taswell Skaggs."

It was Sir John Brodney's enterprise. He saw the way out of the difficulty and he acted as pathfinder to the other and less perceiving counsellors, all of whom had looked forward to an endless controversy.

The business of the Japat Company and all that it entailed was transferred by agreement to a syndicate of Jews!

Never before was there such a stupendous deal in futures.

Soon after the arrival in England of the two claimants, it became known that the syndicate was casting longing eyes upon the far-away garden of rubies and sapphires. There was no hope of escape from a long, bitter contest in the courts. Sir John perhaps saw that there was a possible chance to break the will of the testator; he was an old man and he would hardly live long enough to fight the case to the end. In the interregnum, his clients, the industrious islanders, would be slaving themselves into a hale old age and a subsequently unhallowed grave, none the wiser and none the richer than when the contest began, except for the proportionately insignificant share that was theirs by right of original possession. Sir John took it upon himself to settle the matter while his clients were still in a condition to appreciate the results. He proposed a compromise.

It was not so much a question of jurisprudence, he argued, as it was a matter of self-protection for all sides to the controversy—more particularly that side which assembled the inhabitants of Japat.

And so it came to pass that the Jews, after modifying some twenty or thirty propositions of their own, ultimately assumed the credit of evolving the plan that had originated in the resourceful head of Sir John Brodney, and affairs were soon brought to a close.

The grandchildren of the testators were ready to accept the best settlement that could be obtained. Theirs was a rather forlorn hope, to begin with. When it was proposed that Agnes Deppingham and Robert Browne should accept £250,000 apiece in lieu of all claims, moral or legal, against the estate, they leaped at the chance.

They had seen but little of each other since landing in England, except as they were thrown together at the conferences. There was no pretence of intimacy on either side; the shadow of the past was still there to remind them that a skeleton lurked behind and grinned spitefully in its obscurity. Lady Agnes went in for every diversion imaginable; for a wonder, she dragged Deppingham with her on all occasions. It was a most unexpected transformation; their friends were puzzled. The rumour went about town that she was in love with her husband.

As for Bobby Browne, he was devotion itself to Drusilla. They sailed for New York within three days after the settlement was effected, ignoring the enticements of a London season—which could not have mattered much to them, however, as Drusilla emphatically refused to wear the sort of gowns that Englishwomen wear when they sit in the stalls. Besides, she preferred the Boston dressmakers. The Brownes were rich. He could now become a fashionable specialist. They were worth nearly a million and a quarter in American dollars. Moreover, they, as well as the Deppinghams, were the possessors of rubies and sapphires that had been thrust upon them by supplicating adversaries in the hour of departure—gems that might have bought a dozen wives in the capitals of Persia; perhaps a score in the mountains where the Kurds are cheaper. The Brownes naturally were eager to get back to Boston. They now had nothing in common with Taswell Skaggs; Skaggs is not a pretty name.

Mr. Britt afterward spent three weeks of incessant travel on the continent and an additional seven days at sea. In Baden-Baden he happened upon Lord and Lady Deppingham. It will be recalled that in Japat they had always professed an unholy aversion for Mr. Britt. Is it cause for wonder then that they declined his invitation to dine in Baden-Baden? He even proposed to invite their entire party, which included a few dukes and duchesses who were leisurely on their way to attend the long-talked-of nuptials in Thorberg at the end of June.

The Syndicate, after buying off the hereditary forces, assumed a half interest in the Japat Company's business; the islanders controlled the remaining half. The mines were to be operated under the management of the Jews and eight hours were to constitute a day's work. The personal estate passed into the hands of the islanders, from whom Skaggs had appropriated it in conjunction with John Wyckholme. All in all, it seemed a fair settlement of the difficulty. The Jews paid something like £2,000,000 sterling to the islanders in consideration of a twenty years' grant. Their experts had examined the property before the death of Mr. Skaggs; they were not investing blindly in the great undertaking.

Mr. Levistein, the president of the combine, after a long talk with Lord Deppingham, expressed the belief that the château could be turned into a money-making hotel if properly advertised—outside of the island. Deppingham admitted, that if he kept the prices up, there was no reason in the world why the better class of Jews should not flock there for the winter.

Before the end of June, representatives of the combine, attended by officers of the court, a small army of clerks, a half dozen lawyers and two capable men from the office of Sir John Brodney, set sail for Japat, provided with the power and the means to effect the transfer agreed upon in the compromise.

In Vienna the Deppinghams were joined by the Duchess of N------, the Marchioness of B------ and other fashionables. In a week all of them would be in the Castle at Thorberg, for the ceremony that now occupied the attention of social and royal Europe.

"And to think," said the Duchess, "she might have died happily on that miserable island. I am sure we did all we could to bring it about by steaming away from the place with the plague chasing after us. Dear me, how diabolically those wretches lied to the Marquess. They said that every one in the château was dead, Lady Deppingham—and buried, if I am not mistaken."

The party was dining with one of the Prince Lichtensteins in the Hotel Bristol after a drive in the Haupt-Allee.

"My dog, I think, was the only one of us who died, Duchess," said Lady Agnes airily. "And he was buried. They were that near to the truth."

"It would be much better for poor Genevra if she were to be buried instead of married next week," lamented the Duchess.

"My dear, how ridiculous. She isn't dead yet, by any manner of means. Why bury her? She's got plenty of life left in her, as Karl Brabetz will learn before long." Thus spoke the far-sighted Marchioness, aunt of the bride-to-be. "It's terribly gruesome to speak of burying people before they are actually dead."

"Other women have married princes and got on very well," said Prince Lichtenstein.

"Oh, come now, Prince," put in Lord Deppingham, "you know the sort of chap Brabetz is. There are princes and princes, by Jove."

"He's positively vile!" exclaimed the Duchess, who would not mince words.

"She's entering upon a hell of a—I mean a life of hell," exploded the Duke, banging the table with his fist. "That fellow Brabetz is the rottenest thing in Europe. He's gone from bad to worse so swiftly that public opinion is still months behind him."

"Nice way to talk of the groom," said the host genially. "I quite agree with you, however. I cannot understand the Grand Duke permitting it to go on—unless, of course, it's too late to interfere."

"Poor dear, she'll never know what it is to be loved and cherished," said the Marchioness dolefully.

Lord and Lady Deppingham glanced at each other. They were thinking of the man who stood on the dock at Aratat when the King's Own sailed away.

"The Grand Duke is probably saying the very thing to himself that Brabetz's associates are saying in public," ventured a young Austrian count.

"What is that, pray?"

"That the Prince won't live more than six months. He's a physical wreck to-day—and a nervous one, too. Take my word for it, he will be a creeping, imbecile thing inside of half a year. Locomotor ataxia and all that. It's coming, positively, with a sharp crash."

"I've heard he has tried to kill that woman in Paris half a dozen times," remarked one of the women, taking it as a matter of course that every one knew who she meant by "that woman." As no one even so much as looked askance, it is to be presumed that every one knew.

"She was really responsible for the postponement of the wedding in December, I'm told. Of course, I don't know that it is true," said the Marchioness, wisely qualifying her gossip. "My brother, the Grand Duke, does not confide in me."

"Oh, I think that story was an exaggeration," said her husband. "Genevra says that he was very ill—nervous something or other."

"Probably true, too. He's a wreck. She will be the prettiest widow in Europe before Christmas," said the young count. "Unless, of course, any one of the excellent husbands surrounding me should die," he added gallantly.

"Well, my heart bleeds for her," said Deppingham.

"She's going into it with her eyes open," said the Prince. "It isn't as if she hadn't been told. She could see for herself. She knows there's the other woman in Paris and—Oh, well, why should we make a funeral of it? Let's do our best to be revellers, not mourners. She'll live to fall in love with some other man. They always do. Every woman has to love at least once in her life—if she lives long enough. Come, come! Is my entertainment to develop into a premature wake? Let us forget the future of the Princess Genevra and drink to her present!"

"And to her past, if you don't mind, Prince!" amended Lord Deppingham, looking into his wife's sombre eyes.

THE TITLE CLEAR

Two men and a woman stood in the evening glow, looking out over the tranquil sea that crept up and licked the foot of the cliff. At their back rose the thick, tropical forest; at its edge and on the nape of the cliff stood a bungalow, fresh from the hands of a hundred willing toilsmen. Below, on their right, lay the gaudy village, lolling in the heat of the summer's day. Far off to the north, across the lowlands and beyond the sweep of undulating and ever-lengthening hills, could be seen a great, reddish structure, its gables and towers fusing with the sombre shades of the mountain against which they seemed to lean.

It was September. Five months had passed since the King's Own steamed away from the harbour of Aratat. The new dispensation was in full effect. During the long, sickening weeks that preceded the coming of the Syndicate, Hollingsworth Chase toiled faithfully, resolutely for the restoration of order and system among the demoralised people of Japat.

The first few weeks of rehabilitation were hard ones: the islanders were ready to accede to everything he proposed, but their submissiveness was due in no small measure to the respect they entertained for his almost supernatural powers. In course of time this feeling was more or less dissipated and a condition of true confidence took its place. The lawless element—including the misguided husbands whose jealousy had been so skilfully worked upon by Rasula and Jacob von Blitz—this element, greatly in the minority, subsided into a lackadaisical, law-abiding activity, with little prospect of again attempting to exercise themselves in another direction. Murder had gone out of their hearts.

Eager hands set to work to construct a suitable home for the tall arbiter. He chose a position on the point that ran out into the sea beyond the town. It was this point which the yacht was rounding on that memorable day when he and one other had watched it from the gallery, stirred by emotions they were never to forget. Besides, the cliff on which the new bungalow stood represented the extreme western extremity of the island and therefore was nearest of all Japat to civilisation and—Genevra.

Conditions in Aratat were not much changed from what they had been prior to the event of the legatory invaders. The mines were in full operation; the bank was being conducted as of yore; the people were happy and confident; the town was fattening on its own flesh; the sun was as merciless and the moon as gentle as in the days of old.

The American bar changed hands with the arrival of the new forces from the Occident; the Jews and the English clerks, the surveyors and the engineers, the solicitors and the agents, were now domiciled in "headquarters." Chase turned over the "bar" when he retired from active service under Sir John Brodney. With the transfer of the company's business his work was finished. Two young men from Sir John's were now settled in Aratat as legal advisers to the islanders, Chase having declined to serve longer in that capacity.

He was now waiting for the steamer which was to take him to Cape Town on his way to England—and home.

The château was closed and in the hands of a small army of caretakers. The three widows of Jacob von Blitz were now married to separate and distinct husbands, all of whom retained their places as heads of departments at the château, proving that courtship had not been confined to the white people during the closing days of the siege.

The head of the bank was Oscar Arnheimer, Mr. Bowles having been deposed because his methods were even more obsolete than his coat of armour. Selim disposed of his lawful interest in the corporation to Ben Ali, the new Cadi, and was waiting to accompany his master to America. It may be well to add that the deal did not include the transfer of Neenah. She was not for sale, said Selim to Ben Ali.

It was of Mr. Bowles that the three persons were talking as they stood in the evening glow.

"Yes, Selim," said the tall man in flannels, "he's a sort of old dog Tray—ever faithful but not the right kind. You don't happen to know anything of old dog Tray, do you? No? I thought not. Nor you, Neenah? Well, he was----"

"Was he the one who was poisoned at the château, excellency?" asked Neenah timidly.

"No, my dear," he replied soberly. "If I remember my history, he died in the seventeenth century or thereabouts. It's really of no consequence, however. Any good, faithful dog will serve my purpose. What I want to impress upon you is this: it is most difficult for a faithful old dog to survive a change of masters. It isn't human nature—or dog nature, either. I'm glad that you are convinced, Neenah—but please don't tell Sahib Bowles that he is a dog."

"Oh, no, excellency!" she cried earnestly.

"She is very close-mouthed, sahib," added Selim, with conviction.

"We'll take Bowles to England with us next week," went on Chase dreamily. "We'll leave Japat to take care of itself. I don't know which it is in most danger of, seismic or Semitic disturbances."

He lighted a fresh cigarette, tenderly fingering it before applying the match.

"I'll smoke one of hers to-night, Selim. See! I keep them apart from the others, in this little gold case. I smoke them only when I am thinking. Now, run in and tell Mr. Bowles that I said he was a Tray. I want to be alone."

They left him and he threw himself upon the green sod, his back to a tree, his face toward the distant château. Hours afterward the faithful Selim came out to tell him that it was bedtime. He found his master still sitting there, looking across the moonlit flat in the direction of a place in the hills where once he had dwelt in marble halls.

"Selim," he said, arising and laying his hand upon his servant's shoulder, his voice unsteady with finality, "I have decided, after all, to go to Paris! We will live there, Selim. Do you understand?" with strange fierceness, a great exultation mastering him. "We are to live in Paris!"

To himself, all that night, he was saying: "I must see her again—I shall see her!"

A thousand times he had read and re-read the letter that Lady Deppingham had written to him just before the ceremony in the cathedral at Thorberg. He knew every word that it contained; he could read it in the dark. She had said that Genevra was going into a hell that no hereafter could surpass in horrors! And that was ages ago, it seemed to him. Genevra had been a wife for nearly three months—the wife of a man she loathed; she was calling in her heart for him to come to her; she was suffering in that unspeakable hell. All this he had come to feel and shudder over in his unspeakable loneliness. He would go to her! There could be no wrong in loving her, in being near her, in standing by her in those hours of desperation.

A copy of a London newspaper, stuffed away in the recesses of his trunk, dated June 29th, had come to him by post. It contained the telegraphic details of the brilliant wedding in Thorberg. He had read the names of the guests over and over again with a bitterness that knew no bounds. Those very names proved to him that her world was not his, nor ever could be. Every royal family in Europe was represented; the list of noble names seemed endless to him—the flower of the world's aristocracy. How he hated them!

The next morning Selim aroused him from his fitful sleep, bringing the news that a strange vessel had arrived off Aratat. Chase sprang out of bed, possessed of the wild hope that the opportunity to leave the island had come sooner than he had expected. He rushed out upon his veranda, overlooking the little harbour.

A long, white, graceful craft was lying in the harbour. It was in so close to the pier that he had no choice but to recognise it as a vessel of light draft. He stared long and intently at the trim craft.

"Can I be dreaming?" he muttered, passing his hand over his eyes. "Don't lie to me, Selim! Is it really there?" Then he uttered a loud cry of joy and started off down the slope with the speed of a race horse, shouting in the frenzy of an uncontrollable glee.

It was the Marquess of B----'s white and blue yacht!