The Pursuit

"You saved the boy!" she said, in a quick, panting whisper

Aylmer took the proffered hand, lifted his hat, smiled, and recognized the lady of the pier.

He hesitated a moment. He shrugged his shoulders.

"No," he deprecated, and pointed to the other spear-man who was already wheeling to inspect his trophy. "Your thanks are due to our friend Despard, if anywhere."

"No!" she contradicted vehemently. "Did I not see it? You were sacrificing yourself, doing it deliberately. And I shall never forget it—never!"

He smiled again. He looked at the child who sat silent on the saddle-bow, staring down at him.

"Still running away?" queried Aylmer, pleasantly. "Whither, this time? And what was the terrible hurry?"

A guilty grin puckered the little man's lips.

"I thought I knowed you; you're the man of—of yesterday," he shrilled. "I was running from Selim. He wanted me to take siesta, but I did wish to be in the hunt."

Aylmer nodded.

"The usual trouble," he said. "We all want to be in—or, at any rate, to see—the hunt. And we never pay any attention to Selims, worse luck. You'll learn more by experience, sonny."

The child made a little gesture of protest.

"That's not my name," he answered solemnly. "Mother calls me Jackanapes, or Jack. But I'm John, really, just John."

"Just John," assented Aylmer. "Just John what?"

"John Aylmer," said the boy and stared in surprise at his new friend's startled visage. But the other John Aylmer was not looking at his namesake. He was looking at the girl who held him.

Her eyes answered the glance gravely, sternly, even defiantly, and in silence.

"You?" cried Aylmer. "You are—?"

She hesitated.

"John's nurse," she said, looking him steadily in the face.

THE SHADOW OF A NAME

For a moment there was silence between the two. Aylmer's fingers unconsciously wound and unwound a tiny lock of hair in the horse's mane. His eyes travelled over the woman's face and figure appraisingly; his brows contracted into a frown of puzzlement.

He had seen little John Aylmer's mother once before, at her wedding nine years previously. She had been a girl, then, almost a child, and young for her age, which was barely eighteen. Her beauty had been the fresh, innocent beauté du diable. She was fair, blue-eyed, with a tendency to fragility. And if report told the truth, her beauty had wasted and her fragility increased through the cruel years of her husband's domination. A bare six months ago she had been freed. Her father's millions had helped her to a separation which English Courts had made a legal one. They had also given her the custody of her one child, the heir to the Aylmer name and the Landon title.

This girl was fair, indeed; her eyes like the sea, her color fresh, her forehead bland and unwrinkled. But she was not the woman whose woes had made copy for a thousand newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, whose sufferings had roused the storm of execration which had made the honest name of Aylmer a byword of dishonor and reproach. No, this was not his cousin Landon's wife.

And yet?

Feature for feature, line for line, she reminded him of the woman whose daintiness he remembered among the massed decorations of that New York cathedral those years ago.

He sought bluntly for an explanation.

"I, too, am John Aylmer," he said quietly. "Who are you?"

The sudden thrill of surprise with which she clutched the child to her tightened the reins. The gray backed a step; it was as if horse and rider were alike repelled by his question.

She stared at him with a sudden fierce aversion which was undisguised.

"You are Landon's cousin—you?" she cried.

He bowed his head.

"I have that misfortune," he answered quietly.

At the form of his answer a tinge of relief woke in her eyes, but they still watched him with incredulity and suspicion.

"He—he has sent you?" she demanded. "You bring other proposals, or threats?"

He smiled gravely.

"We have shared nothing, except a club, he and I," he explained. "I have not set eyes on him for over a year."

She still watched him alertly, debatingly, and still with mistrust.

"How did you come here, and why?" she asked.

"I am a member of the Tent Club," he answered. "I am in garrison at Gibraltar. I could not get leave till yesterday afternoon and I waited in Tangier to accompany Captain Rattier, whose ship is in harbor. Have I sufficiently explained myself?"

She hesitated.

"You have not seen your cousin for over a year? Perhaps you are in correspondence with him?"

He showed signs of impatience.

"We have not exchanged half a dozen letters in our lives!" he said emphatically.

The lines of her face remained unsoftened. Her fierce grip on the child's shoulder did not relax.

"And this Frenchman—this Captain Rattier?" she asked. "What of him?"

His eyebrows expressed the intensity of his amazement.

"Paul Rattier is my distant cousin," he answered. "No finer gentleman walks the earth." He paused for a moment. "Is it permitted to inquire why you suspect—strangers?"

She did not answer him. An abstraction, real or feigned, seemed to have seized her. She stared out over his head into the distance with unseeing eyes as if she weighed problems, debated evidence, sought conclusions. It was the child who roused her into attention. He laughed, clapped his hands, and shouted.

"Browny!" he clamored in delight. "Browny!"

Aylmer looked round.

Rattier, leading a very melancholy and still bleeding horse, had approached with Despard. Together they were bending over the major's trophy, the dead boar. Behind them Aylmer's horse was hobbling painfully to its feet. Despard looked up and shook an admonishing finger at his acclaimer.

"You young rebel!" he cried. "You want a good smacking for your disobedience!"

He slipped from the saddle as he spoke and led his horse towards them. He laid his hand familiarly on Aylmer's shoulder.

"Hurt?" he asked.

"Not in the least," said Aylmer, and then looked, with a significant lift of the eyebrow, from Despard to the gray horse's rider.

Despard's face showed his own surprise.

"Don't you know each other yet?" he marvelled. "Miss Van Arlen—Captain Aylmer."

Uncertainty gripped Aylmer again. Landon had married a daughter of Jacob Van Arlen, the millionaire. A divorcée reverted to her maiden name, but surely not to her maiden title. But Despard had said Miss, most distinctly Miss.

With his usual straightforward instinct to find the nearest way to probe a mystery, he looked at the girl herself. He became aware that her eyes had been upon his face with intentness.

"Yes," she said quietly. "This," she patted the child's shoulder, "is my nephew."

He gave a little sigh of appreciation and, he scarcely knew why, of relief. It was not possible, of course, that this girl, whose whole poise and carriage spoke of resolution and unfettered self-command, could be the woman, broken in health and spirit, who had cowered before her husband's glance, so some of the baser journals had hinted, even when she was seeking and had received the law's protection from him.

And her eyes? They were not of that appealing blue which had shone beneath the bride's deep lashes on that half-forgotten wedding-day. They were blue, indeed, but they met his with something which was akin to defiance.

She did not explain herself, but her glance was that of one who needed no warrant for her demeanor. Her attitude was not one of blatant aggressiveness, but was undoubtedly distrustful.

He looked at the child with renewed interest.

"Your sister is—where?" he asked quickly.

The frown came swiftly back to her forehead.

"You ask me that? Why?" she demanded.

He looked at the boy.

"Naturally I thought she might be with you," he answered. "As an Aylmer I should be glad to meet her."

"Ah!" Her tone was hard and suspicious again. Unconsciously she gripped the child to her again with a fierceness which made him protest.

"You hurt!" he complained. "You hurt, and I want to see the boar."

With a sailor's instinctive fondness for children, Rattier, who had resigned his limping horse into the hands of one of the Arab beaters, turned towards him.

"May I be permitted?" he said simply, and held out his arms. The child made a restless little movement towards him. "He'll show it me!" he cried joyously. "He'll take me!"

Again she reined back, looking from one to the other with patent misgiving.

"No!" she cried sharply. "You shall not touch him, either of you!" She made an appealing gesture towards Despard. "You must see me back to the camp!" she said.

He was smiling with tranquil amusement, a smile which seemed to rouse her to anger.

"Let us go now, at once!" she said, and wheeled her horse.

Despard nodded, but did not dismiss the smile.

"Might I inform you that Aylmer has been my friend since our Sandhurst days, and that I have shared his intimacy with Commandant Rattier for the last five years? I can vouch for them; I really can."

She reined in her horse again and sat looking at all three with doubt still lurking in her eyes. Aylmer met her expression with unrestrained amazement. He found her mistrust of him a conundrum to which there was no answer. The Frenchman's shoulders rose and fell almost imperceptibly. His head was slanted with deferential acquiescence. He laid his hand upon Aylmer's arm.

"Your horse?" he interposed.

He pointed to it and to Absalaam, who had now arrived and was touching the wounds in its flank with delicate, probing fingers. The commandant's gesture seemed to imply that the situation in which they found themselves demanded a tactful retreat, and that here he indicated a dignified one.

Aylmer still hesitated. He saw no reason why he should concur in his own dismissal; the idea grated on him. What had he done?

It was Despard who took the edge of restraint off the situation. He swung himself back into the saddle, and pointed up the hill.

"After all, the thing was a squeak," he allowed. "You are shaken." He turned and nodded slightly to the other two. "I will return and help with the horses; we shall have no other beat to-day."

They smiled, bowed to his companion, and gave him answering nod. They understood. He was going to use the opportunity to sponsor them. Then he would return, and they would have their explanation. They watched him bend towards his companion as they rode away.

"It is almost as if we diffused a contagion, you and I," speculated Rattier as they turned to Absalaam and the horses, but Aylmer made no effort to elaborate the issue. An inexplicable instinct to make the incident a personal rather than a general one had overtaken him. As he watched Despard ride away with his companion, he felt almost as if he were being defrauded. The relations between his cousin and her sister made a tie between Miss Van Arlen and himself; surely, in spite of everything, they were sufficient foundation upon which to found something more than a mere acquaintanceship. In the name of all the other decent-minded, clean-living Aylmers, he might have been allowed to make his and their protest against being held responsible for the knaveries of the head of their house.

So it was with something of dissatisfaction in his aspect that he turned to Absalaam and the wounded horse. The Moor saw it but misunderstood its purport.

"Merely a flesh wound, Sidi," he hastened to assure Aylmer. "A week, perhaps ten days, of rest and he is himself again. A small price to pay for so precious a thing as that child's life."

Aylmer looked at him with tolerant amusement. Absalaam ibn Said had neither harem nor wife; his career had been notoriously one of unrest and adventure. These pious opinions issued oddly from his bachelor lips.

"A small price indeed," he agreed pleasantly, "but a hundred youngsters run risks little less in the Sôk of Tangier every day."

The Moor made a sweeping motion of the hand, as if he suddenly dropped the subject of conversation from a higher plane to a lower.

"The children of the Sôk!" he cried contemptuously. "Khabyles—Arabs—Susi—Riffs! What are they? Little more than vermin; their ranks are replenished all too quickly as it is! But this one! Here we tell a different story, do we not?"

Aylmer halted in his examination of the wounded pastern and looked up. There was something arresting in the Moor's vehemence.

Absalaam caught the look and shrugged his shoulders.

"The Sidi has not visited Tangier for five or six weeks?" he said.

Aylmer nodded. And waited. He had had a good deal of experience of the Moor and his conversational methods. He was aware that the deferring of a climax till it could be launched on a tide of tantalization was the chiefest of them.

"Therefore, Sid' Aylmer," continued the Moor, "you have not heard all the tales which center round this small one's fortunes?"

Aylmer smiled and prepared to give his attention again to his horse. It was left to Rattier to ruin the pyramid of stimulation.

"What tales?" he demanded laconically.

Absalaam's brown eyes met both question and questioner with melancholy—almost, indeed, with scorn. How could one titillate, how could one embroider, how could one work up to a brave display of interest, if bald facts were to be wrung from one at this stage of a tale? He sighed.

"Tales of his wealth and importance, Sidi," he answered, in accents of subjection.

Rattier drew up the monocle which swung from a ribbon at his buttonhole and concentrated his stare upon the Moor.

"Wealth?" he repeated tersely.

Absalaam opened his arms to their widest and held his palms emptily outflung.

"Wealth sufficient to buy all Tangier, all Fez, the whole of Mogrheb al Acksa, if a tenth of the reports be true. His life, therefore? How can one value it!"

He beamed upon them. He had been robbed of his slowly forged culmination, but he had, at least, been able to offer them a surprise.

Aylmer replaced upon the ground the hoof which he had been holding. He looked at the Moor good-humoredly.

"So the gossip mongers of the Sôk credit this infant with riches?" he said. "On what evidence, if any?"

Absalaam made a motion towards the sea.

"In the harbor, when you landed, did you observe a yacht, Sidi—a white boat, with lines of gold at her cutwater and figurehead?"

"Yes."

"That boat lies there at the service of that child. They have taken for him the Villa Eulalia; they have surrounded it with tents of men who are there to do no more than guard his safety; there are servants, horses, donkeys. The Gibraltar steamer brings packets of provisions or what not several times a week. In the town their money flows."

Rattier dropped his eyeglass.

"I think, mon ami," he said slowly, "that gold must be freer with them than gratitude. Were you thanked for what you did? I don't seem to remember it."

Aylmer shook his head.

"That is the mystery," he agreed. "I did little enough, but I was going to be thanked—till I disclosed my name. Then," he shrugged his shoulders, "you saw."

He meditated a minute. Then he burst out laughing.

"I was not allowed even to hold him, and I am not at all sure that I am not his guardian!" he said suddenly.

Rattier's surprise was evident, but he managed to concentrate it in a monosyllable.

"Eh?" he demurred wonderingly.

Aylmer gave an emphatic nod of the head.

"I was coming home from China at the time of the marriage of my cousin Landon with this child's mother. I broke my journey in New York specially to attend it. And Landon, merely as a form, asked me as his kinsman to be a party to his settlement. In certain circumstances, including his death, I was to be one of the trustees for his children."

"And he is dead, this cousin?"

"No, my friend. Merely divorced. Where do I come in—where?"

DESPARD EXPLAINS

"Suppose we sit down long enough to smoke a cigarette," suggested Aylmer. "Perhaps the thump I received just now has had a disastrous effect upon my limited intelligence, but I confess that Miss Van Arlen's deportment remains a matter of mystery. What have I done?"

Despard laughed gently. He had strolled back from the camp to meet his friends and had found them superintending the obsequies of the boar. These were performed by a Spaniard, one of the human jetsam cast up everywhere along the North African coast by tides of hazard and adventure which set from every quarter of the Mediterranean. The true son of Islam will not touch the haloof, the unclean jungle pig. And so Señor Bernardo Albareda, penniless derelict and strongly suspected of being a fugitive from the Spanish convict establishment at Melilla, was extracting the tusks. He held them up with a dramatic gesture of admiration.

"Twice the length of my central finger, which is not a short one!" he remarked airily, and used the occasion to exhibit the elegances of a hand which had patently not occupied itself lately with manual toil. One or two of his compatriots, who had been among the beaters, were given the task of disposing of the flesh and bristles, and departed under his escort, carrying their burdens dependent from a couple of poles, the Arabs hastening to avoid even the shadow of contamination which they cast, and spitting with undisguised disfavor as they passed. Despard accepted his comrade's invitation and joined the other two upon the seat which they had made of a fallen mimosa stump in the shadow of the olive.

The major took out his cigarette case, found a match, and sent several tiny clouds rolling up among the branches before he spoke. And his answer was another question.

"You read the details of the Landon divorce case?" he hazarded.

"Yes," said Aylmer. "One could hardly escape it."

"You remember, then, that at the close the respondent was very nearly committed for contempt of court?"

"He lost his temper, or his head," agreed Aylmer, "and threatened his wife. I don't think any one attached much importance to his vaporings."

"Ah!" Despard nodded his head thoughtfully. "I suppose that would be the point of view with most people."

"Not with yourself?" suggested Aylmer.

Despard shook his head.

"I have known the Van Arlens for many years," he said quietly. "Perhaps you have forgotten that my own mother was an American, that a good deal of my boyhood was passed in New York."

"I didn't know you knew the Van Arlens; in fact, I could hardly suspect it, when to the best of my remembrance you never even discussed the Landon divorce case with me."

Despard nodded.

"No," he said, in a dry, unemotional voice. "I did not discuss it with any one. And you, moreover, were an Aylmer."

He was silent for a minute and the other two looked at him a little curiously. This was not the Despard they were accustomed to, a sportsman whose hobbies engrossed him to the exclusion of most other topics. This was a man who had the force of pent feeling behind his words.

"The Van Arlens naturally did not seek outside society at the time of the case," he continued, "but I was on leave, and I saw a good deal of them. Has it occurred to you," he added suddenly, "that this child is not only heir to the Landon title but to the Van Arlen millions—at present?"

"No," said Aylmer, "but I suppose he is the only direct male descendant."

"Do you realize what that means in America? To be a Landon, only a barony, though I grant you an old one, is a small thing compared with being the grandson of—the richest man in the world."

Aylmer was silent. The point of view was one that did not easily present itself to his British complacency. Rattier, too, though he nodded assent, did it without vehemence and with a tinge of reserve. Of a royalist clique, transatlantic caste was outside his experience.

"At any rate your cousin Landon realized it at last in realizing what he was losing. He moved every legal lever he could lay his hands upon to retain the custody of his child and failed. He is to see him twice a year, for an hour. You will understand that his chances of winning his child's profitable affections are too limited for his taste."

Aylmer's brows met in a tiny frown of perplexity.

"Profitable affection?" he meditated.

"John is eight. In thirteen years he will be of age. His father then will be forty-five, and quite capable of getting much enjoyment out of his son's unlimited income."

Rattier gave a little hissing intake of the breath.

"This Landon!" he murmured admiringly.

"The Court decided, also, that the child must be brought up, for nine months of every year, at any rate, in England. This was modified, after medical examination and certificate, to include Europe and North Africa."

Aylmer made a little startled motion which dropped the ash of his cigarette upon his knee.

"Eh?" he questioned. "Medical certificate?"

"Phthisis," rejoined Despard, quietly. "The little chap has the seeds of it, but with care the seeds need never come to growth. But he has to winter in the South, invariably."

Rattier made a tiny caressing motion of the hand which seemed to imply infinite commiseration. Aylmer expressed the same emotion in a little inarticulate murmur.

"And so—?" he questioned. "And so—?"

"And so Tangier," said Despard, "which has other conveniences, for the moneyed. The law, here, is always behind the dollars, is it not?"

The other two looked at him debatingly.

"The law?" mused Aylmer. "The law?"

"They have already had experience of it in Italy and Spain—the Van Arlens. A man like Landon can make use of it there to further his own purposes, against the law. The Spanish and Italian police? Can you expect them to interfere against a man's dealings with his own child? What do they know of the fiats of the British Courts of Chancery? He made two very nearly successful attempts to get possession of the boy,—one at San Remo, one at Taormina."

Aylmer gave a little low whistle of comprehension. Rattier nodded, still with a sort of grudging admiration of this English lord's talents and persistence.

"Have you got it now?" went on Despard. "Do you see where they stand? Here, under the protections of the Bashaw, where Landon can never overbid them, they enjoy a security which they can obtain nowhere else outside America or Great Britain."

Aylmer's eyes filled with a sudden shadow of loathing.

"The scoundrel!" he cried. "The miscreant!"

Despard nodded.

"Quite so," he agreed. "The epithets any decent-minded man would apply to him. Unfortunately, he is without shame, reckless, and heedless of everything but his passionate desire to turn defeat into victory. He will stop at nothing to get even with those who have so far triumphed over him."

"And the boy's mother lives here—with her sister?" said Aylmer.

Despard did not reply for a moment. There was a queer pause and catch in his voice as if he sought uneasily for breath.

"Miss Van Arlen is here, and the old man, Jacob Van Arlen, the grandfather."

"And the mother?" asked Aylmer, with a note of surprise in his voice. "Lady Landon, or does one call her Mrs. Van Arlen?"

"She is broken down in health," answered Despard, in a curiously wooden, expressionless accent. "She has been—recommended to try for at least six months the effects of an Alpine Sanatorium."

The two listeners understood, or thought they understood, and muttered their sympathy in an almost inaudible chorus.

"Insane?" they whispered. "Insane?"

Despard smote his hand down upon the rotting wood.

"No!" he cried fiercely. "Her brain is as sound as yours or mine, but her heart has been frozen. By God! Try to think, imagine, if you can, what hell a woman has lived in who was the wife of Landon!"

His passion seemed to choke him. His eyes glowed, his chest heaved, he was another man from the one who had sat down smilingly to smoke a cigarette with them a few minutes before. And the passion of his wrath infected his hearers. Imagination painted pictures in their brains; they, too, breathed a little faster as they listened.

The gust of Despard's passion passed and left him calm again. He gave a tiny shrug of the shoulders, which seemed to imply apology. He began to speak with ordinary unshaken accents.

"It was I who suggested Tangier to the Van Arlens. I am in garrison at Gibraltar; I can see them at frequent intervals; I introduced them to the Foreign Colony here. The Anstruthers have done their best to make them at home. I got Absalaam to be their dragoman, and I don't think you will find a better or more versatile one between Tripoli and Mogador. They have the most suitable villa outside the town. The Bashaw has been given to understand the situation, has been generously tipped, and is doing his best to keep his side of the bargain. The men who guard them are picked and know that matters will reach an extreme of unpleasantness for them if their vigilance is allowed to relax. All has been done that can be done. And yet—?" He shrugged his shoulders again. "They share the anxieties of Damocles," he added. "They live under a sword which may fall at any moment."

He rose, flicked the cigarette ash from his sleeve, and made a motion towards the hill.

"Shall we be getting on?" he asked. "The sun waits for no one."

They rose slowly and began to follow the distant line of beaters. Aylmer linked his hand through Despard's arm.

"Miss Van Arlen understood ... what we feel ... all we Aylmers, about Landon?" he asked.

Despard hesitated.

"I put it to her, strongly," he answered.

There was something not entirely convincing in the reply. Aylmer's voice showed anxiety.

"But—but she cannot imagine that we, or any decent-minded man, could view him with anything but loathing?"

There was still a perceptible pause before Despard's reply.

"I didn't tell her yesterday that you were coming," he said. "Indeed, Anstruther only informed me last night. I thought it would be well that you should arrive and make a good impression before she learned your name. Then, you see, as it happened, you exploded it on her rather startlingly. And she, at the time, was rather shaken."

"And this means—?" said Aylmer, impatiently.

"It means," answered Despard, debatingly, "that your name recalls memories to her which, unfortunately, do not prepossess you in her favor. And, I think, that, being a woman ... your service to the child ... your saving of him ... under the circumstances ... acted against you."

Aylmer turned and looked into his friend's face with amazement.

"But—but I don't understand!" he stammered. "That's unjust!"

Despard shook his head.

"Not entirely," he demurred. "It's feminine; it's jealousy. It is hard to her that you should have saved the child's life. I could see that, and combated it, during the few minutes in which we rode back to camp."

Aylmer was frowning. He dropped Despard's arm, thrust his own hands into his pockets, and stared out into the distance. He shook his head.

"No!" he said suddenly. "I can't quite follow it. No woman with that girl's ... eyes ... would be so ... shabby ... if she understood!"

Rattier gave him an impulsive little nod.

"If?" he enunciated slowly. "If?"

Despard threw the Frenchman a grateful glance.

"That's it," he agreed. "His name is Aylmer. So far she has not got beyond that fact, my friend."

Aylmer looked round at them both. There was something calculating in the way in which he surveyed the two, as if they were factors in a situation which had hitherto eluded him, but which was now beginning to take definite shape. And his lips had set one upon the other in a rigid line. His chin seemed to have attained incongruous squareness beneath the suave droop of his moustache.

"She's got to believe in me!" he announced grimly. "I won't let her be unworthy of herself."

And the other two noticed that as he said it he nodded to himself two or three times decidedly. He drew himself up; unconsciously his carriage grew stiffer. It was as if he had mapped out and settled a matter definitely. He began to talk and laugh naturally, and on other subjects. And if any allusion to the day's adventure outcropped into the conversation he did not avoid it, but simply passed it by without comment. He had taken his line. The incident, apart from his resolution, was closed.

As the three strolled up to the camp a man rose from the group which sat in the shadow of the awning at the door of the largest tent and came out to meet them. He was tall, white-haired, aquiline of feature. And his pervading characteristic seemed to be gravity. His figure and face alike were unbending.

He made them a studied little bow.

"My daughter tells me, Captain Aylmer," he said, "that I have to thank you for your prompt action on behalf of my grandson. You saved him from a situation of grave peril."

Aylmer realized that this was without doubt Jacob Van Arlen. He suspected, also, why the old man had thus addressed him without waiting for an introduction. For men who are introduced, amid the intimate sociabilities of the Tangier Tent Club, at any rate, usually shake hands. Van Arlen's right hand held his sombrero; his left was at his side.

Aylmer returned the bow.

"I did no more than what had obviously to be done," he said quietly. "Despard merits your thanks more than I."

The other looked at the major with a distinct tinge of relief.

"Is that so?" he asked hopefully.

"No!" said Despard, laconically. "Your thanks are not in the least misdirected, Mr. Van Arlen."

The old man made another courteous inclination of the head.

"I thought I could not so far have misunderstood my daughter," he answered. "I hope, Captain Aylmer, that while you remain in Tangier I may be permitted to serve you in any way which you like to command. Perhaps, though, your stay is short?"

And there was hopefulness in this last query. It was patent amid the studied urbanity of the tone. In spite of himself Aylmer smiled.

"I am a bird of passage," he said lightly. "I manage to take short leave for most of the Tent Club meetings, to which Colonel Anstruther is kind enough to make me welcome."

He strode forward as he spoke and began to exchange greetings with Mrs. Anstruther, who rose to meet him. He had to hear the morning's story re-discussed, exclaimed over, criticized. He bore it, without impatience, but with a certain aloofness which gave the subject no chance to endure. He managed skilfully, at last, to divert the conversation into other channels.

Anstruther, who had sat between his wife and Miss Van Arlen, had risen to welcome Commandant Rattier. The mishap to the latter's horse engrossed their attention; they wandered off together to examine the wounded limb. After a moment's hesitation Aylmer sank into the vacant chair.

He looked round at the girl. Her eyes met his, but her hand, as if acting by some automatic command of the brain, touched her skirt and pulled it toward herself, and away from him. His lips grew a thought more rigid behind the veiling moustache. But his voice was entirely divested of any semblance of pique.

"And how is my small cousin?" he asked pleasantly. "Has Selim persuaded him to take that long-deferred siesta?"

Old Van Arlen stirred restlessly on his seat. He looked at Aylmer, his lips moved as if to speech, and then closed again. Miss Van Arlen sat up very straight.

"Do you mean my nephew?" she asked frigidly.

"Your nephew and my cousin," said Aylmer, cheerfully. "I hardly expected to find a relation here when I started this morning."

Her eyes grew stormy with suspicion, almost with hate.

"Are you sure?" she demanded suddenly.

"Quite sure," said Aylmer, halting for a scarcely perceptible moment before her meaning reached him. "I have found only friends—so far."

MR. MILLER

Outside their own country two British types carry their caste marks patently. They are the tourist and the officer. Gibraltar abounds with both, the company of the first having an occasional and transient superiority when it is swollen by Transatlantic arrivals or intermittent yachting cruisers. But the officers of the garrison and their wives and daughters are the reigning members of the informal club which makes Society on the Rock. They know each other, they discuss each other; the longer they stay the more parochial grow their interests. Newcomers undergo a period of silent probation. They cannot slip in unobserved. The who and the whence test is applied to each with unction, sometimes without justice, but almost invariably with good-humor. As a consequence everybody, within limits, knows something about everybody else.

There are exceptions, and one, an olive-complexioned, gray-clad, gray-haired, dark-eyed man, was walking steadily down the Waterport one sunny afternoon as a rush of cabs towards the custom-house proclaimed the incoming of an important steamer. Mr. William Miller had a pleasantly situated cottage in the South Town. The postman knew that he had many correspondents in Spain, England, Germany, and elsewhere. Moorish visitors from across the straits were not infrequent at a small office which he retained in Waterport Street. Men of letters, desiring information on recondite subjects, separated themselves from the frivolous landing parties of Messrs. Cook and called at the same address. No one had ever tapped the sources of Mr. Miller's encyclopædic knowledge in vain. No one had found him otherwise than affable. And though it was understood that his activities were literary, no resident or tourist had successfully probed the nature of his life-work.

The wives of many colonels had recognized this and had flung themselves with ardor against the breastworks of his imperturbability. Not one of them could look back with pride on any action in which they had won even a temporary advantage. Mr. Miller spoke freely, showed an intimate knowledge of men and manners throughout the civilized world, and appeared to manifest pleasure in sociabilities. His only attempts to return these lay in small but eclectic tea-parties whereat he displayed hoards of artistic treasures and discoursed learnedly of carpet dye and porcelain marks.

But he was by no means a ladies' man. He accepted, and was welcome at the hospitalities of many a mess or gun room. He sang well and could play a more than ordinary effective accompaniment to a comic song after hearing the air whistled half a dozen times by its would-be interpreter. The impersonality of his social attitude prevented his being popular, but he was an institution. As he walked along he bowed, nodded, smiled; obviously he knew everybody. Obviously everybody knew him.

As he walked across the sunlit square and dived into the deeply shadowed tunnel which is the Waterport, a tender fussed noisily up to the quay. Mr. Miller eyed the passengers on its deck keenly.

The steamer was evidently a White Star in from New York. The load of colossal trunks upon the deck would have told him that apart from the accent of the passengers and the flag at the masthead. Baggage agents began to dart here and there; Mr. Cook's uniformed interpreters were in the forefront of the fray; Spanish cab runners yelled and grimaced.

Mr. Miller stood aside without attempting to force a way into the tumult. His hands rested quietly together on the hilt of his cane. His brow was contemplative and unruffled. Certainly if he awaited anything he was in no hurry to find it.

All things come to those who wait, and Mr. Miller had not to wait long. A man strode suddenly out of the custom-house gate, thrust aside the Spanish porter who was snatching at his handbag, and made a beckoning motion towards a cab.

Mr. Miller strode quietly forward and reached it simultaneously with the fare.

The man looked at him with a sudden irritable alertness and then broke into a grin.

"You're here," he said, and flung his bag upon the seat. The other responded with a tiny shrug as if he deprecated the platitudinous nature of the remark. He motioned the man to take his seat, sat down beside him, and told the driver the name of an hotel. "Your man is looking after your heavy luggage?" he questioned.

The other nodded impatiently.

"Yes," he said. "Not that there's much to look after." He turned and glanced into his companion's face. "I'm getting down to bed-rock now; nothing left to waste on trivialities. I nearly came second class."

Miller's eyebrows rose.

"That would have been unnecessary." He speculated.

"Imbecile, as it turned out," agreed the man. "There were some bridge-playing Southerners on board, old school, couldn't bring themselves to be civil to the New Yorkers, but ready to take an Englishman, and a lord, moreover, to their hearts. No high play, but I'm eight hundred dollars up on the voyage."

Miller nodded placidly.

"Bed-rock is quite a way down yet," he smiled.

"Not if expenses are to mount as you advised me in your last letter," snapped the other. "Has anything been done?"

Miller shook his head slowly.

"Force is beyond us," he said, "for we don't possess it. Bribery is out of the question; there is no one left by the other side who has not had his price. Opportunity may be ours. We must await it."

"And waiting costs twenty pounds a week!"

The gray man turned his opened palm outwards with a deprecative motion which was not English at all.

"My dear Lord Landon, how can Opportunity be seized if there is no one to meet her when she appears?"

Landon gave a dissatisfied grunt.

"How many lacqueys have you set to wait on her?"

"Six," said Miller, succinctly. "Six men of action, who would have succeeded before now, but for an accident."

Landon's face took on the eager expression of a wolf to whom a distant taint is brought by the evening wind.

"Eh?" he cried. "There has been a chance, then; their defences are not impregnable?"

Miller shook his head.

"They have been strengthened since," he said diffidently. "But the weak spot in them is the child himself. He has never had, if you will pardon the remark, proper control. He is frankly disobedient of the precautions with which they surround him."

Landon grinned.

"There's my blood in him," he chuckled. "And, by God, I'm fond of the little toad, too. It's not only to spite her, Miller, or for the money that's in it. I never took the trouble to whop him; I believe he'd come to me of his own accord, if he had the chance."

"It's a large if," suggested Mr. Miller, politely.

Landon made no retort. His face had assumed a meditative mask; his lips were firmly pressed together; he had the effect of one who calculates pro against con.

"That's why I think it's time I took a hand," he said suddenly. "We'll knock off three of your six, Miller. I am prepared to be a host in myself."

For the moment the other said nothing. They had swung out of the Waterport Street and turned the sharp corner which brought them to the entrance of the hotel. He listened quietly as his companion demanded the number of the room engaged for him, received his letters, and entered the lift. He accompanied him silently. It was not till they were left alone that he pulled a pocket-book out, tranquilly turned the leaves, and consulted an entry.

"I note that I have had no remittance from you, Lord Landon," he announced, "since November."

"Six weeks ago," agreed Landon, languidly. "Six times twenty is a hundred and twenty. You reinforce my argument, my good Miller. A hundred and twenty pounds gone and you show me—nothing."

The other coughed a dry, perfunctory little cough.

"As far as I am concerned, the money is, as you say, gone," he allowed, "but you have just come by one hundred and sixty sovereigns owing to the complacence of these Southern gentlemen on board your boat. That puts us right and safeguards another fortnight."

Landon nodded and answered in a voice as dry as his own.

"That is a matter for discussion," he intimated. "I should like to hear these expenses justified to some appreciable extent. What was the chance which failed?"

"Though it failed," rejoined Miller, "it proved the advantage of constant vigilance. The child separated himself from his guardians in the very midst of the late afternoon traffic and got into the hands of one of our men. They reached the pier together; they were within an ace of success. Then Fate interfered—it must have been Fate," he interpolated with the ghost of a grin—"because her instrument was of your own house."

Landon came to a sudden halt in the opening of an envelope.

"What's that?" he cried quickly. "A relation of mine?"

"Captain John Aylmer, R.A., Assistant Secretary to the new Military Works Commission," answered Miller, sedately.

Landon swore. Then suddenly he began to laugh.

"It's quaint," he conceded. "It's damned quaint, Miller. And he did—what?"

Miller shrugged his shoulders.

"Interested himself in the situation, caused a delay which was fatal, for the moment, to our success. He cross-questioned the child and our man had to save himself, alone."

Landon laughed again.

"And he knew, this cousin of mine? He knew whose child it was?"

"Not then, but now, I imagine. He has met him since, at the Tent Club. He has also met your late father-in-law."

"What? The Kite—old Jacob—he's there?"

"Personally superintending a situation which gets daily more impenetrable, for us. Each fright we give them adds another palisade to the defence."

Landon took up the letters which he had laid down and went on opening and glancing through them. He pursed up his lips into an obstinately set expression; he assumed the air of a bargainer who has reached the limit of his purpose. For he fully understood the drift of Mr. Miller's remarks.

"We had better be plain with each other," he said at last. "My little expedition to the States has been a failure. As a matrimonial proposition I am, for the present, out of the running. They told me to come again in a year's time. Title-hunting American women have short memories, but some beastly reporter recognized me and ran two columns of reminiscences of the trial. That queered me, and after all the decree is not made absolute for another six months."

"Is this anticipatory of the announcement that those eight hundred dollars are the only support between you and bed-rock after all?"

"You jump at my meaning. I'm going to take over the duties of your six, or of some of them, at any rate."

The other's gray eyes reviewed his companion with a keenly calculating glance. There was no irritation in it, rather there was satisfaction. Mr. Miller did not present the aspect of a man whose chances of receiving a debt of one hundred and twenty pounds had been made doubtful. He had more the look of a bull speculator watching a tape as the eighths and sixteenths are added every few minutes to the stock which he commands.

"You will fail," he said drily. "Without funds you must fail. One poor man, in spite of the story books, can do nothing against a hundred and wealth."

"Possibly," said Landon. "But one may be permitted to try."

"No," said the other, stolidly. "One may not be permitted, in Tangier."

Landon looked up and for a moment silence hung heavily between the two men. The one who stood was the picture of heavy, imperturbable resolution. Landon, sitting back in his chair, was animate with energy, with a sort of tenseness which was almost magnetic. It was as if a panther faced a rhinoceros.

Then Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"Am I being threatened, my dear Miller?" he asked quietly.

"You are being informed," said the other. "The Syndicate which I represent is willing to finance you, for an adequate return. Without that it proposes to make Tangier an impossible residence for you."

Landon stared his surprise and his obvious relief.

"They are going to speculate in me?" He pondered for a moment. "I don't promise, or I haven't promised, that I shall allow old Jacob to buy the child back, if we get him, at all."

Miller nodded weightily.

"That does not matter to us," he announced. "That is as you like."

Landon's eyes were still wide and debating.

"Then your return comes—where?" he asked.

"We are willing to wait for it," said the other. "The first service we require from you is that you will renew your acquaintance with your cousin, Captain Aylmer, and endeavor to remove the distaste which I regret to think he feels for your company."

Landon bent forward, leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on his closed fists. He stared at his companion with a concentrated, dispassionate examination which seemed to probe and fathom through the depths of the other's impenetrability.

Miller met the scrutiny with no other manifestation than an, if possible, increase of apathy.

Landon dropped his hands slowly upon the table and gave his head a tiny shake.

"I don't understand you," he said. "Why has my cousin a distaste for my society? We have never been in collision. As a matter of fact, he was best man at my wedding."

"It is to be supposed that he read the account of your divorce," said the other, stolidly. "He has now made the acquaintance of your wife's relations."

"I see," said Landon, slowly. "Is that all?"

"Isn't it enough? Are you generally received?"

There was something callous, almost brutal, in the man's tone. The tiny spot of color which began to burn in Landon's sallow cheek was evidence that he recognized it.

"So," he answered, "I am to eat dirt at the hands of Captain John Aylmer? I am to appear to like it? Why?"

"Because," said Miller, dispassionately, "you are practically penniless. That is your side of the question. Our side is that your cousin happens to be what he is—Secretary to the Military Works Commission, who hold the immediate future of Gibraltar in their hands."

For the second time, and through a longer silence, the two stared at each other. As the fiery torch of comprehension burned brightly on Landon's face, rose to his forehead, seemed, indeed, to gleam in his eyes, his lips, which were at first grim and rigid, curled slowly into a sneer.

"By the Lord!" he swore. "By the Lord, Miller, you have an impudence!"

"I have a knowledge of values," said the other, impassively. "I wish to get my commission both ways. I expect it from you, because you get the job from no one else. I expect it from my employers, because you are practically the only tool at present, which they can use. I am perfectly open with you."

"As open as the Pit!" snarled Landon. "As candid as midnight! Let's have a taste of it plainly. What is it you want of me—robbery?"

Miller made a gesture of deprecation.

"I want you to—borrow—unknown to your cousin, certain books, the nature of which will be indicated to you in detail."

"And if I don't?"

"You must, at any rate, try."

"And if I won't?"

Miller smiled.

"We don't discuss absurdities."

There was nothing manifestly menacing in this, but there was a sense of finality. It reached Landon like a shaft of cold air blown in through the suddenly opened door. Mentally he flinched from it; he lifted his shoulders into a shrug of resignation.

"Where are his quarters?"

"In the South Town near my own cottage. For the moment that does not matter. You meet him to-morrow, by accident. You do not know, you see, that he is here?"

He consulted a small time-table.

"We should be on the quay about three-thirty to-morrow, when the steamer gets in from Tangier."

For the second time Landon expressed surrender with a passive shrug.

LANDON'S NEW PROFESSION

As Despard and Aylmer passed out of the dark of the Waterport into the sunlight of the square, two men, who walked in front of them, halted, shook hands, appeared to exchange an informal farewell, and separated. One, clad in gray flannels and a gray sombrero, turned to the left and began to mount the ramp behind the barracks. The other strolled slowly on.

The two soldiers fresh from their crossing of the straits from Africa were hailed and questioned more than once by comrades or friends who had not been fortunate enough to share in leave for the Tent Club meeting and were anxious for the last details of sport. How did pig run this time? Had such and such coverts been burned as was reported? What luck had they had personally? Despard and Aylmer had to halt half a dozen times within the first two furlongs. They began to regret that they had not taken a cab.

The man who strolled along in front of them halted, too, here and there. He did not appear to look round, but whenever acquaintances buttonholed the pair behind him it was noticeable that shop windows or Moorish curio sellers claimed his attention. He lingered, indeed, opposite a well-known book shop till his sudden resumption of his stroll brought him into collision with the others at the exact moment of their passing.

He started, muttered a perfunctory apology, and then made an exclamation.

"Jack!" he cried gladly, and held out his hand.

Aylmer met his cousin's glance, first with surprise, then with a sudden stiffening of his lips, finally with frowning. He gave a side glance at Despard.

The major's face was transfigured with wrath and loathing. He was looking at Landon as he might have looked at a poisonous reptile. He drew back a step of instinctive repulsion.

Landon gave a bitter little laugh. He still held out his hand defiantly.

"Isn't it fit to be shaken, Jack?" he asked. "Have I to thank the Galahad at your side for that?"

Despard's eyes grew grim and set. He turned to Aylmer and nodded coldly.

"See you later," he suggested, without another look in Landon's direction, and passed on his way with unhesitating strides. Venomously, malignantly, Landon watched him go.

"I don't wonder he won't face me!" he cried with well-simulated passion. "By God, I don't!"

He turned and stared at his cousin. Aylmer met his gaze coolly, unhesitatingly, and without a trace of relenting. For the second time Landon's bitter laugh escaped him.

"You've had his version?" he said. "Well, I don't altogether wonder at you in that case."

"I don't understand you," said Aylmer, quietly. "The public prints have made it quite evident that you're not fit for the society of decent men, if that is what you mean."

"No!" snarled Landon. "It isn't what I mean. What I mean is that that blackguard who's just left us, curse him! has won all round. He took my wife from me and now he's taken my reputation, my honor, and he's gone far to take every friend I have. But by the Lord who made me, Jack, I thought that you might be left with some sense of justice!"

"Justice?"

Aylmer's voice made an echo to Landon's. "Justice?" he repeated. "You got that, or less than that in most men's opinion, in the divorce court."

"I didn't!" said Landon, fiercely. "Ah, they made a pretty story of it! The blackguard who knocked his wife about, who thrashed his child, who took his wife's allowance and flung it under a dunghill of drink and devilry. That was me! Who gave evidence? The wife herself, who has since gone into a lunatic asylum. Servants who were bought with that old miser's gold. The man who wanted her—Despard!"

In spite of himself Aylmer gave an almost imperceptible quiver of surprise.

Landon laughed again.

"Does that touch you?" he cried. "He wouldn't tell you that. Not of how he schemed, and laid traps, and sunk pitfalls for me, to catch me, as I was caught. I'm no saint, Lord knows, but I've never sunk to that. I've had my game and paid my price, but, by God, I've never cheated!"

Aylmer's eyes still met his with level contempt.

"I know Despard, I've known him since boyhood," he answered. "He does not do these things."

Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"Of course! I'm down and you're all stamping me into the mud, lower and lower. You've all taken the accepted view, and when I cry out against it I'm told I've had my chance. So I did, but it was never a fair one."

"You have still six months in which to give your version to the King's Proctor if you have any new facts to support your statement," said Aylmer, coldly.

"Facts! How am I to get the benefit of facts when the other side can manufacture answers for them with a dollar for my every penny? I've supplied 'facts' to the King's Proctor till I'm sick of the sight of his office paper assuring me that he has 'no evidence to justify my contentions.' I can give facts enough. It's a hearing I want—an impartial hearing!"

Aylmer shook his head.

"You got it," he said doggedly. "You got it!"

Landon rapped his stick upon the pavement.

"I tell you I didn't!" he cried. "I tell you that I could tell you things that would prove to you—yes, prove—that the whole job was got up by that scoundrel who's just left us—got up by him to steal my wife from me. I ask you to hear me; I appeal to you to listen to my side; I appeal to your sense of justice!"

Aylmer turned up the street.

"If you think there is anything to be gained by it, say on!" he answered. "You can walk with me as far as my quarters."

"You won't ask me in?" sneered Landon. "That's more than I can expect."

"Some of the fellows might look in on me—decent fellows," explained Aylmer, drily.

Landon gave a little gasp, halted, and leaned suddenly against the wall. He looked up at his cousin. His lips worked, he stammered, he broke into a panting storm of sobs.

"I didn't deserve that! My God! I didn't deserve that!" he cried.

Aylmer looked down at him and a tiny thrill of compunction shot through him. He hesitated. He did not believe in Landon's protestations. He knew, in every instinct of his nature, that Landon was a scoundrel. But he began to remember that it had not always been so. Things that had brought them together as boys came back to him. His memory suddenly framed a picture of that wedding nine years ago. Landon had gone to meet his bride gallantly, adoringly, that day. He had loved her then. Yes, he could not have acted that, he had loved her then.

And Landon, watching narrowly his cousin's face, read the emotions as they chased each other across it as if they had been writ upon an open page. He hugged himself mentally.

"That's what knocks him!" he told himself triumphantly. "The abased ingenuous sinner! A little more of that and, Great Nicholas! I have him by the short hairs!"

He pulled himself together with a well-acted effort. He turned and drew back.

"You cur!" he cried. "You cur, to hit at a man who's down!"

Aylmer's tanned cheek showed through it a tiny flush. The dart had gone home.

"When you prove that an apology's due, I'll make it."

"In the street!" sneered Landon. "I'm to shout my wrongs, tell you all the intimate story of my provocation before the town. Thank you for nothing!"

Aylmer made a little movement of the hand which implied irritation.

"You can come to my quarters," he said, "but—"

"This evening?"

"No, this evening I'm dining out. You can come to my quarters. Until you give me reason to alter my opinion I don't introduce you to my friends. Is that understood?"

Landon stood silent for another instant before he answered slowly.

"Yes," he agreed. "You've read and been told enough to excuse you. Yes, I'll come. And in half an hour you'll be begging my pardon, or—"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Or what?" said Aylmer, quietly.

"Or I shall know you've made up your mind not to be convinced."

And then a sudden taciturnity overtook him. He marched along at his cousin's side, his eyes bent upon the pavement, his brows contracted. He had the appearance of one who considers deeply. John Aylmer made no attempt to resume conversation. He concluded that Landon was either piecing together a story out of unpromising material which would leave considerable gaps to be filled or, which was more likely, evolving one out of his vivid imagination. In either case he was content to leave the issue to be ascertained in the privacy of his quarters.

They gained them uninterrupted. Aylmer made a sign towards a chair. Landon, after an expressive glance towards the Tantalus on the sideboard, sat down. Aylmer did not take the hint; he was in no mood to offer hospitality to this man, even to the inconsiderable extent of a whisky and soda.

He looked at Landon.

"Well?" he demanded curtly.

Landon gave another look towards the sideboard.

"I've hinted once," he said, with a laugh which he tried to make genial and offhand. "This time I'll ask bluntly for it."

"For what?"

There was no encouragement in Aylmer's voice, and his eyes were hard and unrelenting.

"For a drink."

Aylmer shook his head.

"Suppose I hear your statement first," he suggested. "Then you can have a drink here, or elsewhere."

Landon rose to his feet with a dramatic jerk. He turned abruptly towards the door.

"That's enough, by God! that's enough!" he swore savagely. "I've taken your insolence once; I'll not take it again. I'm not fit to be offered a drink in your rooms; I'm to sit like some damned flunkey giving his character while you cross-examine me. I'll see you on the far side of Hell first."

He reached the door, halted, and stood with hand on it, looking round.

"You'll be sorry for this," he said. "I tell you that, when the truth of it comes to be known, as it'll be known some day, you'll be sorry for it."

Aylmer looked at him with a steady contemplation which showed no signs of clemency. Landon flung open the door and passed out.

"Cursed prig!" he snapped and descended the stairs into the street. Aylmer, with a slight shrug of the shoulders, turned towards his dressing-room.

Ten minutes later Landon was enjoying his drink in Mr. Miller's pleasantly furnished apartments. His host had supplied it this time without any demur—with alacrity. He watched his guest dispose of it and hastened to offer another. This, too, disappeared down Landon's throat and a third was placed solicitously at his elbow. Not till these arrangements had been completed did Mr. Miller smirch his hospitality with any hint of business. But though he differed from Aylmer in this, he imitated him in the directness of his pour-parlers. He, indeed, used the same monosyllable.

"Well?" he said inquiringly.

Landon nodded with much satisfaction.

"I got in," he said briefly. "I was only there two minutes, at a liberal computation, but I've found out and done all I required. He's dining out to-night. The books, as you expected, are in an ordinary bookcase, glass fronted, with an ordinary padlock on it. What fools these War Office experts are! There was a spare latch-key of his rooms hanging on a hook on the wall, for the servant, I suppose. I nicked it as I went out. I met the servant on the stairs—just as well, if I run across him to-night. There will be nothing rummy in my returning to see his master. I purposely dragged my coat against the passage whitewash, and after he offered to brush it for me I gave him half a crown. So he's all right; he thinks I'm a worthy gentleman who ought to be encouraged to call often. Is that all right?"

Mr. Miller smiled.

"You show such talents and attention to detail, my dear Lord Landon," he answered, "that I grieve that I am not the happy partner of such a colleague permanently."

Landon looked across at him with a grin.

"Seriously?" he demanded.

"Quite seriously," replied the impassive Mr. Miller.

Landon meditated.

"If there is good money in it—?" he mused slowly, but his host hastened to interrupt him energetically.

"Excellent money," he assured him, "and we have always a use for a lord."

Landon grinned again.

"Perhaps my value will increase after this evening," he suggested. "When do you purpose going?"

"Would half-past nine suit you?" said Miller, affably, and Landon nodded.

"Charmed, I'm sure," he grinned again, and tossed off his third glass with unction. "Here's luck!" he cried, and Mr. Miller, who used spirits sparingly, and in the afternoon not at all, was forced to include himself in the aspiration with the good fellowship which is implied in a courteous bow.

At half-past nine Aylmer's soldier servant found, as Landon had prophesied, nothing extraordinary in his master's guest's return. The glint of a second half crown shone persuasively in that guest's hand as he expressed his desire to write a note to await the master's coming. He was shown without any demur into the sitting-room, and supplied with pen and paper.

But Landon's talents were not wasted on literary composition when he was left alone. He produced a pair of pliers and dealt very drastically with the padlock on the bookcase, opened the glazed doors, and ran his fingers down the numbers engraved upon the morocco-bound volumes. He selected one, opened it, flipped the pages, and finally came to a halt, his finger-tip poised above a plan.

He closed the book and went to the window. He opened it noiselessly.

"Number 34 North Front. Elevation of gun platforms with angles to east and south," he enunciated very quietly but very distinctly into the night.

A grayness stirred in the shadow below the window. There was a whispered reply.

"Right!" answered Miller's voice laconically, and Landon poised the book in mid-air.

"Can you see it?" he asked, still below his breath. There was an affirmative grunt from below.

The book left Landon's hand and fell through the night. There was a faint shock as it reached the waiting grip in the darkness.

Landon quietly and methodically shut the window and turned to the desk. He leaned, pen in hand, over the note-paper.

There was the click of a latch-key. He swung round to confront his cousin.

For a second the two eyed each other in silence. Then Landon rose slowly to his feet.

"I came, forgetting that you were dining out," he said. "I came because I reasoned that by now ... you would be wanting ... to offer me an apology."

Aylmer looked at the desk. Landon followed the glance.

"I was going to explain—why?" he added, pointing at the unsullied note-paper.

And then Alymer's gaze, which had been concentrated on his cousin's face, slipped past it and found, by chance, the bookcase.

His brows met in a puzzled frown; he made a step forward; he bent to examine the fractured padlock. Then he straightened himself and gave an exclamation.

Landon was ready. He drew a revolver from his pocket; he held it by the muzzle. And the butt came down with business-like vigor on Aylmer's temple. He seemed to crumple up rather than fall. He slid against the bookcase to the floor.