Lord and Lady Deppingham, being first in the field, at once proceeded to settle themselves in the choicest rooms—a Henry the Sixth suite which looked out on the sea and the town as well. It is said that Wyckholme slept there twice, while Skaggs looked in perhaps half a dozen times—when he was lost in the building, and trying to find his way back to familiar haunts.

There was not a sign of a servant about the house or grounds. The men whom Bowles had engaged, carried the luggage to the rooms which Lady Deppingham selected, and then vanished as if into space. They escaped while the new tenants were gorging their astonished, bewildered eyes with the splendors of the apartment.

"We'll have to make the best of it," sighed Deppingham in response to his wife's lamentations. "I daresay, Antoine and the maids can get our things into some sort of shape, my dear. What say to a little stroll about the grounds while they are doing it? By Jove, it would be exciting if we were to find a ruby or two. Saunders says they are as common as strawberries in July."

Mr. Bowles, who had resumed his coat of red, joined them in the stroll about the gardens, pointing out objects of certain interest and telling the cost of each to the penny.

"I can't conduct you through the chateau," he apologised as they were returning after the short tour. "They can't close the bank until I set the balance sheet, sir, and it's now two hours past closing time. It doesn't matter, however, my lord," he added hastily, "we enjoy anything in the shape of a diversion."

"See here, Mr.—er—old chap, what are we to do about servants? We can't get on without them, you know."

"Oh, the horses are being well cared for in the valley, sir. You needn't worry a bit—"

"Horses! What we want, is to be cared for ourselves. Damn the horses," roared his lordship.

"They say these Americans are a wonderful people, my lord," ventured Mr. Bowles. "I daresay when Mr. and Mrs. Browne arrive, they'll have some way of—"

"Browne!" cried her ladyship. "This very evening I shall give orders concerning the rooms they are to occupy. And that reminds me: I must look the place over thoroughly before they arrive. I suppose, however, that the rooms we have taken are the best?"

"The choicest, my lady," said Bowles, bowing.

"See here, Mr.—er—old chap, don't you think you can induce the servants to come back to us? By Jove, I'll make it worth your while. The place surely must need cleaning up a bit. It's some months since the old—since Mr. Skaggs died." He always said "Skaggs" after a scornful pause and in a tone as disdainfully nasal as it was possible for him to produce.

"Not at all, my lord. The servants did not leave the place until your steamer was sighted this morning. It's as clean as a pin."

"This morning?"

"Yes, my lord. They would not desert the chateau until they were sure you were on board. They were extraordinarily faithful."

"I don't see it that way, leaving us like this. What's to become of the place? Can't I get an injunction, or whatever you call it?"

"What are we to do?" wailed Lady Agnes, sitting down suddenly upon the edge of a fountain.

"You see, my lady, they take the position that you have no right here," volunteered Bowles.

"How absurd! I am heir to every foot of this island—"

"They are very foolish about it I'm sure. They've got the ridiculous idea into their noddles that you can't be the heiress unless Lord Deppingham passes away inside of a year, and—"

"I'm damned if I do!" roared the perspiring obstacle. "I'm not so obliging as that, let me tell you. If it comes to that, what sort of an ass do they think I'd be to come away out here to pass away? London's good enough for any man to die in."

"You are not going to die, Deppy," said his wife consolingly. "Unless you starve to death," she supplemented with an expressive moue.

"I daresay you'll find a quantity of tinned meats and vegetables in the storehouse, my lady. You can't starve until the supply gives out. American tinned meats," vouchsafed Mr. Bowles with his best English grimace.

"Come along, Aggy," said her liege lord resignedly. "Let's have a look about the place."

Mr. Saunders met them at the grand entrance. He announced that four of the native servants had been found, dead drunk, in the wine cellar.

"They can't move, sir. We thought they were dead."

"Keep 'em in that condition, for the good Lord's sake," exclaimed Deppingham. "We'll make sure of four servants, even if we have to keep 'em drunk for six months."

"Good day, your lordship—my lady," said Bowles, edging away. "Perhaps I can intercede for you when their solicitor comes on. He's due to-morrow, I hear. It is possible that he may advise at least a score of the servants to return."

"Send him up to me as soon as he lands," commanded Deppingham calmly.

"Very good, sir," said Mr. Bowles.



CHAPTER VII

THE BROWNES ARRIVE

Contrary to all expectations, the Brownes arrived the next morning. The Deppinghams and their miserably frightened servants were scarcely out of bed when Saunders came in with the news that a steamer was standing off the shallow harbour. Bowles had telephoned up that the American claimant was on board.

Lady Agnes and her husband had not slept well. They heard noises from one end of the night to the other, and they were most unusual noises at that. The maids had flatly refused to sleep in the servants' wing, fully a block away, so they were given the next best suite of rooms on the floor, quite cutting off every chance the Brownes may have had for choice of apartments. Pong howled all night long, but his howls were as nothing compared to the screams of night birds in the trees close by.

The deepest gloom pervaded the household when Lady Deppingham discovered that not one of their retinue knew how to make coffee or broil bacon. Not that she cared for bacon, but that his lordship always asked for it when they did not have it. The evening before they had philosophically dined on tinned food. She brewed a delightful tea, and Antoine opened three or four kinds of wine. Altogether it was not so bad. But in the morning! Everything looked different in the morning. Everything always does, one way or another.

Bromley upset the last peg of endurance by hoping that the Americans were bringing a cook and a housemaid with them.

"The Americans always travel like lords," she concluded, forgetting that she served a lord, and not in the least intending to be ironical.

"That will do, Bromley," said her mistress sharply. "If they're like most Americans I've seen they'll have nothing but wet nurses and chauffeurs. I can't eat this vile stuff." She had already burned her fingers and dropped a slice of beechnut bacon on her sweet little morning gown. "Come on, Deppy; let's go up and watch the approach of the enemy."

Dolefully they passed out of the culinary realm; it is of record that they never looked into it from that hour forth. On the broad, vine-covered gallery they sat in dour silence and in silence took turns with Deppy's binoculars in the trying effort to make out what was going on in the offing. The company's tug seemed unusually active. It bustled about the big steamer with an industriousness that seemed almost frantic. The laziness that had marked its efforts of the day before was amazingly absent. At last they saw it turn for the shore, racing inward with a great churning of waves and a vast ado in its smokestack.

From their elevated position, the occupants of the gallery could see the distant pier. When the tug drew up to its moorings, the same motionless horde of white-robed natives lined up along the dock building. Trunks, boxes and huge crated objects were hustled off the boat with astonishing rapidity. Deppingham stared hard and unbelieving at this evidence of haste.

Five or six strangers stood upon the pier, very much as their party had stood the day before. There were four women and—yes, two men. The men seemed to be haranguing the natives, although no gesticulations were visible. Suddenly there was a rush for the trunks and boxes and crates, and, almost before the Lady Agnes could catch the breath she had lost, the whole troupe was hurrying up the narrow street, luggage and all. The once-sullen natives seemed to be fighting for the privilege of carrying something. A half dozen of them dashed hither and thither and returned with great umbrellas, which they hoisted above the heads of the newcomers. Lady Agnes sank back, faint with wonder, as the concourse lost itself among the houses of the agitated town.

Scarcely half an hour passed before the advance guard of the Browne company came into view at the park gates below. Deppingham recalled the fact that an hour and a half had been consumed in the accomplishment yesterday. He was keeping a sharp lookout for the magic red jacket and the Tommy Atkins lid. Quite secure from observation, he and his wife watched the forerunners with the hand bags; then came the sweating trunk bearers and then the crated objects in—what? Yes, by the Lord Harry, in the very carts that had been their private chariots the day before!

Deppingham's wrath did not really explode until the two were gazing open-mouthed upon Robert Browne and his wife and his maidservants and his ass—for that was the name which his lordship subsequently applied, with no moderation, to the unfortunate gentleman who served as Mr. Browne's attorney. The Americans were being swiftly, cozily carried to their new home in litters of oriental comfort and elegance, fanned vigorously from both sides by eager boys. First came the Brownes, eager-faced, bright-eyed, alert young people, far better looking than their new enemies could conscientiously admit under the circumstances; then the lawyer from the States; then a pert young lady in a pink shirt waist and a sailor hat; then two giggling, utterly un-English maids—and all of them lolling in luxurious ease. The red jacket was conspicuously absent.

It is not to be wondered at that his lordship looked at his wife, gulped in sympathy, and then said something memorable.

Almost before they could realise what had happened the newcomers were chattering in the spacious halls below, tramping about the rooms, and giving orders in high, though apparently efficacious voices. Trunks rattled about the place, barefooted natives shuffled up and down the corridors and across the galleries, quick American heels clattered on the marble stairways; and all this time the English occupants sat in cold silence, despising the earth and all that therein dwelt.

Mr. and Mrs. Browne evidently believed in the democratic first principles of their native land: they did not put themselves above their fellow-man. Close at their heels trooped the servants, all of whom took part in the discussion incident to fresh discoveries. At last they came upon the great balcony, pausing just outside the French windows to exclaim anew in their delight.

"Great!" said the lawyer man, after a full minute. He was not at all like Mr. Saunders, who looked on from an obscure window in the distant left. "Finest I've ever seen. Isn't it a picture, Browne?"

"Glorious," said young Mr. Browne, taking a long breath. The Deppinghams, sitting unobserved, saw that he was a tall, good-looking fellow. They were unconscionably amused when he suddenly reached out and took his wife's hand in his big fingers. Her face was flushed with excitement, her eyes were wide and sparkling. She was very trim and cool-looking in her white duck; moreover, she was of the type that looks exceedingly attractive in evening dress—at least, that was Deppingham's innermost reflection. It was not until after many weeks had passed, however, that Lady Agnes admitted that Brasilia Browne was a very pretty young woman.

"Most American women are, after a fashion," she then confessed to Deppingham, and not grudgingly.

"What does Baedeker say about it, Bobby?" asked Mrs. Browne. Her voice was very soft and full—the quiet, well-modulated Boston voice and manner.

"Baedeker?" whispered Deppingham, passing his hand over his brow in bewilderment. His wife was looking serenely in the opposite direction.

The pert girl in the pink waist opened a small portfolio while the others gathered around her. She read therefrom. The lawyer, when she had concluded, drew a compass from his pocket, and, walking over to the stone balustrade, set it down for observation. Then he pointed vaguely into what proved to be the southwest.

"We must tell Lady Deppingham not to take the rooms at this end," was the next thing that the listeners heard from Mrs. Browne's lips. Her ladyship turned upon her husband with a triumphant sniff and a knowing smile.

"What did I tell you?" she whispered. "I knew they'd want the best of everything. Isn't it lucky I pounced upon those rooms? They shan't turn us out. You won't let 'em, will you, Deppy?"

"The impudence of 'em!" was all that Deppy could sputter.

At that moment, the American party caught sight of the pair in the corner. For a brief space of time the two parties stared at each other, very much as the hunter and the hunted look when they come face to face without previous warning. Then a friendly, half-abashed smile lighted Browne's face. He came toward the Deppinghams, his straw hat in his hand. His lordship retained his seat and met the smile with a cold stare of superiority.

"I beg your pardon," said Browne. "This is Lord Deppingham?"

"Ya-as," drawled Deppy, with a look which was meant to convey the impression that he did not know who the deuce he was addressing.

"Permit me to introduce myself. I am Robert Browne."

"Oh," said Deppy, as if that did not convey anything to him. Then as an afterthought: "Glad to know you, I'm sure." Still he did not rise, nor did he extend his hand. For a moment young Browne waited, a dull red growing in his temples.

"Don't you intend to present me to Lady Deppingham?" he demanded bluntly, without taking his eyes from Deppy's face.

"Oh—er—is that necess—"

"Lady Deppingham," interrupted Browne, turning abruptly from the man in the chair and addressing the lady in azure blue who sat on the balustrade, "I am Robert Browne, the man you are expected to marry. Please don't be alarmed. You won't have to marry me. Our grandfathers did not observe much ceremony in mating us, so I don't see why we should stand upon it in trying to convince them of their error. We are here for the same purpose, I suspect. We can't be married to each other. That's out of the question. But we can live together as if we—"

"Good Lord!" roared Deppy, coming to his feet in a towering rage. Browne smiled apologetically and lifted his hand.

"—as if we were serving out the prescribed period of courtship set down in the will. Believe me, I am very happily married, as I hope you are. The courtship, you will perceive, is neither here nor there. Please bear with me, Lord Deppingham. It's the silly will that brings us together, not an affinity. Our every issue is identical, Lady Deppingham. Doesn't it strike you that we will be very foolish if we stand alone and against each other?"



"My solicitor—" began Lady Deppingham, and then stopped. She was smiling in spite of herself. This frank, breezy way of putting it had not offended her, after all, much to her surprise.

"Your solicitor and mine can get together and talk it over," said Browne blandly. "We'll leave it to them. I simply want you to know that I am not here for the purpose of living at swords' points with you. I am quite ready to be a friendly ally, not a foe."

"Let me understand you," began Deppingham, cooling off suddenly. "Do you mean to say that you are not going to fight us in this matter?"

"Not at all, your lordship," said Browne coolly. "I am here to fight Taswell Skaggs and John Wyckholme, deceased. I imagine, if you'll have a talk with your solicitor, that that is precisely what you are here for, too. As next nearest of kin, I think both of us will run no risk if we smash the will. If we don't smash it, the islanders will cheerfully take the legacy off our hands."

"By Jove," muttered Deppy, looking at his wife.

"Thank you, Mr. Browne, for being so frank with us," she said coolly. "If you don't mind, I will consult my solicitor." She bowed ever so slightly, indicating that the interview was at an end, and, moreover, that it had not been of her choosing.

"Any time, your ladyship," said Browne, also bowing. "I think Mrs. Browne wants to speak to you about the rooms."

"We are quite settled, Mr. Browne, and very well satisfied," she said pointedly, turning red with a fresh touch of anger.

"I trust you have not taken the rooms at this end."

"We have. We are occupying them." She arose and started away, Deppingham hesitating between his duty to her and the personal longing to pull Browne's nose.

"I'm sorry," said Browne. "We were warned not to take them. They are said to be unbearable when the hot winds come in October."

"What's that?" demanded Deppingham.

"The book of instruction and description which we have secured sets all that out," said the other. "Mr. Britt, my attorney, had his stenographer take it all down in Bombay. It's our private Baedeker, you see. We called on the Bombay agent for the Skaggs-Wyckholme Company. He lived with them in this house for ten months. No one ever slept in this end of the building. It's strange that the servants didn't warn you."

"The da—the confounded servants left us yesterday before we came—every mother's son of 'em. There isn't a servant on the place."

"What? You don't mean it?"

"Are you coming?" called Lady Deppingham from the doorway.

"At once, my dear," replied Deppingham, shuffling uneasily. "By Jove, we're in a pretty mess, don't you know. No servants, no food, no——"

"Wait a minute, please," interrupted Browne. "I say, Britt, come here a moment, will you? Lord Deppingham says the servants have struck."

The American lawyer, a chubby, red-faced man of forty, with clear grey eyes and a stubby mustache, whistled soulfully.

"What's the trouble? Cut their wages?" he asked.

"Wages? My good man, we've never laid eyes on 'em," said Deppingham, drawing himself up.

"I'll see what I can do, Mr. Browne. Got to have cooks, eh, Lord Deppingham?" Without waiting for an answer he dashed off. His lordship observing that his wife had disappeared, followed Browne to the balustrade, overlooking the upper terrace. The native carriers were leaving the grounds, when Britt's shrill whistle brought them to a standstill. No word of the ensuing conversation reached the ears of the two white men on the balcony, but the pantomime was most entertaining.

Britt's stocky figure advanced to the very heart of the group. It was quite evident that his opening sentences were listened to impassively. Then, all at once, the natives began to gesticulate furiously and to shake their heads. Whereupon Britt pounded the palm of his left hand with an emphatic right fist, occasionally pointing over his shoulder with a stubborn thumb. At last, the argument dwindled down to a force of two—Britt and a tall, sallow Mohammedan. For two minutes they harangued each other and then the native gave up in despair. The lawyer waved a triumphant hand to his friends and then climbed into one of the litters, to be borne off in the direction of the town.

"He'll have the servants back at work before two o'clock," said Browne calmly. Deppingham was transfixed with astonishment.

"How—how the devil do you—does he bring 'em to time like that?" he murmured. He afterward said that if he had had Saunders there at that humiliating moment he would have kicked him.

"They're afraid of the American battleship," said Browne.

"But where is the American battleship?" demanded Deppingham, looking wildly to sea.

"They understand that there will be one here in a day or two if we need it," said Browne with a sly grin. "That's the bluff we've worked." He looked around for his wife, and, finding that she had gone inside, politely waved his hand to the Englishman and followed.

At three o'clock, Britt returned with the recalcitrant servants—or at least the "pick" of them, as he termed the score he had chosen from the hundred or more. He seemed to have an Aladdin-like effect over the horde. It did not appear to depress him in the least that from among the personal effects of more than one peeped the ominous blade of a kris, or the clutch of a great revolver. He waved his hand and snapped his fingers and they herded into the servants' wing, from which in a twinkling they emerged ready to take up their old duties. They were not a liveried lot, but they were swift and capable.

Calmly taking Lord Deppingham and his following into his confidence, he said, in reply to their indignant remonstrances, later on in the day:

"I know that an American man-o'-war hasn't any right to fire upon British possessions, but you just keep quiet and let well enough alone. These fellows believe that the Americans can shoot straighter and with less pity than any other set of people on earth. If they ever find out the truth, we won't be able to control 'em a minute. It won't hurt you to let 'em believe that we can blow the Island off the map in half a day, and they won't believe you if you tell 'em anything to the contrary. They just simply know that I can send wireless messages and that a cruiser would be out there to-morrow if necessary, pegging away at these green hills with cannon balls so big that there wouldn't be anything left but the horizon in an hour or two. You let me do the talking. I've got 'em bluffed and I'll keep 'em that way. Look at that! See those fellows getting ready to wash the front windows? They don't need it, I'll confess, but it makes conversation in the servants' hall."

Over in the gorgeous west wing, Lord Deppingham later on tried to convince his sulky little wife that the Americans were an amazing lot, after all. Bromley tapped at the door.

"Tea is served in the hanging garden, my lady," she announced. Her mistress looked up in surprise, red-eyed and a bit dishevelled.

"The—the what?"

"It's a very pretty place just outside the rooms of the American lady and gentleman, my lady. It's on the shady side and quite under the shelf of the mountain. There's a very cool breeze all the time, they say, from the caverns."

Deppingham glanced at the sun-baked window ledges of their own rooms and swore softly.

"Ask some one to bring the tea things in here, Bromley," she said sternly, her piquant face as hard and set as it could possibly be—which, as a matter of fact, was not noticeably adamantine. "Besides, I want to give some orders. We must have system here, not Americanisms."

"Very well, my lady."

After she had retired Deppingham was so unwise as to run his finger around the inside of his collar and utter the lamentation:

"By Jove, Aggie, it is hot in these rooms." She transfixed him with a stare.

"I find it delightfully cool, George." She called him George only when it was impossible to call him just what she wanted to.

The tea things did not come in; in their stead came pretty Mrs. Browne. She stood in the doorway, a pleading sincere smile on her face.

"Won't you please join Mr. Browne and me in that dear little garden? It's so cool up there and it must be dreadfully warm here. Really, you should move at once into Mr. Wyckholme's old apartments across the court from ours. They are splendid. But, now do come and have tea with us."

Whether it was the English love of tea or the American girl's method of making it, I do not know, but I am able to record the fact that Lord and Lady Deppingham hesitated ever so briefly and—fell.

"Extraordinary, Browne," said Deppingham, half an hour later. "What wonders you chaps can perform."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Browne. "We only strive to land on our feet, that's all. Another cigarette, Lady Deppingham?"

"Thank you. They are delicious. Where do you get them, Mr. Browne?"

"From the housekeeper. Your grandfather brought them over from London. My grandfather stored them away."



CHAPTER VIII

THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S

It was quite forty-eight hours before the Deppinghams surrendered to the Brownes. They were obliged to humbly admit, in the seclusion of their own councils, that it was to the obnoxious but energetic Britt that they owed their present and ever-growing comfort.

It is said that Mr. Saunders learned more law of a useful and purposeful character during his first week of consultation with Britt than he could have dreamed that the statutes of England contained. Britt's brain was a whirlpool of suggestions, tricks, subterfuges and—yes, witticisms—that Saunders never even pretended to appreciate, although he was obliging enough to laugh at the right time quite as often as at the wrong. "He talks about what Dan Webster said, how Dan Voorhees could handle a jury, why Abe Lincoln and Andy Jackson were so—" Saunders would begin in a dazzled sort of way.

"Mr. Saunders, will you be good enough to ask Bromley to take Pong out for a walk?" her ladyship would interrupt languidly, and Saunders would descend to the requirements of his position.

Late in the afternoon of the day following the advent of the Brownes, Lord and Lady Deppingham were laboriously fanning themselves in the midst of their stifling Marie Antoinette elegance.

"By Jove, Aggie, it's too beastly hot here for words," growled he for the hundredth time. "I think we'd better move into your grandfather's rooms."

"Now, Deppy, don't let the Brownes talk you into everything they suggest," she complained, determined to be stubborn to the end. "They know entirely too much about the place already; please don't let them know you as intimately."

"That's all very good, my dear, but you know quite as well as I that we made a frightful mistake in choosing these rooms. It is cooler on that side of the house. I'm not too proud to be comfortable, don't you know. Have you had a look at your grandfather's rooms?"

She was silent for a long time, pondering. "No, I haven't, Deppy, but I don't mind going over there now with you—just for a look. We can do it without letting them see us, you know."

Just as they were ready to depart stealthily for the distant wing, a servant came up to their rooms with a note from Mrs. Browne. It was an invitation to join the Americans at dinner that evening in the grand banquet hall. Across the bottom of Mrs. Browne's formal little note, her husband had jauntily scrawled: "Just to see how small we'll feel in a ninety by seventy dining-room" Lady Deppingham flushed and her eyes glittered as she handed the note to her husband.

"Rubbish!" she exclaimed. Paying no heed to the wistful look in his eyes or to the appealing shuffle of his foot, she sent back a dignified little reply to the effect that "A previous engagement would prevent, etc." The polite lie made it necessary for them to venture forth at dinner time to eat their solitary meal of sardines and wafers in the grove below. The menu was limited to almost nothing because Deppy refused to fill his pockets with "tinned things and biscuit."

The next day they moved into the west wing, and that evening they had the Brownes to dine with them in the banquet hall. Deppingham awoke in the middle of the night with violent cramps in his stomach. He suffered in silence for a long time, but, the pain growing steadily worse, his stoicism gave way to alarm. A sudden thought broke in upon him, and with a shout that was almost a shriek he called for Antoine. The valet found him groaning and in a cold perspiration.

"Don't say a word to Lady Deppingham," he grunted, sitting up in bed and gazing wildly at the ceiling, "but I've been poisoned. The demmed servants—ouch!—don't you know! Might have known. Silly ass! See what I mean? Get something for me—quick!"

For two hours Antoine applied hot water bags and soothing syrups, and his master, far from dying as he continually prophesied, dropped off into a peaceful sleep.

The next morning Deppingham, fully convinced that the native servants had tried to poison him, inquired of his wife if she had felt the alarming symptoms. She confessed to a violent headache, but laid it to the champagne. Later on, the rather haggard victim approached Browne with subtle inquiries. Browne also had a headache, but said he wasn't surprised. Fifteen minutes later, Deppingham, taking the bit in his quivering mouth, unconditionally discharged the entire force of native servants. He was still in a cold perspiration when he sent Saunders to tell his wife what he had done and what a narrow escape all of them had had from the treacherous Moslems.

Of course, there was a great upheaval. Lady Agnes came tearing down to the servants' hall, followed directly by the Brownes and Mr. Britt. The natives were ready to depart, considerably nonplussed, but not a little relieved.

"Stop!" she cried. "Deppy, what are you doing? Discharging them after we've had such a time getting them? Are you crazy?"

"They're a pack of snakes—I mean sneaks. They're assassins. They tried to poison every one of us last—"

"Nonsense! You ate too much. Besides, what's the odds between being poisoned and being starved to death? Where is Mr. Britt?" She gave a sharp cry of relief as Britt came dashing down the corridor. "We must engage them all over again," she lamented, after explaining the situation. "Stand in the door, Deppy, and don't let them out until Mr. Britt has talked with them," she called to the disgraced nobleman.

"They won't stop for me," he muttered, looking at the half-dozen krises that were visible.

Britt smoothed the troubled waters with astonishing ease; the servants returned to their duties, but not without grumbling and no end of savage glances, all of which were levelled at the luckless Deppingham.

"By Jove, you'll see, sooner or later," he protested, like the schoolboy, almost ready to hope that the servants would bear him out by doling out ample quantities of strychnine that very night.

"Why poison?" demanded Britt. "They've got knives and guns, haven't they?"

"My dear man, that would put them to no end of trouble, cleaning up after us," said Deppingham, loftily.

The next day the horses were brought in from the valley, and the traps were put to immediate use. A half-dozen excursions were planned by the now friendly beneficiaries; life on the island, aside from certain legal restraints, began to take on the colour of a real holiday.

Two lawyers, each clever in his own way, were watching every move with the faithfulness of brooding hens. Both realised, of course, that the great fight would take place in England; they were simply active as outposts in the battle of wits. They posed amiably as common allies in the fight to keep the islanders from securing a single point of vantage during the year.

"If they hadn't been in such a hurry to get married," Britt would lament.

"Do you know, I don't believe a man should marry before he's thirty, a woman twenty-six," Saunders would observe in return.

"You're right, Saunders. I agree with you. I was married twice before I was thirty," reflected Britt on one occasion.

"Ah," sympathised Saunders. "You left a wife at home, then?"

"Two of 'em," said Britt, puffing dreamily. "But they are other men's wives now." Saunders was half an hour grasping the fact that Britt had been twice divorced.

Meanwhile, it may be well to depict the situation from the enemy's point of view—the enemy being the islanders as a unit. They were prepared to abide by the terms of the will so long as it remained clear to them that fair treatment came from the opposing interests. Rasula, the Aratat lawyer, in mass meeting, had discussed the document. They understood its requirements and its restrictions; they knew, by this time, that there was small chance of the original beneficiaries coming into the property under the provisions. Moreover, they knew that a bitter effort would be made to break this remarkable instrument in the English courts. Their attitude, in consequence, toward the grandchildren of their former lords was inimical, to say the least.

"We can afford to wait a year," Rasula had said in another mass meeting after the two months of suspense which preceded the discovery that grandchildren really existed. "There is the bare possibility that they may never marry each other," he added sententiously. Later came the news that marriage between the heirs was out of the question. Then the islanders laughed as they toiled. But they were not to be caught napping. Jacob von Blitz, the superintendent, stolid German that he was, saw far into the future. It was he who set the native lawyer unceremoniously aside and urged competent representation in London. The great law firm headed by Sir John Brodney was chosen; a wide-awake representative of the distinguished solicitors was now on his way to the island with the swarthy committee which had created so much interest in the metropolis during its brief stay.

Jacob von Blitz came to the island when he was twenty years old. That was twenty years before the death of Taswell Skaggs. He had worked in the South African diamond fields and had no difficulty in securing employment with Skaggs and Wyckholme. Those were the days when the two Englishmen slaved night and day in the mines; they needed white men to stand beside them, for they looked ahead and saw what the growing discontent among the islanders was sure to mean in the end.

Von Blitz gradually lifted labour and responsibility from their shoulders; he became a valued man, not alone because of his ability as an overseer, but on account of the influence he had gained over the natives. It was he who acted as intermediary at the time of the revolt, many years before the opening of this tale. Through him the two issues were pooled; the present co-operative plan was the result. For this he was promptly accepted by both sides as deserving of a share corresponding to that of each native. From that day, he cast his lot with the islanders; it was to him that they turned in every hour of difficulty.

Von Blitz was shrewd enough to see that the grandchildren were not coming to the island for the mere pleasure of sojourning there; their motive was plain. It was he who advised—even commanded—the horde of servants to desert the chateau. If they had been able to follow his advice, the new residents would have been without "help" to the end of their stay. The end of their stay, he figured, would not be many weeks from its beginning if they were compelled to dwell there without the luxury of servants. Bowles often related the story of Von Blitz's rage when he found that the recalcitrants had been persuaded to resume work by the American lawyer.

He lived, with his three wives, in the hills just above and south of the town itself. The Englishmen who worked in the bank, and the three Boer foremen also, had houses up there where it was cooler, but Von Blitz was the only one who practised polygamy. His wives were Persian women and handsome after the Persian fashion.

There were many Persian, Turkish and Arabian women on the island, wives of the more potential men. It was no secret that they had been purchased from avaricious masters on the mainland, in Bagdad and Damascus and the Persian gulf ports—sapphires passing in exchange. Marriages were performed by the local priests. There were no divorces. Perhaps there may have been a few more wife murders than necessary, but, if one assumes to call wife murder a crime, he must be reminded that the natives of Japat were fatalists. In contradiction to this belief, however, it is related that one night a wife took it upon herself to reverse the lever of destiny: she slew her husband. That, of course, was a phase of fatalism that was not to be tolerated. The populace burned her at a stake before morning.

One hot, dry afternoon about a week after the reopening of the chateau, the siesta of a swarthy population was disturbed by the shouts of those who kept impatient watch of the sea. Five minutes later the whole town of Aratat knew that the smoke of a steamer lay low on the horizon. No one doubted that it came from the stack of the boat that was bringing Rasula and the English solicitor. Joy turned to exultation when the word came down from Von Blitz that it was the long-looked-for steamship, the Sir Joshua.

Just before dusk the steamer, flying the British colours, hove to off the town of Aratat and signalled for the company's tug. There was no one in Aratat too old, too young or too ill to stay away from the pier and its vicinity. Bowles telephoned the news to the chateau, and the occupants, in no little excitement, had their tea served on the grand colonnade overlooking the town.

Von Blitz stood at the landing place to welcome Rasula and his comrades, and to be the first to clasp the hand of the man from London. For the first time in his life his stolidity gave way to something resembling exhilaration. He cast more than one meaning glance at the chateau, and those near by him heard him chuckle from time to time. The horde of natives seethed back and forth as the tug came running in; every eye was strained to catch the first glimpse of—Rasula? No! Of the man from Brodney's!

At last his figure could be made out on the forward deck. His straw hat was at least a head higher than the turban of Rasula, who was indicating to him the interesting spots in the hills.

"He's big," commented Von Blitz, comfortably, more to himself than to his neighbour. "And young," he added a few minutes later. Bowles, standing at his side, offered the single comment:

"Good-looking."

As the tall stranger stepped from the boat to the pier, Von Blitz suddenly started back, a look of wonder in his soggy eyes. Then, a thrill of satisfaction shot through his brain. He turned a look of triumph upon Britt, who had elbowed through the crowd a moment before and was standing close by.

The newcomer was an American!



CHAPTER IX

THE ENEMY

"I've sighted the Enemy," exclaimed Bobby Browne, coming up from Neptune's Pool—the largest of the fountains. His wife and Lady Deppingham were sitting in the cool retreat under the hanging garden. "Would you care to have a peek at him?"

"I should think so," said his wife, jumping to her feet. "He's been on the island three days, and we haven't had a glimpse of him. Come along, Lady Deppingham."

Lady Deppingham arose reluctantly, stifling a yawn.

"I'm so frightfully lazy, my dear," she sighed. "But," with a slight acceleration of speech, "anything in the shape of diversion is worth the effort, I'm sure. Where is he?"

They had come to call the new American lawyer "The Enemy." No one knew his name, or cared to know it, for that matter. Bowles, in answer to the telephone inquiries of Saunders, said that the new solicitor had taken temporary quarters above the bank and was in hourly consultation with Von Blitz, Rasula and others. Much of his time was spent at the mines. Later on, it was commonly reported, he was to take up his residence in Wyckholme's deserted bungalow, far up on the mountain side, in plain view from the chateau.

Life at the chateau had not been allowed to drag. The Deppinghams and the Brownes confessed in the privacy of their chambers that there was scant diplomacy in their "carryings-on," but without these indulgences the days and nights would have been intolerable.

The white servants had become good friends, despite the natural disdain that the trained English expert feels for the unpolished American domestic. Antipathies were overlooked in the eager strife for companionship; the fact that one of Mrs. Browne's maids was of Irish extraction and the other a rosy Swede may have had something to do with their admission into the exclusive set below stairs, but that is outside the question. If the Suffolk maids felt any hesitancy about accepting the hybrid combination as their equals, it was never manifested by word or deed. Even the astute Antoine, who had lived long in the boulevards of Paris, and who therefore knew an American when he saw one at any distance or at any price, evinced no uncertainty in proclaiming them Americans.

Miss Pelham, the stenographer from West Twenty-third Street, might have been included in the circle from the first had not her dignity stood in the way. For six days she held resolutely aloof from everything except her notebook and her machine, but her stock of novels beginning to run low, and the prospect of being bored to extinction for six months to come looming up before her, she concluded to wave the olive branch in the face of social ostracism, assuming a genial attitude of condescension, which was graciously overlooked by the others. As she afterward said, there is no telling how low she might have sunk, had it not entered her head one day to set her cap for the unsuspecting Mr. Saunders. She had learned, in the wisdom of her sex, that he was fancy free. Mr. Saunders, fully warned against the American typewriter girl as a class, having read the most shocking jokes at her expense in the comic papers, was rather shy at the outset, but Britt gallantly came to Miss Pelham's defence and ultimate rescue by emphatically assuring Saunders that she was a perfect lady, guaranteed to cause uneasiness to no man's wife.

"But I have no wife," quickly protested Saunders, turning a dull red.

"The devil!" exclaimed Britt, apparently much upset by the revelation.

But of this more anon.

* * * * *

Browne conducted the two young women across the drawbridge and to the sunlit edge of the terrace, where two servants awaited them with parasols.

"Isn't it extraordinary, the trouble one is willing to take for the merest glimpse of a man?" sighed Lady Agnes. "At home we try to avoid them."

"Indeed?" said pretty Mrs. Browne, with a slight touch of irony. It was the first sign of the gentle warfare which their wits were to wage.

"There he is! See him?" almost whispered Browne, as if the solitary, motionless figure at the foot of the avenue was likely to hear his voice and be frightened away.

The Enemy was sitting serenely on one of the broad iron benches just inside the gates to the park, his arms stretched out along the back, his legs extended and crossed. The great stone wall behind him afforded shelter from the broiling sun; satinwood trees lent an appearance of coolness that did not exist, if one were to judge by the absence of hat and the fact that his soft shirt was open at the throat. He was not more than two hundred yards away from the clump of trees which screened his watchers from view. If he caught an occasional glimpse of dainty blue and white fabrics, he made no demonstration of interest or acknowledgment. It was quite apparent that he was lazily surveying the chateau, puffing with consistent ease at the cigarette which drooped from his lips. His long figure was attired in light grey flannels; one could not see the stripe at that distance, yet one could not help feeling that it existed—a slim black stripe, if any one should have asked.

"Quite at home," murmured her ladyship, which was enough to show that she excused the intruder on the ground that he was an American.

"Mr. Britt was right," said Mrs. Browne irrelevantly. She was peering at the stranger through the binoculars. "He is very good-looking."

"And you from Boston, too," scoffed Lady Deppingham. Mrs. Browne flushed, and smiled deprecatingly.

"Wonder what he's doing here in the grounds?" puzzled Browne.

"It's plain to me that he is resting his audacious bones," said her ladyship, glancing brightly at her co-legatee. The latter's wife, in a sudden huff, deliberately left them, crossing the macadam driveway in plain view of the stranger.

"She's not above an affair with him," was her hot, inward lament. She was mightily relieved, however, when the others tranquilly followed her across the road, and took up a new position under the substitute clump of trees.

The Enemy gave no sign of interest in these proceedings. If he was conscious of being watched by these curious exiles, he was not in the least annoyed. He did not change his position of indolence, nor did he puff any more fretfully at his cigarette. Instead, his eyes were bent lazily upon the white avenue, his thoughts apparently far away from the view ahead. He came out of his lassitude long enough to roll and light a fresh cigarette and to don his wide madras helmet.

Suddenly he looked to the right and then arose with some show of alacrity. Three men were approaching by the path which led down from the far-away stables. Browne recognised the dark-skinned men as servants in the chateau—the major-domo, the chef, and the master of the stables.

"Lord Deppingham must have sent them down to pitch him over the wall," he said, with an excited grin.

"Impossible! My husband is hunting for sapphires in the ravine back of—" She did not complete the sentence.

The Enemy was greeting the statuesque natives with a friendliness that upset all calculations. It was evident that the meeting was prearranged. There was no attempt at secrecy; the conference, whatever its portent, had the merit of being quite above-board. In the end, the tall solicitor, lifting his helmet with a gesture so significant that it left no room for speculation, turned and sauntered through the broad gateway and out into the forest road. The three servants returned as they had come, by way of the bridle path along the wall.

"The nerve of him!" exclaimed Browne. "That graceful attention was meant for us."

"He is like the polite robber who first beats you to death and then says thank you for the purse," said Lady Deppingham. "What a strange proceeding, Mr. Browne. Can you imagine what it means?"

"Mischief of some sort, I'll be bound. I admire his nerve in holding the confab under our very noses. I'll have Britt interview those fellows at once. Our kitchen, our stable and our domestic discipline are threatened."

They hastened to the chateau, and regaled the resourceful Britt with the disquieting news.

"I'll have it out of 'em in a minute," he said confidently. "Where's Saunders? Where's Miss Pelham? Confound the girl, she's never around when I want her these days. Hay, you!" to a servant. "Send Miss Pelham to me. The one in pink, understand? Golden-haired one. Yes, yes, that's right: the one who jiggles her fingers. Tell her to hurry."

But Miss Pelham was off in the wood, self-charged with the arousing of Mr. Saunders; an hour passed before she could be found and brought into the light of Mr. Britt's reflections. If her pert nose was capable of elevating itself in silent disdain, Mr. Saunders was not able to emulate its example. He was not so dazzled by the sunshine of her sprightly recitals but that he could look sheep-faced in the afterglow of Britt's scorn.

Britt, with all his clever blustering, could elicit no information from the crafty head-servants. All they would say was that the strange sahib had intercepted them on their way to the town, to ask if there were any rooms to rent in the chateau.

"That's what he told you to say, isn't it?" demanded Britt angrily. "Confounded his impudence! Rooms to rent!"

That evening he dragged the reluctant Saunders into the privacy of the hanging garden, and deliberately interrupted the game of bridge which was going on. If Deppingham had any intention to resent the intrusion of the solicitors, he was forestalled by the startling announcement of Mr. Britt, who seldom stood on ceremony where duty was concerned.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Britt, calmly dropping into a chair near by, "this place is full of spies."

"Spies!" cried four voices in unison. Mr. Saunders nodded a plaintive apology.

"Yes, sir, every native servant here is a spy. That's what the Enemy was here for to-day. I've analysed the situation and I'm right. Ain't I, Mr. Saunders? Of course, I am. He came here to tell 'em what to do and how to report our affairs to him. See? Well, there you are. We've simply got to be careful what we do and say in their presence. Leave 'em to me. Just be careful, that's all."

"I don't intend to be watched by a band of sneaks—" began Lord Deppingham loftily.

"You can't help yourself," interrupted Britt.

"I'll discharge every demmed one of them, that's—"

"Leave 'em to me—leave 'em to me," exclaimed Britt impatiently. His lordship stiffened but could find no words for instant use. "Now let me tell you something. This lawyer of theirs is a smooth party. He's here to look out for their interests and they know it. It's not to their interest to assassinate you or to do any open dirty work. He is too clever for that. I've found out from Mr. Bowles just what the fellow has done since he landed, three days ago. He has gone over all of the company's accounts, in the office and at the mines, to see that we, as agents for the executors, haven't put up any job to mulct the natives out of their share of the profits. He has organised the whole population into a sort of constabulary to protect itself against any shrewd move we may contemplate. Moreover, he's getting the evidence of everybody to prove that Skaggs and Wyckholme were men of sound mind up to the hour of their death. He has the depositions of agents and dealers in Bombay, Aden, Suez and three or four European cities, all along that line. He goes over the day's business at the bank as often as we do as agents for the executors. He knows just how many rubies and sapphires were washed out yesterday, and how much they weigh. It's our business, as your agents, to scrape up everything as far back as we can go to prove that the old chaps were mentally off their base when they drew up that agreement and will. I think we've got a shade the best of it, even though the will looks good. The impulse that prompted it was a crazy one in the first place." He hesitated a moment and then went on carefully. "Of course, if we can prove that insanity has always run through the two families it—"

"Good Lord!" gasped Browne nervously.

"—it would be a great help. If we can show that you and Mrs.—er—Lady Deppingham have queer spells occasionally, it—"

"Not for all the islands in the world," cried Lady Deppingham. "The idea! Queer spells! See here, Mr. Britt, if I have any queer spells to speak of, I won't have them treated publicly. If Lord Deppingham can afford to overlook them, I daresay I can, also, even though it costs me the inheritance to do so. Please be good enough to leave me out of the insanity dodge, as you Americans call it."

"Madam, God alone provides that part of your inheritance—" began Britt insistently, fearing that he was losing fair ground.

"Then leave it for God to discover. I'll not be a party to it. It's utter nonsense," she cried scathingly.

"Rubbish!" asserted Mr. Saunders boldly.

"What?" exclaimed Britt, turning upon Saunders so abruptly that the little man jumped, and immediately began to readjust his necktie. "What's that? Look here; it's our only hope—the insanity dodge, I mean. They've got to show in an English court that Skaggs and—"

"Let them show what they please about Skaggs," interrupted Bobby Browne, "but, confound you, I can't have any one saying that I'm subject to fits or spells or whatever you choose to call 'em. I don't have 'em, but even if I did, I'd have 'em privately, not for the benefit of the public."

"Is it necessary to make my husband insane in order to establish the fact that his grandfather was not of sound mind?" queried pretty Mrs. Browne, with her calmest Boston inflection.

"It depends on your husband," said Britt coolly. "If he sticks at anything which may help us to break that will, he's certainly insane. That's all I've got to say about it."

"Well, I'm hanged if I'll pose as an insane man," roared Browne.

"Mr. Saunders hasn't asked me to be insane, have you, Mr. Saunders?" asked Lady Agnes in her sweetest, scorn.

"I don't apprehend—" began Saunders nervously.

"Saunders," said Britt, calculatingly and evenly, "next thing we'll have to begin hunting for insanity in your family. We haven't heard anything from you on this little point, Lord Deppingham."

"I don't know anything about Mr. Saunders's family," said Deppingham stiffly. Britt looked at him for a moment, puzzled and uncertain. Then he gave a short, hopeless laugh and said, under his breath:

"Holy smoke!"

He immediately altered the course of the discussion and harked back to his original declaration that spies abounded in the chateau. When he finally called the conference adjourned and prepared to depart, he calmly turned to the stenographer.

"Did you get all this down, Miss Pelham?"

"Yes, Mr. Britt."

"Good!" Then he went away, leaving the quartette unconsciously depressed by the emphasis he placed upon that single word.

The next day but one, it was announced that the Enemy had moved into the bungalow. Signs of activity about the rambling place could be made out from the hanging garden at the chateau. It was necessary, however, to employ the binoculars in the rather close watch that was kept by the interested aristocrats below. From time to time the grey, blue or white-clad figure of the Enemy could be seen directing the operations of the natives who were engaged in rehabilitating Wyckholme's "nest."

The chateau was now under the very eye of the Enemy.



CHAPTER X

THE AMERICAN BAR

"You're wanted at the 'phone, Mr. Britt," said Miss Pelham. It was late in the evening a day or two afterward. Britt went into the booth. He was not in there long, but when he came out he found that Miss Pelham had disappeared. The coincidence was significant; Mr. Saunders was also missing from his seat on the window-sill at the far end of the long corridor. Britt looked his disgust, and muttered something characteristic. Having no one near with whom he could communicate, he boldly set off for the hanging garden, where Deppingham had installed the long-idle roulette paraphernalia. The quartette were placing prospective rubies and sapphires on the board, using gun-wads in lieu of the real article.

Britt's stocky figure came down through the maze of halls, across the vine-covered bridge and into the midst of a transaction which involved perhaps a hundred thousand pounds in rubies.

"Say," he said, without ceremony, "the Enemy's in trouble. Bowles just telephoned. There's a lot of excitement in the town. I don't know what to make of it."

"Then why the devil are you breaking in here with it?" growled Deppingham, who was growing to hate Britt with an ardour that was unmanageable.

"This'll interest you, never fear. There's been a row between Von Blitz and the lawyer, and the lawyer has unmercifully threshed Von Blitz. Good Lord, I'd like to have seen it, wouldn't you, Browne? Say, he's all right, isn't he?"

"What was it all about?" demanded Browne. They, were now listening, all attention.

"It seems that Von Blitz is in the habit of licking his wives," said Britt. "Bowles was so excited he could hardly talk. It must have been awful if it could get Bowles really awake."

"Miraculous!" said Deppingham conclusively.

"Well, as I get it, the lawyer has concluded to advance the American idiosyncrasy known as reform. It's a habit with us, my lady. We'll try to reform heaven if enough of us get there to form a club. Von Blitz beats his Persian wives instead of his Persian rugs, therefore he needed reforming. Our friend, the Enemy, met him this evening, and told him that no white man could beat his wife, singular or plural, while he was around. Von Blitz is a big, ugly chap, and he naturally resented the interference with his divine might. He told the lawyer to go hang or something equivalent. The lawyer knocked him down. By George, I'd like to have seen it! From the way Bowles tells it, he must have knocked him down so incessantly in the next five minutes that Von Blitz's attempts to stand up were nothing short of a stutter. Moreover, he wouldn't let Von Blitz stab him worth a cent. Bowles says he's got Von Blitz cowed, and the whole town is walking in circles, it's so dizzy. Von Blitz's wives threaten to kill the lawyer, but I guess they won't. Bowles says that all the Persian and Turkish women on the island are crazy about the fellow."

"Mr. Britt!" protested Mrs. Browne.

"Beg pardon. Perhaps Bowles is wrong. Well, to make it short, the lawyer has got Von Blitz to hating him secretly, and the German has a lot of influence over the people. It may be uncomfortable for our good-looking friend. If he didn't seem so well able to look out for himself, I'd feel mighty uneasy about him. After all, he's a white man and a good fellow, I imagine."

"If he should be in great danger down there," said her ladyship firmly—perhaps consciously—"we must offer him a safe retreat in the chateau." The others looked at her in surprise. "We can't stand off and see him murdered, you know," she qualified hastily.

The next morning a messenger came up from the town with a letter directed to Messrs. Britt and Saunders. It was from the Enemy, and requested them to meet him in private conference at four that afternoon. "I think it will be for the benefit of all concerned if we can get together," wrote the Enemy in conclusion.

"He's weakening," mused Britt, experiencing a sense of disappointment over his countryman's fallibility. "My word for it, Saunders, he's going to propose an armistice of some sort. He can't keep up the bluff."

"Shocking bad form, writing to us like this," said Saunders reflectively. "As if we'd go into any agreement with the fellow. I'm sure Lady Deppingham wouldn't consider it for a moment."

The messenger carried back with him a dignified response in which the counsellors for Mr. Browne and Lady Deppingham respectfully declined to engage in any conference at this time.

At two o'clock that afternoon the entire force of native servants picked up their belongings, and marched out of the chateau. Britt stormed and threatened, but the inscrutable Mohammedans shook their heads and hastened toward the gates. Despair reigned in the chateau; tears and lamentations were no more effective than blasphemy. The major-domo, suave and deferential, gravely informed Mr. Britt that they were leaving at the instigation of their legal adviser, who had but that hour issued his instructions.

"I hope you are not forgetting what I said about the American gunboats," said Britt ponderously.

"Ah," said Baillo, with a cunning smile, "our man is also a great American. He can command the gunboats, too, sahib. We have told him that you have the great power. He shows us that he can call upon the English ships as well, for he comes last from London. He can have both, while you have only one. Besides, he says you cannot send a message in the air, without the wire, unless he give permission. He have a little machine that catch all the lightning in the air and hold it till he reads the message. Our man is a great man—next to Mohammed."

Britt passed his hand over his brow, staggered by these statements. Gnawing at his stubby mustache, he was compelled to stand by helplessly, while they crowded through the gates like a pack of hounds at the call of the master. The deserters were gone; the deserted stood staring after them with wonder in their eyes. Suddenly Britt laughed and clapped Deppingham on the back.

"Say, he's smoother than I thought. Most men would have been damned fools enough to say that it was all poppy-cock about me sending wireless messages and calling out navies; but not he! And that machine for tapping the air! Say, we'd better go slow with that fellow. If you say so, I'll call him up and tell him we'll agree to his little old conference. What say to that, Browne? And you, Deppy? Think we—"

"See here," roared Deppingham, red as a lobster, "I won't have you calling me Deppy, confound your—"

"I'll take it all back, my lord. Slip of the tongue. Please overlook it. But, say, shall I call him up on the 'phone and head off the strike?"

"Anything, Mr. Britt, to get back our servants," said Lady Deppingham, who had come up with Mrs. Browne.

"I was just beginning to learn their names and to understand their English," lamented Mrs. Browne.

When Britt reappeared after a brief stay in the telephone booth he was perspiring freely, and his face was redder, if possible, than ever before.

"What did he say?" demanded Mrs. Browne, consumed by curiosity. Britt fanned himself for a moment before answering.

"He was very peremptory at first and very agreeable in the end, Mrs. Browne. I said we'd come down at four-thirty. He asked me to bring some cigarettes. Say, he's a strenuous chap. He wouldn't haggle for a second."

Britt and Saunders found the Enemy waiting for them under the awning in front of the bank. He was sitting in a long canvas lounging chair, his feet stretched out, his hands clasped behind his head. There was a far-away, discontented look in his eyes. A native was fanning him industriously from behind. There was no uncertainty in their judgment of him; he looked a man from the top of his head to the tips of his canvas shoes.

Every line of his long body indicated power, vitality, health. His lean, masterful face, with its clear grey eyes (the suspicion of a sardonic smile in their depths), struck them at once as that of a man who could and would do things in the very teeth of the dogs of war.

He arose quickly as they came under the awning. A frank, even joyous, smile now lighted his face, a smile that meant more than either of them could have suspected. It was the smile of one who had almost forgotten what it meant to have the companionship of his fellow-man. Both men were surprised by the eager, sincere manner in which he greeted them. He clasped their hands in a grip that belied his terse, uncompromising manner at the telephone; his eyes were not those of the domineering individual whom conjecture had appraised so vividly a short time before.

"Glad to see you, gentlemen," he said. He was a head taller than either, coatless and hatless, a lean but brawny figure in white crash trousers. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, displaying hard, sinewy forearms, browned by the sun and wind. "It's very good of you to come down. I'm sure we won't have to call out the British or American gunboats to preserve order in our midst. I know something a great deal better than gunboats. If you'll come to my shack down the street, I'll mix you a real American cocktail, a mint julep, a brandy smash or anything you like in season. There's a fine mint bed up my way, just back of the bungalow. It's more precious than a ruby mine, let me tell you. And yet, I'll exchange three hundred carats of mint, Mr. Britt, for a dozen boxes of your Egyptian deities."

Then as they sauntered off into a narrow side street: "Do you know, gentlemen, I made the greatest mistake of my life in failing to bring a ton of these little white sticks out with me? I thought of Gordon gin, both kinds of vermouth, brandy, and all that sort of thing, and completely forgot the staff of life. I happened to know that you have a million packages of them, more or less, up at the chateau. My spies told me. I daresay you know that I have spies up there all the time? Don't pay any attention to them. You're at liberty to set spies on my trail at any time. Here we are. This is the headquarters for the Mine-owners' Association of Japat."

He led them down a flight of steps and into a long, cool-looking room some distance below the level of the street. Narrow windows near the ceiling let in the light of day and yet kept out much of the oppressive heat. A huge ice chest stood at one end of the room. At the other end was his desk; a couch, two chairs, and a small deal table were the only other articles of furniture. The floor was covered with rugs; the walls were hung with ancient weapons of offence and defence.

"The Mine-owners' Association, gentlemen, comprises the entire population of Japat. Here is where I receive my clients; here is where they receive their daily loaf, if you will pardon the simile. I sit in the chairs; they squat on the rugs. We talk about rubies and sapphires as if they were peanuts. Occasionally we talk about our neighbours. Shall I make three mint juleps? Here, Selim! The ice, the mint and the straws—and the bottles. Sit down, gentlemen. This is the American bar that Baedeker tells you about—the one you've searched all over Europe for, I daresay."

"Reminds me of home, just a little bit," said Britt, as the tall glasses were set before them. The Englishman was still clothed in reticence. His slim, pinched body seemed more drawn up than ever before; the part in his thatch of straw-coloured hair was as straight and undeviating as if it had been laid by rule; his eyes were set and uncompromising. Mr. Saunders was determined that the two Americans should not draw him into a trap; after what he had seen of their methods, and their amazing similarity of operation, he was quite prepared to suspect collusion. "They shan't catch me napping," was the sober reflection of Thomas Saunders.

The Enemy planted the mint in its bed of chipped ice. "The sagacity that Taswell Skaggs displayed in erecting an ice plant and cold storage house here is equalled only by John Wyckholme's foresightedness in maintaining a contemporaneous mint bed. I imagine that you, gentlemen, are hoping to prove the old codgers insane. Between the three of us, and man to man, how can you have the heart to propose anything so unkind when we look, as we now do, upon the result of their extreme soundness of mind? Here's how?"

Selim passed the straws and the three men took a long and simultaneous "pull" at the refreshing julep. Mr. Saunders felt something melt as he drew the subsequent long and satisfying breath. It was the outer rim of his cautious reserve.

"I think we'll take you up on that proposition to trade mint for cigarettes," said Mr. Britt. "Mr. Browne, my client, for one, will sanction the deal. How about your client, Saunders?"

Saunders raised his eyes, but did not at once reply, for the very significant reason that he had just begun a second "pull" at his straw.

"I can't say as to Lady Deppingham," he responded, after touching his lips three or four times with his handkerchief, "but I'm quite sure his lordship will make no objection."

"Then we'll consider the deal closed. I'll send one of my boys over to-morrow with a bunch of mint. Telephone up to the bungalow when you need more. By the way," dropping into a curiously reflective air, "may I ask why Lady Deppingham is permitted to ride alone through the unfrequented and perilous parts of the island?" The question was directed to her solicitor, who stared hard for a moment before replying.

"Perilous? What do you mean?"

"Just this, Mr. Saunders," said the Enemy, leaning forward earnestly. "I'm not responsible for the acts of these islanders. You'll admit that there is some justification in their contention that the island and its treasures may be snatched away from them, by some hook or crook. Well, there are men among them who would not hesitate to dispose of one or both of the heirs if they could do it without danger to their interests. What could be more simple, Mr. Saunders, than the death of Lady Deppingham if her horse should stumble and precipitate her to the bottom of one of those deep ravines? She wouldn't be alive to tell how it really happened and there would be no other witnesses. She's much too young and beautiful to come to that sort of an end."

"My word!" was all that Saunders could say, forgetting his julep in contemplation of the catastrophe.

"He's right," said Britt promptly. "I'll keep my own client on the straight and public path. He's liable to tip over, too."

"Deuce take your Browne," said Saunders with mild asperity. "He never rides alone."

"I've noticed that," said the Enemy coolly. "He's usually with Lady Deppingham. It's lucky that Japat is free from gossips, gentlemen."

"Oh, I say," said Saunders, "none of that talk, you know."

"Don't lose your temper, Saunders," remonstrated Britt. "Browne's worth two of Deppingham."

"Gentlemen," said the Enemy, "please remember that we are not to discuss the habits of our clients. To change the subject, Britt, that was a—Oh, Selim, please step over to the bank and ask what time it is." As Selim departed, the Enemy remarked: "It won't do for him to hear too much. As I was saying, that was a clever bluff of yours—I mean the gunboat goblin. I have enlarged upon your story somewhat. You——-"

"Yes," said Britt, "you've added quite a bit to it."

"It's a sort of two-story affair now, don't you know," said Saunders, feeling the effect of the drink. They all laughed heartily, two, at least, in some surprise. Saunders never let an opportunity escape to repeat the joke to his friends in after life; in fact, he made the opportunity more often than not.

"There's another thing I want to speak of," said the Enemy, arising to prepare the second round of juleps. "I hope you won't take my suggestions amiss. They're intended for the peace and security of the island, nothing else. Of course, I could sit back and say nothing, thereby letting your clients cut off their own noses, but it's hardly fair among white people. Besides, it can have nothing to do with the legal side of the situation. Well, here it is: I hear that your clients and their partners for life are in the habit of gambling like fury up there."

"Gambling?" said Britt. "What rot!"

"The servants say that they play Bridge every night for vast piles of rubies, and turn the wheel daily for sapphires uncountable. Oh, I get it straight."

"Why, man, it's all a joke. They use gun wads and simply play that they are rubies."

"My word," said Saunders, "there isn't a ruby or sapphire in the party."

"That's all right," said the Enemy, standing before them with a bunch of mint in one hand and the bowl of ice in the other. They could not but see that his face was serious. "We know it's all right, but the servants don't. How do they know that the stakes are not what they're said to be? It may be a joke, but the people think you are playing for real stones, using gun wads as they've seen poker chips used. I've heard that as much as L50,000 in precious gems change hands in a night. Well, the situation is obvious. Every man in Japat thinks that your people are gambling with jewels that belong to the corporation. They think there's something crooked, d'ye see? My advice to you is: Stop that sort of joking. It's not a joke to the islanders, as you may find out to your sorrow. Take the tip from me, gentlemen. Let 'em play for pins or peppermint drops, but not for rubies red. Here's your julep, Mr. Saunders. Fresh straw?"

"By Jove," said Saunders, taking a straw, and at the same time staring in open-mouthed wonder at the tall host; "you appal me! It's most extraordinary. But I see your point clearly, quite clearly. Do you, Britt?"

"Certainly," said Britt with a look of disdain. "I told 'em to lower the limit long ago."

"This is all offered in a kindly spirit, you understand," said the magnanimous Enemy. "We might as well live comfortably as to die unseasonably here. Another little suggestion, Mr. Saunders. Please tell Lord Deppingham that if he persists in snooping about the ravines in search of rubies, he'll get an unmanageable bullet in the back of his head some day soon. He's being watched all the time. The natives resent his actions, foolish as they may seem to us. This is not child's play. He has no right to a single ruby, even if he should see one and know what it was. Just tell him that, please, Mr. Saunders."

"I shall, confound him," exploded Saunders, smiting the table mightily. "He's too damned uppish anyhow. He needs taking down—"

"Ah, Selim," interrupted the Enemy, as the native boy entered, "no mail, eh?"

"No, excellency, the ship is not due to arrive for two weeks."

"Ah, but, Selim, you forget that I am expecting a letter from Von Blitz's wives. They promised to let me know how soon he is able to resume work at the mines."

"I hear you polished him off neatly," said Britt, with a grin.

"Just the rough edges, Mr. Britt. He is now a gem of purest ray serene. By the way, I hope you'll not take my mild suggestions amiss."

"There's nothing I object to except your power to call strikes among our servants. That seems to me to be rather high-handed," said Britt good-naturedly.

"No doubt you're right," agreed the other, "but you must remember that I needed the cigarettes."

"My word!" muttered Saunders admiringly.

"Look here, old man," said Britt, his cheeks glowing, "it's mighty good of you to take this trouble for——"

"Don't mention it. I'd only ask in return that we three be a little more sociable hereafter. We're not here to cut each other's throats, you know, and we've got a deadly half year ahead of us. What say?"

For answer the two lawyers arose and shook hands with the excellent Enemy. When they started for the chateau at seven o'clock, each with six mint juleps about his person, they were too mellow for analysis. The Enemy, who had drunk but little, took an arm of each and piloted them sturdily through the town.

"I'd walk up to the chateau if I were you," he said, when they clamoured for a jinriksha apiece. "It will help pass away the time."

"By Jove," said Saunders, hunting for the Enemy's hand. "I'm going to 'nform L-Lord Deppingham that he's 'nsufferable ass an'—an' I don't care who knows it."

"Saunders," said Britt, with rare dignity, "take your hand out of my pocket."



CHAPTER XI

THE SLOUGH OF TRANQUILLITY

Three months stole by with tantalising slowness. How the strangers on the island of Japat employed those dull, simmering, idle weeks it would not be difficult to relate. There was little or no incident to break the monotony of their enforced residence among the surly Japatites; the same routine obtained from day to day. Sultry, changeless, machine-like were those hundred days and nights. They looked forward with hopeful, tired eyes; never backward. There was nothing behind them but a dour waste, a bog through which they had driven themselves with a lash of resolution.

Autumn passed on into winter without a change of expression in the benign face of nature. Christmas day was as hot as if it had come in midsummer; the natives were as naked, the trees as fully clad. The curious sun closed his great eye for a few hours in the twenty-four; the remainder of the time he glared down upon his victims with a malevolence that knew no bounds. Soft, sweet winds came with the typhoon season, else the poor whites must have shrivelled and died while nature revelled. Rain fell often in fitful little bursts of joyousness, but the hungry earth sipped its moisture through a million greedy lips, eager to thwart the mischievous sun. Through it all, the chateau gleamed red and purple and gray against the green mountainside, baked where the sun could meet its face, cool where the caverns blew upon it with their rich, damp breath.

The six months were passing away, however, in spite of themselves; ten weeks were left before the worn, but determined heirs could cast off their bonds and rush away to other climes. It mattered little whether they went away rich or poor; they were to go! Go! That was the richest thing the future held out to them—more precious than the wealth for which they stayed. Whatever was being done for them in London and Boston, it was no recompense for the weariness of heart and soul that they had found in the green island of Japat.

True, they rode and played and swam and romped without restraint, but beneath all of their abandon there lurked the ever-present pathos of the jail, the asylum, the detention ward. The blue sky seemed streaked with the bars of their prison; the green earth clanked as with the sombre tread of feet crossing flagstones.

Not until the end of January was there a sign of revolt against the ever-growing, insidious condition of melancholy. As they turned into the last third of their exile, they found heart to rejoice in the thought that release was coming nearer and nearer. The end of March! Eight weeks off! Soon there would be but seven weeks—then six!

And, all this time, the islanders toiled as they had toiled for years; they reckoned in years, while the strangers cast up Time's account in weeks and called them years. Each day the brown men worked in the mines, piling gems into the vaults with a resoluteness that never faltered. They were the sons of Martha. The rubies of Mandalay and Mogok were rivalled by the takings of these indifferent stockholders in the great Japat corporation. Nothing short of a ruby as large as the Tibet gem could have startled them out of their state of taciturnity. Gems weighing ten and fifteen carats already had been taken from the "byon" in the wash, and yet inspired no exaltation. Sapphires, nestling in the soft ground near their carmine sisters, were rolling into the coffers of the company, but they were treated as so many pebbles in this ceaseless search.

The tiniest child knew that the ruby would not lose its colour by fire, while the blue of the sapphire would vanish forever if subjected to heat. All these things and many more the white strangers learned; they were surfeited with a knowledge that tired and bored them.

From London came disquieting news for all sides to the controversy. The struggle promised to be drawn out for years, perhaps; the executors would probably be compelled to turn over the affairs of the corporation to agents of the Crown; in the meantime a battle royal, long drawn out, would undoubtedly be fought for the vast unentailed estate left behind by the two legators.

The lonely legatees, marooned in the far South Sea, began to realise that even after they had spent their six months of probation, they would still have months, even years, of waiting before they could touch the fortune they laid claim to. The islanders also were vaguely awake to the fact that everything might be tied up for years, despite the provisions of the will; a restless, stubborn feeling of alarm spread among them. This feeling gradually developed itself into bitter resentment; hatred for the people who were causing this delay was growing deeper and fiercer with each succeeding day of toil.

Their counsellor, the complacent Enemy, was in no sense immune to the blandishments of the climate. His tremendous vitality waned; he slowly drifted into the current with his fellows, although not beside them. For some unaccountable reason, he held himself aloof from the men and women that his charges were fighting. He met the two lawyers often, but nothing passed between them that could have been regarded as the slightest breach of trust. He lived like a rajah in his shady bungalow, surrounded by the luxuries of one to whom all things are brought indivisible. If he had any longing for the society of women of his own race and kind, he carefully concealed it; his indifference to the subtle though unmistakable appeals of the two gentlewomen in the chateau was irritating in the extreme. When he deliberately, though politely, declined their invitation to tea one afternoon, their humiliation knew no bounds. They had, after weeks of procrastination, surrendered to the inevitable. It was when they could no longer stand out against the common enemy—Tranquillity! Lord Deppingham and Bobby Browne suffered in silence; they even looked longingly toward the bungalow for the relief that it contained and refused to extend.

Lady Deppingham and Mrs. Browne should not be misunderstood by the reader. They loved their husbands—I am quite sure of that; but they were tired of seeing no one else, tired of talking to no one else. Moreover, in support of this one-sided assertion, they experienced from time to time the most melancholy attacks of jealousy. The drag of time hung so heavily upon them that any struggle to cast it off was immediately noticeable. If Mrs. Browne, in plain despair, went off for a day's ride with Lord Deppingham, that gentleman's wife was sick with jealousy. If Lady Agnes strolled in the moonlit gardens with Mr. Browne, the former Miss Bate of Boston could scarcely control her emotions. They shed many tears of anguish over the faithlessness of husbands; tears of hatred over the viciousness of temptresses. Their quarrels were fierce, their upbraidings characteristic, but in the end they cried and kissed and "made up"; they actually found some joy in creating these little feuds and certainly there was great exhilaration in ending them.

They did not know, of course, that the wily Britt, despite his own depression, was all the while accumulating the most astounding lot of evidence to show that a decided streak of insanity existed in the two heirs. He won Saunders over to his way of thinking, and that faithful agent unconsciously found himself constantly on the watch for "signs," jotting them down in his memorandum book. Britt was firm in his purpose to make them out as "mad as March hares" if needs be; he slyly patted his typewritten "manifestations" and said that it would be easy sailing, so far as he was concerned. One choice bit of evidence he secured in a most canny manner. He was present when Miss Pelham, at the bank, was "taking" a dictation for the Enemy—some matter pertaining to the output of the mines. Lady Deppingham had just been guilty of a most astounding piece of foolhardiness, and he was discussing it with the Enemy. She had forced her horse to leap across a narrow fissure in the volcano the day before. Falling, she would have gone to her death three hundred feet below.

"She must be an out and out lunatic," the Enemy had said. Britt looked quickly at Miss Pelham and Mr. Bowles. The former took down the statement in shorthand and Bowles was afterward required to sign "his deposition." Such a statement as that, coming from the source it did, would be of inestimable value in Court.

"If they could only be married in some way," was Britt's private lament to Saunders, from time to time, when despair overcame confidence.

"I've got a ripping idea," Saunders said one day.

"Let's have it. You've always got 'em. Why not divide with me?"

"Can't do it just yet. I've been looking up a little matter. I'll spring it soon."

"How long have you been working on the idea?"

"Nearly four months," said Saunders, yawning.

"'Gad, this climate is enervating," was Britt's caustic comment.

Saunders was heels over head in love with Miss Pelham at this time, so it is not surprising that he had some sort of an idea about marriage, no matter whom it concerned.

Night after night, the Deppinghams and Brownes gave dinners, balls, musicales, "Bridges," masques and theatre suppers at the chateau. First one would invite the other to a great ball, then the other would respond by giving a sumptuous dinner. Their dinners were served with as much punctiliousness as if the lordliest guests were present; their dancing parties, while somewhat barren of guests, were never dull for longer than ten minutes after they opened. Each lady danced twice and then pleaded a headache. Whereupon the "function" came to a close.

For a while, the two hostesses were not in a position to ask any one outside their immediate families to these functions, but one day Mrs. Browne was seized by an inspiration. She announced that she was going to send regular invitations to all of her friends at home.

"Regular written invitations, with five-cent stamps, my dear," she explained enthusiastically. "Just like this: 'Mrs. Robert Browne requests the pleasure of Miss So-and-so's company at dinner on the 17th of Whatever-it-is. Please reply by return steamer.' Won't it be fun? Bobby, please send down to the bank for the stamps. I'm going to make out a list."

After that it was no unusual thing to see large packages of carefully stamped envelopes going to sea in the ships that came for the mail.

"And I'd like so much to meet these native Americans that you are asking," said Lady Agnes sweetly, and without malice. "I've always wondered if the first families over there show any trace of their wonderful, picturesque Indian blood."

"Our first families came from England, Lady Deppingham," said Drusilla, biting her lips.

"Indeed? From what part of England?" Of course, that query killed every chance for a sensible discussion.

One morning during the first week in February, the steamer from Aden brought stacks of mail—the customary newspapers, magazines, novels, telegrams and letters. It was noticed that her ladyship had several hundred letters, many bearing crests or coats-of-arms.

At last, she came to a letter of many pages, covered with a scrawl that looked preposterously fashionable.

"Nouveau riche," thought Drusilla Browne, looking up from her own letters. Lady Agnes gave a sudden shriek, and, leaping to her feet, performed a dance that set her husband and Bobby Browne to gasping.

"She's coming!" she cried ecstatically, repeating herself a dozen times.

"Who's coming, Aggie?" roared her husband for the sixth time.

"She!"

"She may be a steamship for all I know, if—"

"The Princess! Deppy, I'm going to squeeze you! I must squeeze somebody! Isn't it glorious? Now—now! Now life will be worth living in this beastly place."

Her dearest friend, the Princess, had written to say that she was coming to spend a month with her. Her dear schoolmate of the old days in Paris—her chum of the dear Sacred Heart Convent when it flourished in the Boulevard des Invalides—her roommate up to the day when that institution was forced to leave Paris for less unfriendly fields!

"In her uncle's yacht, Deppy—the big one that came to Cowes last year, don't you know? Of course, you do. Don't look so dazed. He's cruising for a couple of months and is to set her down here until the yacht returns from Borneo and the Philippines. She says she hopes it will be quiet here! Quiet! She hopes it will be quiet! Where are the cigarettes, Deppy? Quick! I must do something devilish. Yes, I know I swore off last week, but—please let me take 'em." The four of them smoked in wondrous silence for two or three minutes. Then Browne spoke up, as if coming from a dream:

"I say, Deppingham, you can take her out walking and pick up a crownful of fresh rubies every day or so."

"Hang it all, Browne, I'm afraid to pluck a violet these days. Every time I stoop over I feel that somebody's going to take a shot at me. I wonder why the beggars select me to shoot at. They're not always popping away at you, Browne. Why is it? I'm not looking for rubies every time I stoop over. They shot at me the other day when I got down to pick up my crop."

"It's all right so long as they don't kill you," was Browne's consoling remark.

"By Jove!" said Deppingham, starting up with a look of horror in his eyes, sudden comprehension rushing down upon him. "I wonder if they think I am you, Browne! Horrible!"



CHAPTER XII

WOMEN AND WOMEN

The Enemy's office hours were from three to five in the afternoon. It was of no especial consequence to his clients that he frequently transferred the placard from the front of the company's bank to the more alluring doorway of the "American bar;" all was just and fair so long as he was to be found where the placard listed. Twice a week, Miss Pelham came down from the chateau in a gaily bedecked jinriksha to sit opposite to him in his stuffy corner of the banking house, his desk between them, her notebook trembling with propinquity. Mr. Britt generously loaned the pert lady to the Enemy in exchange for what he catalogued as "happy days."

Miss Pelham made it a point to look as fascinating as possible on the occasion of these interesting trips into the Enemy's territory.

The Enemy, doing his duty by his clients with a determination that seemed incontestable, suffered in the end because of his very zealousness. He took no time to analyse the personal side of his work; he dealt with the situation from the aspect of a man who serves but one interest, forgetting that it involved the weal of a thousand units. For that reason, he was the last to realise that an intrigue was shaping itself to combat his endeavours. Von Blitz, openly his friend and ally, despite their sad encounter, was the thorn which pricked the natives into a state of uneasiness and doubt as to their agent's sincerity.

Von Blitz, cunning and methodical, sowed the seed of distrust; it sprouted at will in the minds of the uncouth, suspicious islanders. They began to believe that no good could come out of the daily meetings of the three lawyers. A thousand little things cropped out to prove that the intimacy between their man and the shrewd lawyers for the opposition was inimical to their best interests.

It was Von Blitz who told the leading men of the island that their wives—the Persians, the Circassians, the Egyptians and the Turkish houris—were in love with the tall stranger. It was he who advised them to observe the actions, to study the moods of their women.

If he spoke to one of the women, beautiful or plain, the whole male population knew of it, and smiled derisively upon the husband. Von Blitz had turned an adder loose among these men; it stung swiftly and returned to sting again.

The German knew the condition of affairs in his own household. His overthrow at the hands of the American had cost him more than physical ignominy; his wives openly expressed an admiration for their champion.

He knew too well the voluptuous nature of these creamy, unloved women, who had come down to the island of Japat in exchange for the baubles that found their way into the crowns of Persian potentates. He knew too well that they despised the men who called them wives, even though fear held them constantly in bond. Rebuffed, unnoticed, scorned, the women themselves began to suspect and hate each other. If he spoke kindly to one of them, be she fair and young or old and plain, the eyes of all the others blazed with jealousy. Every eye in Japat was upon him; every hand was turning against him.

It was Miss Pelham who finally took it upon herself to warn the lonely American. The look of surprise and disgust that came into his face brought her up sharply. She had been "taking" reports at his dictation; it was during an intermission of idleness on his part that she broached the subject.

"Miss Pelham," he said coldly, "will you be kind enough to carry my condolences to the ladies at court, and say that I recommend reading as an antidote for the poison which idleness produces. I've no doubt that they, with all the perspicacity of lonely and honest women, imagine that I maintain a harem as well as a bar-room. Kindly set them right about it. Neither my home nor my bar-room is open to ladies. If you don't mind we'll go on with this report."

Miss Pelham flushed and looked very uncomfortable. She had more to say, and yet hesitated about bearding the lion. He noticed the pain and uncertainty in her erstwhile coquettish eyes, and was sorry.

"I beg your pardon," he said gently.

"You're wrong about Lady Deppingham and Mrs. Browne," she began hurriedly. "They've never said anything mean about you. It was just my miserable way of putting it. The talk comes from the islanders. Mr. Bowles has told Mr. Britt and Mr. Saunders. He thinks Von Blitz is working against you, and he is sure that all of the men are furiously jealous."

"My dear Miss Pelham, you are very good to warn me," said he easily. "I have nothing to fear. The men are quite friendly and—" He stopped abruptly, his eyes narrowing in thought. A moment later he arose and walked to the little window overlooking the square. When he turned to her again his face wore a more serious expression. "Perhaps there is something in what you say. I'm grateful to you for preparing me." It had suddenly come to mind that the night before he had seen a man skulking in the vicinity of the bungalow. His body servant, Selim, had told him that very morning that this same man, a native, had stood for hours among the trees, apparently watching the house.

"I just thought I'd tell you," murmured Miss Pelham nervously, "I—we don't want to see you get into trouble—none of us."

"Thank you," After a long pause, he went on, lowering his voice: "Miss Pelham, I have had a hard time here, in more ways than I care to speak of. It may interest you to know that I had decided to resign next month and go home. I'm a living man, and a living man objects to a living death. It's worse than I had thought, I came out here in the hope that there would be excitement, life, interest. The only excitement I get is when the ships call twice a month. I've even prayed that our beastly old volcano might erupt and do all sorts of horrible things. It might, at least, toss old Mr. Skaggs back into our midst; that would be a relief, even if he came up as a chunk of lava. But nothing happens—nothing! These Persian fairies you talk about—bah! I said I'd decided to resign, to get out of the infernal place. But I've changed my mind. I'll stick my time out. I've got three months longer to stay and I'll stay. If Von Blitz thinks he can drive me out, he's mistaken. I'll be here after you and your friends up there have sailed away, Miss Pelham—God bless you, you're all white!—and I'll be here when Von Blitz and his wives are dancing to the tunes I play. Now let's get back to work."

"All right; but please be careful," she urged. "Don't let them catch you unprepared. If you need help, I know the men at the chateau will come at your call."

One of those bright, enveloping smiles swept over his face—the smile that always carried the little stenographer away with it. A merry chuckle escaped his lips. "Thanks, but you forget that I can call out the American and British navies."

She looked doubtful. "I know," she said, "but I'm afraid Von Blitz is scuttling your ships."

"If poor little Bowles can conquer them with a red jacket that's too small for him, to say nothing of the fit it would give to the British army, I think I can scrape up a garment or two that will startle them in another way. Please don't worry about me. I shall call my clients together and have it out with them. If Von Blitz is working in the dark, I'll compel him to show his hand. And, Miss Pelham," he concluded very slowly, "I'll promise to use a club, if necessary, to drive the Persian ladies away. So please rest easy on my account."

Poor little Miss Pelham left him soon afterward, her head and heart ringing with the consciousness that she had at last driven him out of his customary reserve. Mr. Saunders was pacing the street in the neighbourhood of the bank. He had been waiting an hour or more, and he was green with jealousy. She nodded sweetly to him and called him to the side of her conveyance. "Don't you want to walk beside me?" she asked. And he trotted beside her like a faithful dog, all the way to the distant chateau.

The next morning the town bustled with a new excitement. A trim, beautiful yacht, flying strange colours, steamed into the little harbour of Aratat.

She came to anchor much closer in than ships usually ventured, and an officer put off in the small boat, heading for the pier, which was already crowded with the native women and children. Every one knew that the yacht brought the Princess who was to visit her ladyship; nothing else had been talked of among the women since the word first came down from the chateau that she was expected.

The Enemy came down from his bungalow, attracted by the unusual and inspiring spectacle of a ship at anchor. A line of anxiety marked his brow. Two figures had watched his windows all night long, sinister shadows that always met his eye when it penetrated the gloom of the moonlit forest.

Lord and Lady Deppingham were on the pier before him. Excitement and joy illumined her face; her eyes were sparkling with anticipation; he could almost see that she trembled in her eagerness. He came quite close to them before they saw him. Exhilaration no doubt was responsible for the very agreeable smile of recognition that she bestowed upon him. Or, perhaps it was inspired by womanly pity for the man whose loneliness was even greater and graver than her own. The Enemy could do no less than go to them with his pleasantest acknowledgment. His rugged face relaxed into a most charming, winsome smile, half-diffident, half-assured.

He passed among the wives of his clients without so much as a sign of recognition, coolly indifferent to the admiring glances that sought his face. The dark, langourous eyes that flashed eager admiration a moment before now turned sullen with disappointment. He had ignored their owners; he had avoided them as if they were dust heaps in the path; he had spurned them as if they were dogs by the roadside. And yet he smiled upon the Englishwoman, he spoke with her, he admired her! The sharp intake of breath that swept through the crowd told plainer than words the story of the angry eyes that followed him to the end of the pier, where the officer's boat was landing.

"I have heard that you expect a visitor," said the Enemy in his most agreeable manner. Lady Deppingham had just told him that she had a friend aboard the yacht.

"Won't you go aboard with us," asked Deppingham, at a loss for anything better to say. The Enemy shook his head and smiled.

"You are very good, but I believe my place is here," he said, with a swift, sardonic glance toward his herd of followers. Lady Deppingham raised her delicate eyebrows and gave him the cool, intimate smile of comprehension. He flushed. "I am one of the lowly and the despised," he explained humbly.

"The Princess is to be with me for a month. We expect more sunshine than ever at the chateau," ventured her ladyship.

"I sincerely hope you may be disappointed," said he commiseratingly, fanning himself with his hat. She laughed and understood, but Deppingham was half way out to the yacht before it became clear to him that the Enemy hoped literally, not figuratively.