t last.

Easton had deferred his advent so long that Mamise and Davidge had
come almost to yearn for him with heartsick eagerness. The first
inkling of the prodigal's approach was a visit that Jake Nuddle paid
to Mamise late one evening. She had never broached to him the matter
of her talk with Easton, waiting always for him to speak of it to her.
She was amazed to see him now, and he brought amazement with him.

"I just got a call on long distance," he said, "and a certain party
tells me you was one of us all this time. Why didn't you put a feller
wise?"

Mamise was inspired to answer his reproach with a better: "Because I
don't trust you, Jake. You talk too much."

This robbed Jake of his bluster and convinced him that the elusive
Mamise was some tremendous super-spy. He became servile at once, and
took pride in being the lackey of her unexplained and unexplaining
majesty. Mamise liked him even less in this role than the other.

She took his information with a languid indifference, as if the
terrifying news were simply a tiresome confirmation of what she had
long expected. Jake was tremulous with excitement and approval.

"Well, well, who'd 'a' thought our little Mamise was one of them
slouch-hounds you read about? I see now why you've been stringin' that
Davidge boob along. You got him eatin' out your hand. And I see now
why you put them jumpers on and went out into the yards. You just got
to know everything, ain't you?"

Mamise nodded and smiled felinely, as she imagined a queen of mystery
would do. But as soon as she could get rid of Jake she was like a
child alone in a graveyard.

Jake had told her that Nicky would be down in a few days, and not to
be surprised when he appeared. She wanted to get the news to Davidge,
but she dared not go to his rooms so late. And in the morning she was
due at her job of passing rivets. She crept into bed to rest her
dog-tired bones against the morrow's problems. Her dreams were all of
death and destruction, and of steel ships crumpled like balls of
paper thrown into a waste-basket.

If she had but known it, Davidge was making the rounds of his
sentry-line. The guard at one gate was sound asleep. He found two
others playing cards, and a fourth man dead drunk.

Inside the yards the great hulls rose up to the moon like the
buttresses of a cliff. Only, they were delicately vulnerable, and
Europe waited for them.

CHAPTER IV

True sleep came to Mamise so late th