clock; and had left at about that hour with a small hand-bag and no
companion. Nothing further was known of his actions save the police
report. The car had been found stationary on Washington Bridge, and
deserted, Drummond's motor coat and cap on the driver's seat. Bystanders
averred that a man had been seen to leave the car and precipitate
himself from the bridge to the stream below. The body was still
unrecovered. The club had notified by telegraph a brother in San
Francisco, the only member of Drummond's family of whom it had any
record. Friends, fellow-members of the club, were looking after
things--doing all that could and properly ought to be done under the
circumstances.

Whitaker walked back to his hotel. There was no other place to go: no
place, that is, that wooed his humour in that hour. He could call to
mind, of course, names of friends and acquaintances of the old days to
whom there was no reason why he shouldn't turn, now that he had elected
to rediscover himself to the world; but there was none of them all that
he really wanted to see before he had regained complete control of his
emotions.

He was, indeed, profoundly shocked. He held himself measurably
responsible for Drummond's act of desperation. If he had not wilfully
sought to evade the burden of his duty to Mary Ladislas, when he found
that he was to live rather than die--if he had been honest and generous
instead of allowing himself to drift into cowardly defalcation to her
trust--Drummond, doubtless, would still be alive. Or even if, having
chosen the recreant way, he had had the strength to stick to it, to stay
buried....

Next to poor Peter Stark, whom his heart mourned without ceasing, he had
cared most for Drummond of all the men he had known and liked in the old
life. Now ... he felt alone and very lonely, sick of heart and forlorn.
There was, of course, Lynch, his partner in the Antipodes; Whitaker was
fond of Lynch, but not with the affection that a generous-spirited youth
had accorded Peter Stark and Drummond--a blind and unreasoning affection
that asked no questions and made nothing of faults. The capacity for
such sentiment was dead in him, as dead as Peter Stark, as dead as
Drummond....

It was nearly midnight, but the hour found Whitaker in no humour for bed
or the emptiness of his room. He strolled into the lounge, sat down at a
detached table in a corner, and ordered something to drink. There were
not many others in the room, bu