d the Irishman, in the tone of one
rebuffed. He turned again and left the room, closing the door behind
him. Outside on the stairs it occurred to him that he had forgotten to
ask the other man what this fellow's name was--the fellow who lay
wounded up-stairs. No, he had asked once, but in the interest of the
conversation the question had been lost. He determined to inquire again
that evening at dinner.

But Captain Stewart, left thus alone, sank deeper in the uncomfortable
chair, and his head once more stirred and sought vainly for ease against
the chair's high back. The pain swept him in regular throbbing waves
that were like the waves of the sea--waves which surge and crash and
tear upon a beach. But between the throbs of physical pain there was
something else that was always present while the waves came and went.
Pain and exhaustion, if they are sufficiently extreme, can well nigh
paralyze mind as well as body, and for some time Captain Stewart
wondered what this thing might be which lurked at the bottom of him
still under the surges of agony. Then at last he had the strength to
look at it, and it was fear, cold and still and silent. He was afraid to
the very depths of his soul.

True, as O'Hara had said, there did not seem to be any very desperate
peril to face, but Stewart was afraid with the gambler's unreasoning,
half-superstitious fear, and that is the worst fear of all. He realized
that he had been afraid of Ste. Marie from the beginning, and that, of
course, was why he had tried to draw him into partnership with himself
in his own official and wholly mythical search for Arthur Benham. He
could have had the other man under his eye then. He could have kept him
busy for months running down false scents. As it was, Ste. Marie's
uncanny instinct about the Irishman O'Hara had led him true--that and
what he doubtless learned from Olga Nilssen.

If Stewart had been in a condition and mood to philosophize, he would
doubtless have reflected that seven-tenths of the desperate causes, both
good and bad, which fail in this world, fail because they are wrecked by
some woman's love or jealousy--or both. But it is unlikely that he was
able just at this time to make such a reflection, though certainly he
wondered how much Olga Nilssen had known, and how much Ste. Marie had
had to put together out of her knowledge and any previous suspicions
which he may have had.

The man would have been amazed if he could have known what