tepped out of the
gondola and gained the bridge, the beggar had disappeared.

"Who was it?" asked Merrihew indifferently.

"Giovanni!"

CHAPTER XVI

O'MALLY SUGGESTS

In a bedroom in one of the cheap little _pensiones_ which shoulder one
another along the Riva degli Schiavoni, from the ducal palace to the
public gardens, sat three men. All three were smoking execrable tobacco
in ancient pipes. Now and then this one or that consulted his watch
(grateful that he still possessed it), as if expecting some visitor. The
castaways of the American Comic Opera troupe were on the anxious seat
this morning.

"Well, what do you think?" asked Smith.

"Think? Why, she'll be here this morning, or I know nothing about women.
That ring was worth a cool thousand." O'Mally shook the nicotine from
his pipe. "She'll be here, never you worry. But," with a comic grimace,
"it's dollars to doughnuts that both of 'em will be stone-broke. I know
something about that innocent little game called roulette."

"But if she's broke, what the devil shall we do?" Smith put this
question in no calm frame of mind.

"Forty dollars; it's a heap just now."

"She said she had another plan," said Worth.

"If it's a plan which needs no investments, all well and good. But, on
my word, I wouldn't dare advance another cent." Smith's brow wore many
wrinkles.

"Nor I," said O'Mally.

"Positively, no," added Worth.

O'Mally mused. "A bill from your tailor will reach you here in eight
days, but money! Looks as if they had sent it via Japan."

"The one thing I'm sore about is the way she buncoed us into giving up
our return tickets to the chorus."

"Shame on you!" cried the generous O'Mally. "What chance had any of them
on this side? Ten to one, nobody home could have sent them money. We men
can get along somehow. But I wish I could get some good plug-cut. This
English shoe-string tobacco burns like hot lead."

"O'Mally, what's your opinion?"

"On what?"

"La Signorina," said Worth.

"What about her?"

"What do you think of her? She's not one of us; she belongs to another
class, and the stage is only an incident."

"Well, I don't know what to think. I've pumped Killigrew, but she seems
to be in the dark with the rest of us. That ring and the careless way
she offered it as security convinces me that she doesn't belong. But
what a voice! It lifts you out of your very boots."

"Even when she talks," said Smith. "Honestly, I'm glad she