the scene, Chess had displayed much
more helplessness than he need have shown. But Ruth decided that he was
very wise to do this, and she was much relieved to discover this to be
the fact. She did nothing to attract the attention of their captors to
his real condition. She moaned over him, and made little pitying sounds
as though she thought he had been very seriously hurt by the blow he had
received.

The King of the Pipes put his clawlike hand upon her shoulder again.

"Let him alone. He will have to have his head off, of course. No hope for
it. But I will try to postpone your decapitation until the thirty-first
day of June, which comes when there are two Sundays in the same week. Eh?
Isn't that shrewd? As King of the Pipes I have to show great astuteness.
Oh, great astuteness!"

"I am sure you will help us, sire," murmured Ruth, standing up once more
and looking appealingly at the queer old man.

"Well, I will do what I can. But, remember, we kings can't do what we
once could. Seems to me I told you that before. The war did the business
for us. And I would not dare suggest taking a consort. The Pipes would
never stand for it."

"Whom do you call 'the Pipes'?" Ruth asked wonderingly.

"Look about you. See them? Already they are beginning to smoke up again.
And it is a dirty smell. I have to go out and roam about the island to
get away from it. Dreadful! To give up my throne room to nasty little
brass pipes. Ugh!"

While he was speaking the girl stared about her, now better able to see
the place and the people in it. There were at least half a dozen men. And
all were Chinamen, as far as she could see, although not all were dressed
in blouse and loose trousers and wadded slippers--the usual costume of
the un-westernized Chinaman.

Two of the men were lying down, and there were tiny lamps sputtering on
the low stools, or tables, set close to their heads. They held
long-stemmed pipes with small brass bowls, and had begun to smoke
something that had a very pungent and disagreeable odor.

Ruth's mind had begun to clear. She remembered the heavy boxes she and
Chess had seen brought ashore, and the Chinaman in the speed launch, and
then the yellow-faced woman being taken on this very day toward the
American shore. The whole puzzle began to fit together like a piece of
patchwork.

Chinamen; a high-powered boat going back and forth across the St.
Lawrence; a hidden cave on this supposedly uninhabited island; the he