re respect for us if we laugh at him. Has he a sense of humour?"

"My word for it, he has! What could be more humorous than tying me up in
this fashion and putting me in the cabin that used to be mine? Ten
thousand for a string of glass beads! I say, Jane!"

"What?"

"When he comes back tell him you might consider twenty thousand, just to
get an idea what the thing is worth."

"I'll promise that."

"All right. Then I'll try to snooze a bit. Getting stuffy lying on my
back."

"The brute! If I could only help you!"

"You have--you are--you will!"

He turned on his side, his face toward the door. His arms and legs began
to sting with the sensation known as sleep. He was glad his father had
overheard the initial conversation. A wave of terror ran over him at the
thought of being set ashore while Jane went on. Still he could have sent a
British water terrier in hot pursuit.

Jane sat down and took inventory. She knew but little about antiques--rugs
and furniture--but she was full of inherent love of the beautiful. The
little secretary upon which she had written the order on the consulate was
an exquisite lowboy of old mahogany of dull finish. On the floor were
camel saddle-bays, Persian in pattern. On the panel over the lowboy was a
small painting, a foot broad and a foot and a half long. It was old--she
could tell that much. It was a portrait, tender and quaint. She would have
gasped had she known that it was worth a cover of solid gold. It was a
Holbein, The Younger, for which Cleigh some years gone had paid Cunningham
sixteen thousand dollars. Where and how Cunningham had acquired it was not
open history.

An hour passed. By and by she rose and tiptoed to the partition. She held
her ear against the panel, and as she heard nothing she concluded that
Denny--why not?--was asleep. Next she gazed out of the port. It was
growing dark outside, overcast. It would rain again probably. A drab sky,
a drab shore. She saw a boat filled with those luscious vegetables which
wrote typhus for any white person who ate them. A barge went by piled high
with paddy bags--rice in the husk--with Chinamen at the forward and stern
sweeps. She wondered if these poor yellow people had ever known what it
was to play?

Suddenly she fell back, shocked beyond measure. From the direction of the
salon--a pistol shot! This was followed by the tramp of hurrying feet.
Voices, now sharp, now rumbling--this grew nearer. A struggle of some
dimensi