omplete.

Every room and suite was occupied. The lobby was crowded. Formally
dressed guests strolled the promenade, and tried fruitlessly to gain
admission to the already overcrowded roof garden.

Here, with tables crowded to capacity and emergency waiters trying to
give all the de luxe service required, the second act of the famous Blue
Bay floor show was going on.

In the small dance floor at the center of the tables was a dancer. She
was doing a slave dance, trying to free herself from chains. The
spotlight was on; the full moon, pouring its silver down on the open
roof, added its blue beams.

The dancer was excellent. The spectators were enthralled. One elderly
man, partially bald, a little too stout, seemed particularly engrossed.
He sat alone at a ringside table, and had been shown marked deference
all during the evening. For he was Mathew Weems, owner of a large block
of stock in the Blue Bay summer resort development, and a very wealthy
man.

Weems was leaning forward over his table, staring at the dancer with
sensual lips parted. And she, quite aware of his attention and his
wealth, was outdoing herself.

A prosaic scene, one would have said. Opening night of a resort de luxe;
wealthy widower concentrating on a dancer's whirling bare body; people
applauding carelessly. But the scene was to become far indeed from
prosaic--and the cause of its change was to be Weems.

* * * * *

Among the people standing at the roof-garden entrance and wishing they
could crowd in, there was a stir. A woman walked among them.

She was tall, slender but delicately voluptuous, with a small, shapely
head on a slender, exquisite throat. The pallor of her clear skin and
the largeness of her intensely dark eyes made her face look like a
flower on an ivory stalk. She was gowned in cream-yellow, with the
curves of a perfect body revealed as her graceful walk molded her frock
against her.

Many people looked at her, and then, questioningly, at one another. She
had been registered at the hotel only since late afternoon, but already
she was an object of speculation. The register gave her name as Madame
Sin, and the knowing ones had hazarded the opinion that she, and her
name, were publicity features to help along with the resort opening
news.

Madame Sin entered the roof garden, with the assurance of one who has a
table waiting, and walked along the edge of the small dance floor. She
moved silent