t light to consult his watch.

"Almost ten!" he said. "I hope you don't mind, Byrne; but I told Jennie
I was going to your pension. She detests Stewart."

"Oh, that's all right. She knows you're playing poker?"

"Yes. She doesn't object to poker. It's the other. You can't make a good
woman understand that sort of thing."

"Thank God for that!"

After a moment of silence Byrne took up his whistling again. It was the
"Humoresque."

Stewart's apartment was on the third floor. Admission at that hour was
to be gained only by ringing, and Boyer touched the bell. The lights
were still on, however, in the hallways, revealing not overclean stairs
and, for a wonder, an electric elevator. This, however, a card announced
as out of order. Boyer stopped and examined the card grimly.

"'Out of order'!" he observed. "Out of order since last spring, judging
by that card. Vorwarts!"

They climbed easily, deliberately. At home in God's country Boyer played
golf, as became the leading specialist of his county. Byrne, with a
driving-arm like the rod of a locomotive, had been obliged to
forswear the more expensive game for tennis, with a resulting muscular
development that his slight stoop belied. He was as hard as nails,
without an ounce of fat, and he climbed the long steep flights with an
elasticity that left even Boyer a step or so behind.

Stewart opened the door himself, long German pipe in hand, his coat
replaced by a worn smoking-jacket. The little apartment was thick with
smoke, and from a room on the right came the click of chips and the
sound of beer mugs on wood.

Marie, restored to good humor, came out to greet them, and both men
bowed ceremoniously over her hand, clicking their heels together and
bowing from the waist. Byrne sniffed.

"What do I smell, Marie?" he demanded. "Surely not sausages!"

Marie dimpled. It was an old joke, to be greeted as one greets an old
friend. It was always sausages.

"Sausages, of a truth--fat ones.'

"But surely not with mustard?"

"Ach, ja--englisch mustard."

Stewart and Boyer had gone on ahead. Marie laid a detaining hand on
Byrne's arm.

"I was very angry with you to-day."

"With me?"

Like the others who occasionally gathered in Stewart's unconventional
menage, Byrne had adopted Stewart's custom of addressing Marie in
English, while she replied in her own tongue.

"Ja. I wished but to see nearer the American Fraulein's hat, and
you--She is rich, so?"

"I really d