by an imbecile female. What he needed was a pair of
woman's arms which, flung round his neck, would brace him up for the
encounter. Inspire him, he called it to himself.

He lay awake a long time; and his slumbers, when they came, were
unsatisfactory and short. The morning light had no joy for his eyes.
He listened dismally to the movements in the house. The Chinamen were
unlocking and flinging wide the doors of the public rooms which opened
on the veranda. Horrors! Another poisoned day to get through somehow!
The recollection of his resolve made him feel actually sick for a
moment. First of all the lordly, abandoned attitudes of Mr. Jones
disconcerted him. Then there was his contemptuous silence. Mr. Jones
never addressed himself to Schomberg with any general remarks, never
opened his lips to him unless to say "Good morning"--two simple words
which, uttered by that man, seemed a mockery of a threatening character.
And, lastly, it was not a frank physical fear he inspired--for as to
that, even a cornered rat will fight--but a superstitious shrinking awe,
something like an invincible repugnance to seek speech with a wicked
ghost. That it was a daylight ghost surprisingly angular in his
attitudes, and for the most part spread out on three chairs, did
not make it any easier. Daylight only made him a more weird, a more
disturbing and unlawful apparition. Strangely enough in the evening when
he came out of his mute supineness, this unearthly side of him was less
obtrusive. At the gaming-table, when actually handling the cards, it was
probably sunk quite out of sight; but Schomberg, having made up his mind
in ostrich-like fashion to ignore what was going on, never entered the
desecrated music-room. He had never seen Mr. Jones in the exercise of
his vocation--or perhaps it was only his trade.

"I will speak to him tonight," Schomberg said to himself, while he drank
his morning tea, in pyjamas, on the veranda, before the rising sun had
topped the trees of the compound, and while the undried dew still
lay silvery on the grass, sparkled on the blossoms of the central
flower-bed, and darkened the yellow gravel of the drive. "That's what
I'll do. I won't keep out of sight tonight. I shall come out and catch
him as he goes to bed carrying the cash-box."

After all, what was the fellow but a common desperado? Murderous? Oh,
yes; murderous enough, perhaps--and the muscles of Schomberg's stomach
had a quivering contraction under his