ightmare happening had passed
with the precision and ease of a clockwork scene played by marionettes.
Now the curtain was down, and nothing remained but the haunting,
fateful words still ringing in the ears of them all. Small wonder they
sat silent as death. As the car entered the precincts of the town,
Druro said to Tryon:

"I must go to the police camp and report this thing, Dick. But, first
drive to the 'Falcon,' will you? I've just remembered that I had an
appointment there and must go and apologize."

They drew up at a side entrance of the hotel and Druro stepped out and
turned almost mechanically to open the door for those behind. So far
he had shown no knowledge of Gay's presence, but he now looked straight
into her eyes without any sign of surprise. He held out his hand to
help her to descend, and, in the same instant, swiftly withdrew it.

"I forgot," he said, and, for an instant, stood staring at his palm and
then at her in a dazed, musing sort of way. "There is blood upon it!"

Gay could not speak. Her heart felt breaking. It seemed to her that,
in that moment, with the shadow of crime on him, he had suddenly
changed into a bright-haired, innocent, wistful boy. She longed, with
an infinite, brooding love that was almost maternal, to shelter and
comfort him against all the world. But she could do nothing. Even if
she could have spoken, there was nothing to say. Only, on an impulse,
she caught the hand he had drawn back, and, for a moment, held it close
between her warm, generous little palms. Then she slipped away into
the darkness, and he went into the hotel, walking like a man in a dream.

PART II

Cold-blooded nerve, otherwise intrepid cheek, is a much admired quality
in that land of bluffs and _blagues_ called Rhodesia. Therefore, when
Lundi Druro walked into Mrs. Hading's ballroom in his old grey lounge
suit, with ruffled hair and the distrait eyes of a man dreaming of
other things, and proceeded, in casual but masterly fashion, to detach
his hostess from the tentacles of a new admirer, Wankelo silently
awarded him the palm of palms. But no one who saw Mrs. Hading's face
as she walked out of the ballroom by his side envied him his job of
conciliation.

However, they could not know that her cold looks were for their benefit
rather than Druro's. Banal upbraidings would not bring off the _coup_
she had planned, and she did not intend to employ them. When she and
Druro were out