elt something strike." Peter put his hand to his side. He unbuttoned
his coat and felt again. Then he pulled out a little sachet from his
breast-pocket, and as e did so, a flattened bullet dropped to the floor.
Peter looked into the sachet anxiously. The bullet had only gone through
the lower corner of the four photographs and the glove! Peter laughed
happily. "I had a gold coin in my pocket, and the bullet struck that.
Who says that a luck-piece is nothing but a superstition?"

"But, Peter, shan't we call the police?" demanded Ogden, still looking
stunned.

Curlew moved towards the door.

"One moment," said Peter, and Curlew stopped.

"Ray," Peter continued, "I am faced with a terrible question. I want
your advice?"

"What, Peter?"

"A man is trying to force me to stand aside and permit a political
wrong. To do this, he threatens to publish lying affidavits of worthless
scoundrels, to prove a shameful intimacy between a married woman and
me."

"Bosh," laughed Ray. "He can publish a thousand and no one would believe
them of you."

"He knows that. But he knows, too, that no matter how untrue, it would
connect her name with a subject shameful to the purest woman that ever
lived. He knows that the scavengers of gossip will repeat it, and gloat
over it. That the filthy society papers will harp on it for years. That
in the heat of a political contest, the partisans will be only too glad
to believe it and repeat it. That no criminal prosecution, no court
vindication, will ever quite kill the story as regards her. And so he
hopes that, rather than entail this on a woman whom I love, and on her
husband and family, I will refuse a nomination. I know of such a case in
Massachusetts, where, rather than expose a woman to such a danger, the
man withdrew. What should I do?"

"Do? Fight him. Tell him to do his worst."

Peter put his hand on Ray's shoulder.

"Even if--if--it is one dear to us both?"

"Peter!"

"Yes. Do you remember your being called home in our Spanish trip,
unexpectedly? You left me to bring Miss De Voe, and--Well. They've
bribed, or forged affidavits of two of the stewards of the 'Majestic.'"

Ray tried to spring forward towards Curlew. But Peter's hand still
rested on his shoulder, and held him back, "I started to kill him,"
Peter said quietly, "but I remembered he was nothing but the miserable
go-between."

"My God, Peter! What can I say?"

"Ray! The stepping aside is nothing to me. It was an