brute!" muttered Orme.

"Oh, I don't think he intended to hurt me. What he feared, as nearly as I
can make out, is that I might have him intercepted if he let me go free.
That must have been why he tried to take me with him. Probably he planned
to beach the boat at some unfrequented point on the North Side and leave
me to shift for myself.

"When your boat came, of course I didn't know who was in it. I never
dreamed it would be you. And I had promised to keep still."

"Hardly a binding promise."

"Well, before he stopped threatening me with that awful handkerchief, he
had made me swear over and over that I would not call for help, that I
would not make any signal, that I would sit quietly on the seat. When you
recognized me, I felt that all need of observing the promise was over."

"Naturally," muttered Orme.

She sighed. "It does seem as though Fate had been against us," she said.

"Fate is fickle," Orme returned. "You never know whether she will be your
friend or your enemy. But I believe that she is now going to be our
friend--for a change. To-morrow I shall get those papers."

CHAPTER VIII

THE TRAIL OF MAKU

When for the second time that night he bade the girl adieu and saw her
enter the house of her friends, Orme went briskly to the electric-car
line.

He had not long to wait. A car came racing down the tracks and stopped at
his corner. Swinging aboard at the rear platform, he glanced within.
There were four passengers--a man and woman who, apparently, were
returning from an evening party of some sort, since he was in evening
dress and she wore an opera-cloak; a spectacled man, with a black
portfolio in his lap; a seedy fellow asleep in one corner, his head
sagging down on his breast, his hands in his trousers pockets; and--was
it possible? Orme began to think that Fate had indeed changed her face
toward him, for the man who sat huddled midway of the car, staring
straight before him with beady, expressionless eyes, was Maku.

Under the brim of his dingy straw hat a white bandage was drawn tight
around his head--so tight that from its under edge the coarse black hair
bristled out in a distinct fringe. The blow of the wrench, then, must
have cut through the skin.

Well--that would mean one more scar on the face of the Japanese.

The other scar, how had Maku come by that? Perhaps in some battle with
the Russians in Manchuria. He seemed to be little more than a boy, but
then, one never could