ried to break it, there was a sudden,
killing strain on his spine. Then Arima's voice said, close to his ear:

"Where the papers?"

The papers!

Japanese character thus brought its fresh surprise to Orme. Even after
this hard fight, when three of his friends lay groaning on the
ground--when he had in his power the man who had injured them, who had
temporarily bested himself--Arima's chief thought was still of the
papers!

He seemed to have none of the semi-barbarian vengefulness that might have
been expected. He merely wished the papers--wished them the more
desperately with every passing moment. The lives of his companions
counted for nothing besides the papers!

"Where?" repeated Arima.

"I haven't them," said Orme. "You ought to know that by this time."

The answer was a torturing pressure on Orme's spine. "You tell," hissed
Arima.

As the pressure increased Orme's suffering was so keen that his senses
began to slip away. He was gliding into a state in which all
consciousness centered hazily around the one sharp point of pain.

Then, suddenly, he was released. For a moment he staggered limply, but
his strength surged back, and he was able to see how the situation had
changed.

The girl had swung her car in closer to the edge of the grove and nearer
to the struggling figures. Doubtless she had some idea of helping. But
the effect of the change in the position of her car was to permit the
searchlight of the other car to throw its bright beam without
interruption down the road. And there, perhaps fifty feet to the
southward, gleamed something white.

The girl could not see it, for her car was headed north. But Arima saw
it, and in a flash he realized what it was. The papers lay there at the
side of the road, where Orme had tossed them a moment before the two cars
met.

There had been no other way to dispose of them. If the car from the north
had stopped at a different angle, or if the other car had not moved, the
light would not have shone upon them, and the Japanese might not have
suspected where they were. Or, if Orme had tossed them a few feet farther
to one side, they would have been out of the range of the light. But
there they lay.

Arima leaped toward them. Even as he started, a figure appeared at the
other side of the road and walked over toward the two cars. It was a man
with brass buttons and policeman's helmet. He walked with authority, and
he held a stout club in his hand.

"What's goin'