entary distraction to leap past him. As she did so
there was a slight explosion. A sheet of flaming kerosene spread over
the floor and licked the chairboarding.

Ismay jumped back, mouthing curses; the girl had already slipped out of
the room. Turning, he saw her flying through the hall toward the main
door. In a fit of futile, childish spite, unreasonable and unreasoning,
he whipped out his pistol and sent a bullet after her.

She heard it whine near her head and crash through the glass panes of
the door. And she heard herself cry out in a strange voice. The next
instant she had flung open the door and thrown herself out, across the
veranda and down the steps. Then turning blindly to the left, instinct
guiding her to seek temporary safety by hiding in the wilderness of the
dunes, she blundered into somebody's arms.

She was caught and held fast despite her struggles to free herself: to
which, believing herself to be in the hands of Mrs. Clover or her
husband, she gave all her strength.

At the same time the first-floor windows of the hotel were illumined by
an infernal glare. All round her there was lurid light, setting
everything in sharp relief. The face of the man who held her was
suddenly revealed; and it was her father's.... She had left him inside
the building and now ... She was assailed with a terrifying fear that
she had gone mad. In a frenzy she wrenched herself free; but only to be
caught in other arms.

A voice she knew said soothingly: "There, Miss Searle--you're all right
now...."

Staff's voice and, when she twisted to look, Staff's face, friendly and
reassuring!

"Don't be afraid," he was saying; "we'll take care of you now--your
father and I."

"My father!" she gasped. "My father is in there!"

"No," said Iff at her side. "Believe me, he isn't. That, dear, is your
fondly affectionate Uncle Arbuthnot--and between the several of us I
don't mind telling you that he's stood in my shoes for the last time."

"But I don't," she stammered--"I don't understand--"

"You will in a minute," Staff told her gently. At the same time he
lifted his voice. "Look out, Iff--look out!"

He strove to put himself between the girl and danger, making a shield of
his body. But with a supple movement she eluded him.

She saw in the doorway of the burning house the man she had thought to
be her father. The other man, he whose daughter she really was, had
started to run toward the veranda steps. The man in the door