st be going," he said. "It is a strange story--not? But
I don't like it; I don't like it at all."

"Adieu," said Cobb, rising also. "I don't think I'd worry, if I were
you. And I won't interfere again."

"On no account," said Savinien, seriously.

Cobb watched him move away, plodding along the pavement heavily, huge
and portentous. The back of his head bulged above the collar, with no
show of neck between. He was comical and pathetic; he seemed too vast
in mere flesh to be the sport of a thing so freakish as luck. To
think that such a bulk had a weak heart in it--and that deeper still
in its recesses there moved and suffered the soul of a poet!

"Queer yarn," mused Cobb.

It was on the following morning, while Cobb was dressing, that the
messenger arrived--a little man in black, with a foot-rule sticking
out of his coat-pocket. He looked like an elderly man-servant who had
descended to trade. He had a letter for Cobb, addressed in Savinien's
pyrotechnic hand, and handed it to him without speaking.

"My dear friend," it said, "I fear the worst. On my return to my
rooms here, the first thing I saw was my watch, reposing on my
bedside table. It appears that when I made my toilet in the morning I
forgot to put it in my pocket. The thief, after all, got nothing. I
am lost. In despair, Your Cesar Savinien."

"Yes?" said Cobb. "You want an answer?" For the little artisan in
black was waiting.

"An answer!" The other stared. "But----then monsieur does not know?"

"What?"

"He must have been going down to post that note when he had written
it," said the little man. "We found it in his hand."

"Eh?" Cobb almost recoiled in the shock of his surprise and horror.
"D'you mean to tell me that after all, he--he is----"

The little man in black uttered a professional sigh. "The concierge
found him in the morning," he replied. "It is said that he suffered
from his heart, that poor Monsieur."

"Good Lord!" said Cobb.

VI

BETWEEN THE LIGHTS

There was but the one hotel in that somber town of East Africa, and
Miss Gregory, fronting the proprietor of it squarely, noted that he
looked at her with something like amusement. She was a short woman
of fifty, grey-haired and composed, and her pleasant face had a quiet
and almost masculine strength and assurance. In her grey flannel
jacket and short skirt and felt hat, with a sun-umbrella carried like
a walking-stick, she looked adequate and worthy. Hers was a presence
tha