ck, from the
point where the soft flannel shirt fell away to show the fine slope of
the throat line to the shoulders.

Strong had stepped to the wharf to talk with an old acquaintance, but
when the boat threw out a warning signal he made a hurried good-bye and
came on board. He rejoined Elliot.

"Well, what d'you think of him? Was I right?"

The young man had already guessed who this imperious stranger was. "I
never saw anybody get away with a hard job as easily as he did that one.
You could see with half an eye that those fellows meant fight. They were
all primed for it--and he bluffed them out."

"Bluffed them--huh! If that's what you call bluffing. I was where I
could see just what happened. Colby Macdonald wasn't even looking at
Trelawney, but you bet he saw him start. That suitcase traveled like
a streak of light. You'd 'a' thought it weighed about two pounds. That
ain't all either. Mac used his brains. Guess what was in that grip."

"The usual thing, I suppose."

"You've got another guess--packed in among his socks and underwear was
about twenty pounds of ore samples. The purser told me. It was that
quartz put Trelawney to sleep so thorough that he'd just begun to wake
up when I passed a minute ago."

The young man turned his eyes again upon the big Canadian Scotchman.
He was talking with Mrs. Mallory, who was leaning back luxuriously
in a steamer chair she had brought aboard at St. Michael's. It would
have been hard to conceive a contrast greater than the one between
this pampered heiress of the ages and the modern business berserk who
looked down into her mocking eyes. He was the embodiment of the dominant
male,--efficient to the last inch of his straight six feet. What he
wanted he had always taken, by the sheer strength that was in him. Back
of her smiling insolence lay a silken force to match his own. She too
had taken what she wanted from life, but she had won it by indirection.
Manifestly she was of those women who conceive that charm and beauty
are tools to bend men to their wills. Was it the very width of the gulf
between them that made the appeal of the clash in the sex duel upon
which they had engaged?

The dusky young woman with the magazine was the first of those on
the upper deck to retire for the night. She flitted so quietly that
Gordon did not notice until she had gone. Mrs. Selfridge and her friends
disappeared with their men folks, calling gay good-nights to one another
as they left.