down at the crowd on the wharf. Sidney Prale looked
straight at her, despite the glare of the middle-aged maid. Kate Gilbert
was a woman who would appeal to a majority of men, but there seemed to
be something peculiar about her, Prale told himself. He knew that she
had avoided him purposely during the voyage, and that she had spoken to
him purposely now, yet had asked nothing except whether he had chosen a
hotel.

Why should Kate Gilbert wish to know where he was going to stop? Perhaps
it had been only an idle question, he explained to himself. In her
happiness at getting home, she had merely wished to speak to somebody,
and none of her shipboard friends happened to be near.

He turned from her and glanced at the maid again. She was not the sort
to be named Marie, Prale told himself. Marie called up a vision of a
petite, trim woman from sunny France, and this Marie was nothing of the
sort. She appeared more to be a peasant used to hard labor, Prale
decided.

And he could not understand the expression on the woman's face as she
looked at him. It was almost one of loathing.

"Got me mixed up with somebody else, or somebody has been giving me a
bad reputation," Prale mused. "Enough to make a man shiver--that look of
hers."

Kate Gilbert, apparently, did not intend to have anything more to do
with him. Smiling a little at her manner, Prale lifted his hat, picked
up the suit case, and turned away. Once more he tried to force a passage
through the jostling crowd. He had not taken three steps when Kate
Gilbert touched him on the arm.

"Pardon me, Mr. Prale, but there is something sticking on the end of
your suit case," she said.

Prale glanced down. On one end of the suit case was a bit of paper. It
had been stuck there by a drop of mucilage, and the mucilage was still
wet.

He thanked Kate Gilbert and picked the paper off, but he did not throw
it over the rail into the water. He crumpled it in his hand and, when he
was some distance away, he smoothed it out.

There was a single word written on it, in the same handwriting
as that of the note he had found pinned to the pillow in the
stateroom--"Retribution."

Sidney Prale glanced around quickly. Nobody seemed to be paying
particular attention to him. Kate Gilbert and her maid had passed him
and were preparing to land. Prale put the piece of paper into his coat
pocket and picked up his suit case again. That bit of paper, he knew
well, had not been on the suit case