make it good."

Phineas Duge walked out into the sunlight and drove away in his
automobile. Was it the glaring light, he wondered, the perfume of the
flowers, the evidences on every side of an easier and less strenuous
life, which were accountable for a certain depression, a slackening of
interests which certainly seemed to come over him that afternoon as he
drove back to the hotel. If he could have summarized his thoughts
afterwards, he would have scoffed at them, as a grown man might laugh at
a toy which a lunatic had offered him. Yet it is certain that the empty
place by his side was filled more than once during that brief ride. He
looked into the faces of the women and girls who streamed along the
pavements with a certain half-eager curiosity, as though he expected to
find a familiar face amongst them, a pale oval face, with quivering lips
and lustrous appealing eyes--eyes which had come into his thoughts more
often lately than he would have cared to admit.

"It is that infernal voyage!" he said to himself, as he got out of the
car and entered the hotel. "One cannot think about reasonable things on
days when the marconigram fails."

He bought a cigar at the stall and strolled over to the tape. It was a
busy afternoon, and reports from America were coming in fast. He nodded
as he turned away. Weiss and the rest had had their lesson. They were
keeping, at any rate, to their part of the bargain.

CHAPTER XVI

TRAPPED

Phineas Duge carefully drew off his gloves and laid them inside his hat.
He declined a chair, however, and stood facing the man whom he had
come to visit.

"I scarcely understand, Mr. Duge," Vine said, "what you can possibly
want with me. Our former relations have scarcely been of so pleasant a
nature as to render a visit from you easily to be understood."

"I will admit," Phineas Duge said coldly, "that personally I have no
interest or any concern in you. But nevertheless there are two matters
which must bring us together so far as the holding of a few minutes'
conversation can count. In the first place, I want to know whether you
are going to make use of the paper which my daughter stole, and which
you feloniously received? In the second place, I want to know how much
or what you will accept for the return of that paper? And thirdly, I
want to know what the devil you have done with my niece, Virginia
Longworth?"

"Your niece, Virginia Longworth," Norris Vine repeated thoughtfully.
"Ar