d shoulders, then reached across her body, took from her dressing
table a toilet-water flask of lovely Italian glass, and drenched her
face and bosom with its pungent contents.

She gasped, started convulsively, and began to breathe with less
effort. That dreadful rattling in her throat was stilled. Heavy lids
curtained her eyes.

Lanyard continued to apply the scented water with a lavish hand. In
time the woman shuddered, sighed profoundly, and looked up with a
witless stare.

Man is measurably a creature of gestures stereotyped when the world was
young: Lanyard patted the woman's hand as one might comfort an abused
child. "It is all right now, Liane," he said in a reassuring voice.
"Rest tranquilly. You will soon be yourself again. But wait: I will
find you a drink."

She said nothing, her look continued cloudy; but the dazed eyes
followed him as he got up and cast about for a glass of water.

But then he remembered Dupont, and decided that Liane could wait
another minute while he made it impossible for the Apache to do more
mischief.

He moved round the chaise-longue and paused, looking down thoughtfully.
Since his fall Dupont had made neither moan nor stir. No crescent
irides showed beneath the half-shut lids. He was so motionless, he
seemed scarcely to breathe. Lanyard dug the toe of a boot into his ribs
none too gently, but without satisfaction of any doubts. The fellow
gave no sign of sensibility, but lay utterly relaxed, with the look of
one dead.

Lanyard frowned uneasily. He had seen men drop dead from blows less
powerful than his, and though this one had well earned a death swift
and merciless, Lanyard experienced a twinge of horror at the thought.
Often enough it had been his lot in times of peace and war to be forced
to fight for life, and more than once to kill in defence of it; but
that had never happened, never could happen, without his suffering the
bitterest regret. Even now, in the case of this bloody-handed butcher,
this ruthless garroter....

Dropping to his knees, Lanyard bent over the body to search for
symptoms of animation. He perceived them instantly. With inconceivable
suddenness Dupont demonstrated that he was very much alive. An arm like
the flexible limb of a tree wound itself affectionately round Lanyard's
neck, clipped his head to Dupont's yearning bosom, ground his face into
the flannel folds of a foul-scented shirt. Simultaneously the huge body
heaved prodigiously, and after