Gianapolis had trained himself to suspect all
impulses.

Therefore he had drawn near--near enough to overhear their conversation
without proclaiming himself. What he had learned by this eavesdropping
he counted of peculiar value.

Helen Cumberly was arranging to dine with her friend at the latter's
hotel that evening. "But I want to be home early," he had heard the
girl say, "so if I leave you at about ten o'clock I can walk to Palace
Mansions. No! you need not come with me; I enjoy a lonely walk through
the streets of London in the evening"...

Gianapolis registered a mental vow that Helen's walk should not be a
lonely one. He did not flatter himself upon the possession of a pleasing
exterior, but, from experience, he knew that with women he had a winning
way.

Now, his mind aglow with roseate possibilities, he stepped from the tram
in the neighborhood of Shoreditch, and chartered a taxi-cab. From this
he descended at the corner of Arundel Street and strolled along westward
in the direction of the hotel patronized by Miss Ryland. At a corner
from which he could command a view of the entrance, he paused and
consulted his watch.

It was nearly twenty minutes past ten. Mentally, he cursed Mahara, who
perhaps had caused him to let slip this golden opportunity. But his was
not a character easily discouraged; he lighted a cigarette and prepared
himself to wait, in the hope that the girl had not yet left her friend.

Gianapolis was a man capable of the uttermost sacrifices upon either
of two shrines; that of Mammon, or that of Eros. His was a temperament
(truly characteristic of his race) which can build up a structure
painfully, year by year, suffering unutterable privations in the cause
of its growth, only to shatter it at a blow for a woman's smile. He was
a true member of that brotherhood, represented throughout the bazaars of
the East, of those singular shopkeepers who live by commercial rapine,
who, demanding a hundred piastres for an embroidered shawl from a plain
woman, will exchange it with a pretty one for a perfumed handkerchief.
Externally of London, he was internally of the Levant.

His vigil lasted but a quarter of an hour. At twenty-five minutes to
eleven, Helen Cumberly came running down the steps of the hotel and
hurried toward the Strand. Like a shadow, Gianapolis, throwing away a
half-smoked cigarette, glided around the corner, paused and so timed
his return that he literally ran into the girl as s