er, came with startling
distinctness, the shriek of a parrot. She would have recognized that
piercing cry anywhere. It was Rajah. In the next room, and she had
not known that Warrington (she would always know him by that name) was
stopping at the same hotel! She listened intently. Presently she
heard muffled sounds: a clatter of metal. A few minutes later came a
softer tinkle, scurry of pattering feet, then silence.

Elsa ran to the door and stood motionless by the jamb, waiting,
ethereally white in the moonshine. Suddenly upon the gallery pillars
flashed yellow light. She should have gone back to bed, but a thrill
of unknown fear held her. By and by the yellow light went out with
that quickness which tricks the hearing into believing that the
vanishing had been accompanied by sound. She saw Warrington, fully
dressed, issue forth cautiously, glance about, then pass down the
gallery, stepping with the lightness of a cat.

She returned hastily to her room, threw over her shoulders a kimono,
and went back to the door, hesitating there for a breath or two. She
stepped out upon the gallery. What had roused him at this time of
night? She leaned over the railing and peered down into the roadway
which in daytime was given over to the rickshaw coolies. She heard the
crunch of wheels, a low murmur of voices; beyond this, nothing more.
But as the silence of the night became tense once more, she walked as
far as Warrington's door, and paused there.

The gallery floor was trellised with moonlight and shadow. She saw
something lying in the center of a patch of light, and she stooped.
The light was too dim for her to read; so she reentered her own room
and turned on the lights. It was Warrington's letter of credit. She
gave a low laugh, perhaps a bit hysterical. There was no doubt of it.
Some one had entered his room. There had been a struggle in which he
had been the stronger, and the thief had dropped his plunder. (As a
matter of fact, the Chinaman, finding himself closed in upon, had
thrown the letter of credit toward the railing, in hope that it would
fall over to the ground below, where, later, he could recover it.) Elsa
pressed it to her heart as another woman might have pressed a rose, and
laughed again. Something of his; something to give her the excuse to
see and to speak to him again. To-morrow she would know; and he would
tell her the truth, even as her heart knew it now. For what other
reason had