Diane of the Green Van

Philip's hand came down heavily upon the Palmer's broad shoulder and Carl wheeled. In that instant as he grasped Philip's hand in a silence more eloquent than words, every finer instinct of his queerly balanced nature flashed in his face. The two hands tightened and fell apart.

"Come, smoke!" invited Carl, smiling. "I'm glad you're here. I haven't been ragged and abused for so long there's a lonely furrow in my soul."

But Dick Sherrill, looking very warm and disgruntled in a costume he informed them bitterly was meant for Claude Duval, came up as they were turning away and insisted upon presenting Carl to the guest of the evening.

"Ann sent me," he added. "And you've got to come. And I want to say right now that Ann makes me tired. She's as notional as a lunatic. She planned this rig and now she doesn't like it. And if I don't look like a highwayman you can wager your last sou I feel like one, and that's sufficient. The whole trouble is that Ann's been so busy with hair-dressers and manicurists and corsetières and dressmakers and the Lord knows what not over that stunning Indian girl, who'll likely run off with the family topazes, that she's had no time for her brother, and rubs it in now by laughing at the shape of my legs. What's the matter with my legs, Carl?"

"Too ornamental," said Carl. "Curvilinear grace is all very well but--"

"Shut up!" said Sherrill viciously. "Have you ever met this king-pin I'm exploiting?"

"I've seen him," said Car. "Once when he was riding up the mountain road to Houdania with a brilliant escort and one--er--other time. Think I told you I'd spent a month or so in a Houdanian monastery several years ago, didn't I, Dick?"

"Yes," said Dick. "That's why I asked. Poynter, who in blue blazes are you looking for?"

Philip flushed.

"Dry up!" he advised. "You're grouchy."

Sherrill was still heatedly denying the charge when they halted near the Baron.

"You wear a singular costume," suggested Ronador stiffly, when the formalities of presentation were at an end. He glanced at the luminous turban and thence to the chains. Carl, though he had primarily intended the singular rig for the eyes of Tregar, had subtly invited the remark. His eyes were darkly ironic.

"Prince," he said guilelessly, "it is a silent parable."

"Yes?"

"I am 'The Ghost of a Man's Past!'" explained the Palmer lightly--and clanked his chains. The level glances of the two met with the keenness of invisible swords.

"The heavy, sinister black," suggested the Palmer, "the flashes of forbidden scarlet--the hours of a man's past are scarlet, are they not?--the cloud above the head, with a treacherous heart of fire, the clanking chains of bondage--they are all here. And the skeleton in the closet--Sire--behold!" He laughed and flung back his mantle, revealing a perfect skeleton cunningly etched in glaring white upon a close-fitting garment of black.