"Don't let's hang round here," said the detective, "and don't stand

holding yourself like a ramrod--like that gent out there with the ruff

that must be taking the skin off his chin. I kinder thought I'd like to

see the whole show, but we'd best go now and wait for our little turn."

He led the way round the building to the rear of the southwest tower.

There was a little grove of jasmine trees just beneath it, that made the

air overpoweringly sweet, but there were no lights on this side, as the

garages, stables, vegetable gardens, and servants' quarters would have

destroyed the picture.

Spaulding glanced about sharply, but there was not even a strolling

couple, and even the moon was shining on the other side of the heavy mass

of buildings.

"Now, listen," he said. "You see this window?"--he indicated one directly

over their heads. "At exactly one o'clock, when everybody is flocking to

the supper tables on the terraces, I expect some one to lean out of that

window and talk to some one who will be waiting just below. There may be

no talk, but I think there will be, and I want you to listen to every

word of it without so much as drawing a long breath, no matter what is

said, until I grab your elbow--like this--then I want you to put up your

hand in a hurry while I'm also attendin' to business.

"That's all I'll say now. But by the time a few words have been said,

later, I guess you'll be on.

"Now, we must resign ourselves to a long wait without a smoke and to

keeping perfectly still. I dared not risk comin' any later for fear the

others might be beforehand, too."

Ruyler ground his teeth. He felt ridiculous and humiliated. It was no

compensation that he was holding up the wall of a stucco Moorish palace

and that some three hundred masked people in fancy dress were within

earshot... or did the way he was togged out make him feel all the more

absurd? The whole thing was beastly un-American....

But, was it, after all? If he and Helene had been here together to-night,

not married and harrowed, but engaged and quick with romance, would he

have thought it absurd to conspire and maneuver to separate her from the

crowd and snatch a few moments of heavenly solitude? Would he have

despised himself for suffering torments if she flouted him or for wanting

to murder any man who balked him?

Love, and all the passions, creative and destructive, it engendered, all

the sentiments and follies and crimes, to say nothing of ambition and

greed and the lust to kill in war--these were instincts and traits that

appeared in mankind generation after generation, in every corner

civilized and savage of the globe. The world changed somewhat in form

during its progress, but never in substance.




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