it has been a vital matter."

Before he had marked something peculiar about the eyes; now he saw just what it was. They were Oriental, slanting upward slightly toward the white temples. No wonder she had impressed him as foreign. He wondered if she were Persian or Arabian; if in her blood was a strain of Chinese, even?

He gave no sign of having heard her but groped for the door through which he had come. It now, like the rest of the walls, was hidden under the silken hangings which no doubt had fallen into place when the door had closed behind him. He did not remember having shut it; perhaps the old woman in the outer room had done so. And locked it. For when at last his hand found the knob the door would not open. "What's all this nonsense about?" he demanded. "I want to go."

It was her turn to pretend not to have heard. She sat back idly, looking at him fixedly, smiling at him after her strange fashion. "I have heard of you," she said at last. "A great deal. I have even seen you once before tonight. I know the sort of man you are. I know how you made your money in Mexico; how you rode with it across the border. I have never known another man like you, Señor Jim Kendric."

"Will you have the door unlocked?" he said. "Or shall I smash it off its hinges?"

"A man with your look and your reputation," she said calmly, "was worth a woman's looking up. When that woman had need for a man." Her eyes were glittering now; she leaned forward, suddenly rigid and tense and breathing hard. "When I have found a man who stakes ten thousand, twenty thousand on one throw and is not moved; who returns ten thousand in rage because a word of pity goes with it, am I to let him go?"

"I don't like the company you keep," said Kendric. "And I don't like your ways of doing business. I guess you'll have to let me go."

"You mean Ruiz Rios?" Her eyes flashed and her two hands clenched. Then she sank back again, laughing. "When you learn to hate him as I do, señor, then will you know what hate means!"

He pressed a knee against the door, near the lock. The hangings getting in his way, he tore them aside. Zoraida Castelmar watched him half in amusement, half in mockery. "There is a heavy oak bar on the other side," she told him carelessly.

"I have a notion," he flung at her, "to take that white throat of yours in my two hands and choke you!"

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