Maseden took thought a moment.

“It has never been dishonored during my life,” he said quietly. “I would need to be assured that it will not be smirched after my death.”

Steinbaum was stout. A certain anxiety to succeed in an extraordinary mission, joined to the warm, moist atmosphere of the cell, had induced a copious perspiration.

[Pg 4]

[Pg 4]

“Ach, Gott!” he purred despairingly. “I know nothing. She told me nothing. She offered to pay me for the trouble—”

“Ah!”

“Why not? I run some risk in acting so. She is American, like yourself. She came to me—”

“American, you say! Is she young?”

“I think so. I have not seen her face. She wears a thick veil.”

Romance suddenly spread its fairy wings in that squalid South American prison-house. Maseden’s spirit was fired to perform a last act of chivalry, of mercy, it might be, in behalf of some unhappy girl of his own race. The sheer folly of this amazing marriage moved him to grim mirth.

“Very well,” he said with a half-hearted laugh. “I’ll do it! But, as you are mixing the cards, Steinbaum, there must be a joker in the pack somewhere. I’m a pretty quick thinker, you know, and I shall probably see through your proposition before I die, though I am damned if I can size it up right off.”

“Mr. Maseden, I assure you, on my—well, you and I never were friends and never will be, but I have told you the real facts this time.”

“When is the wedding to take place?”

“Now.”

“Great Scott! Did the lady come with you?”

[Pg 5]

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