ownership of a certain stake--he stared in amazement into the gloomy den. Yet that amazement was not occasioned by the place itself (he had seen worse, or at least as bad, in other lands), but by the face of a man who was seated behind the half-caste girl acting as croupier, evidently under his directions.

Where had he seen that face, or one like it, before? That was what he was asking himself now; that was what was causing his amazement!

Where? Where? For the features were known to him--the face was familiar, some trick or turn in it was not strange.

Where had he done so, and what did it mean?

Almost he was appalled, dismayed, at the sight of that face. The nose straight, the eyes full and clear, the chin clear cut; nothing in it unfamiliar to him except a certain cruel, determined look that he did not recognise.

The dispute waxed stronger between the gamblers; the half-caste girl laughed and chattered like one of the monkeys outside in the woods, and beat the table more than once with her lithe, sinuous hand and summoned them to put down fresh stakes, to recommence the game; the men squabbled and wrangled between themselves, and one pointed significantly to his blouse--open at the breast; so significantly, indeed, that none who saw the action could doubt what there was inside that blouse, lying ready to his right hand.

That action of the man--a little wizened fellow, himself half Spaniard, half Indian, with perhaps a drop or two of the tar-bucket also in his veins--brought things to an end, to a climax.

For the other man whose face was puzzling Julian Ritherdon's brain, and puzzling him with a bewilderment that was almost weird and uncanny, suddenly sprang up from beside, or rather behind, the girl croupier and cried--

"Stop it! Cease, I say. It is you, Jaime, you who always makes these disputes. Come! I'll have no more of it. And keep your hand from the pistol or----"

But his threat was ended by his action, which was to seize the man he had addressed by the scruff of his neck, after which he commenced to haul him towards the door.

Then he--then all of them--saw the intruder, Julian Ritherdon, standing there by that door, looking at them calmly and unruffled--calm and unruffled, that is to say, except for his bewilderment at the sight of the other man's face.

They 

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