tell him, not me.”

“Ca’pen Heavy.... Why didn’t you say that ’efore?” snarled the man. He went sullenly out of the cabin. The little lawyer waited for a minute, then he slipped out, too. He darted up the little alleyway that led to the main passage along the deck. Clement heard him say in a tart voice:

“My good man, I know my way off this ship—you needn’t hang about here waiting to conduct me off.”

In a moment he was back with Clement, talking[Pg 10] rapidly again, but this time in a noticeably lowered voice.

[Pg 10]

“He’s one of them. I thought he was. You’ll have to be on your guard against that steward.”

“One of whom?” asked Clement, trying to keep pace with the happenings. “One of the rogues, do you mean? Good heavens! are you telling me there is a sort of Villains’ Gang of them aboard this ship?”

“I don’t say it,” said the little man grimly, “but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it were so. It’s a big thing, a terribly big thing, my friend, this marriage of Heloise. It is a matter of a million pounds sterling and more.”

III

“You are rather stunning as well as other things,” said Clement limply.

He really was feeling a trifle dazed. The little man had so hustling a manner. Also, his own knowledge of the girl, Heloise Keys, was of the faintest kind. She was just a tall, slim girl whom he had found attractive enough to want to know again after his first meeting. She was quite pleasant, quite English, quite natural. Apart from her special attraction, she was just one of the millions of crisp, self-assured and self-contained young women of Britain.

He had met her, as he had said, twice. The[Pg 11] first time had been a delightful accident. He had arrived to book his passage at the Canadian Pacific Ocean Service Office in London, to find her there on the same errand.

[Pg 11]

What is more, there was a certain sense of comradeship in that action, for both intended to sail to Canada in the same ship, the Empress of Prague. One shipping clerk attended to both, he left the one cabin plan before them from which to choose their rooms, while he went away on the business of registering their tickets.

Clement had only to glance 

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