The change from the bright sunlight without to the dim and dusty interior of the store was, at first, almost blinding to Herc. Before entering he had taken the precaution to pull the front of his soft hat down over his eyes, for, as will be recalled, he was wearing civilian clothing. This did not help to make things clearer to his vision in the gloom.

His first impression was of a large apartment, bare of floor and wall, with a set of dusty show cases placed at one side behind a rickety counter. It did not look like a store where much business of the kind it ostensibly catered to was transacted.

All this confirmed Herc's growing suspicions that the place was conducted as a blind. That[Pg 201] it was nothing more than a haunt for Japanese spies and those allied with them in their schemes against Uncle Sam.

A soft voice, a voice with a purring inflection as silky as that of a cream-fed cat, broke on his ears.

"What will the gentleman please to 'ave?"

Herc saw that a small, spectacled Japanese had glided rather than stepped in behind the counter, and now stood regarding the new customer with a face that might as well have been a mask for all the expression it conveyed.

It is a curious fact, but Herc, who up to that moment had acted the part of a bold investigator, suddenly found himself embarrassed. He struggled to find an answer to the simple question that had been put to him. This Jap behind the counter regarded him with growing suspicion.

"You come in for something—a cigar, maybe?" he purred.

[Pg 202]

"Yes—oh, yes,—give me—give me a box of matches," blurted out Herc desperately.

"A box of matches? Veree well."

The Jap turned deftly to the show cases behind him, and inserting a long fingered hand in a drawer, drew out the required article. Herc fumbled in his pocket for the change necessary, but in so doing he drew out a navy button, cut from his first uniform, with the small silver.

As he extended a nickel across the counter, with no very clear idea as to what he was to do next, he had the misfortune, for so he presently perceived it to be, to drop this pocket piece.

It fell with a jingling sound and before he could pick it up, the Jap was out from behind the counter and had grasped and was extending it to him.

"A navee button," said he suavely. "The honorable gentleman is in the service of the so estimable Uncle Sam?"

There was one thing that Herc could not do,[Pg 203] at no matter what cost, and that was to lie. Yet he had important reasons for not wishing his service to become known to the Jap. So he compromised.

"Yes, it's a navy button," he said pocketing it.

"Ah; it is a fine service," said the Jap, with a swift appraising look at Herc, and at the red hair that showed under his pulled-down hat. "I often deplore that I am Japanese and so cannot to enter it."

"Yet there are Japs in the navy," said Herc, and then with one of those incautious bursts which Ned so often deprecated, he rushed on, "one came in here just now,&mda............