Slyne had drawn back a step. One of his hands fell on the haft of a flogging-hammer that some one had left lying loose on the casemate there. Had it not been for the proximity of the pilot, drowsing away the time till morning in the chart-house behind, he would most assuredly have attempted to knock the old man on the head with it. He felt sure that, but for Captain Dove, he could have managed Sallie now that Yoxall was out of the way. He stood gnawing savagely at his lower lip as she vanished along the deck in the darkness. He had taken no notice at all of her timid good-bye.

Captain Dove grinned spitefully at him through the gloom of the small hours. "You\'d better be off below and pack up," the old man suggested. "You\'ll be going ashore as soon as we get pratique."

"But—I\'ll be back. Give me time to turn!" Slyne snarled at him. "A bargain\'s a bargain, and—I\'ll be back."

"You\'d better not," Captain Dove advised in a very ominous voice, and went on his way below, leaving Slyne to his own aggrieved, embittered reflections.

To Jasper Slyne the past few days had been like a foretaste of purgatory. Captain Dove had interdicted all communication with Sallie, and had proved a most unpleasant companion himself throughout the unspeakably wearisome passage from the North-west African coast, a passage made at the poorest speed of the ship because coal was scarce and he was afraid to call anywhere by the way to fill up his bunkers. Amid the dire squalor and discomfort, the enforced inaction and loneliness of life under such conditions, Slyne\'s only solace had been the hope of finally winning Sallie, by fair means or foul. He who, in his time, had met and made love to so many charming adventuresses, who would not have thought any more about her had she been one of their sort, had become absolutely obsessed by ambitions to be fulfilled with her for his wife.

And now—he knew that neither force nor finesse would avail him against Captain Dove\'s ultimatum. He had not the cash to meet the old man\'s demands, and that was apparently the end of the matter.

Most men, in Slyne\'s place, would have owned themselves beaten then. But not so he. Thinking it all over again, he would admit to himself no more than that he was for the moment baffled by contrary circumstances; circumstances such as had been his lot for so long that he could contemplate them almost unmoved. It was his happy creed that in the very face of failure itself one may, as often as not, discern the inspiriting features of final success. The dark hour that heralds dawn he spent pacing the cluttered quarter-deck of the Olive Branch in the cold, his far-away eyes always fixed on the twinkling dock-lights, his almost bloodless lips straight and compressed under his black moustache, cudgelling his brains for some safe means of immediately obtaining the money he wanted.

He had not the cash to meet Captain Dove\'s demands. But neither was he so entirely penniless as Captain Dove supposed him. He had only a hundred dollars in hand, but he had twenty thousand francs at his credit in a French bank. Many a millionaire had risen to affluence from infinitely smaller beginnings.

But it would have been idle to offer Captain Dove any such trifling sum on account of the price he had set on Sallie. And, rack his own overworked wits as he would, Slyne could think of no safe plan for turning his modest capital over at a sufficient profit within the time at his disposal.

"The only possible way," he told himself finally, his teeth set, "the only possible way is to chance my luck at those cursèd tables again. Although, God knows that\'s a risk I\'d give up anything else to avoid. But—it\'s the only possible way now," he repeated vexedly, recalling the very excellent reasons he had for never showing his face in Monte Carlo again.

For, only a season or two before, he had figured throughout the C?te d\'Azur as accessory in an affaire with which the whole civilised world had afterwards rung, in spite of every effort to hush it up, an affaire whose tragic consequences had caused such a flutter of scandalised chagrin among the private police of three great European powers that he could never again cross their frontiers without fear. Since he knew very well that, if he were ever identified, he would deservedly disappear, without any further fuss, to spend the rest of his life as a nameless cypher, forgotten, among the living dead, entombed in some secure fortress. In that cosmopolitan underworld to which such as Slyne belong, occur many curious incidents not reported in the newspapers, and the citizens of Cosmopolis have nowhere consul or minister to protect them against unfortunate consequences.

Slyne had no illusions as to what his fate would be if he were recognised on the Riviera.

"But she\'s worth the stake," he told himself with dogged determination, "even though it is life and liberty as well as my last few francs. And—I\'d just as soon be done with things if I can\'t capture Sallie from that old scoundrel."

He knew very well, of course, that his prospect of making a financial success at the tables was no less of a forlorn hope. But he had all a professional gambler\'s blind faith in the goddess of chance. And since he would not withdraw from the contest, he had no option but to play that losing hazard also.

Day had broken before he had completed his plans. And then Captain Dove reappeared, sleepy-eyed and unshaven, to interview the port-doctor.

As soon as that functionary had glanced at the forged Bill of Health put before him and seen the crew mustered to the tally it told, the yellow flag at the fore was hauled down and Captain Dove hailed a shore-boat, to which he had Slyne\'s baggage transferred, and curtly told Slyne to be off ashore.

Nor did Slyne delay to bid him farewell. Each was heartily sick of the sight of the other, and each had plans of his own to promote in a hurry. They separated without so much as a nod. Sallie was invisible. And Slyne, in the boat on his way to the Custom-house, only looked back once at the ports of the poop-cabin, to see, within the dingy brass frame of one, a face that seemed to be watching him very thankfully as he went, a horrible face, with blubber lips, almost inhumanly ugly, the face of Sallie\'s devoted attendant, the dumb black dwarf, Ambrizette.

A yawning Customs\' searcher glanced at his baggage and passed it unopened. In return for which courtesy Slyne bestowed upon him a doubtful rix-dollar and a few words in fluent Italian concerning the Olive Branch—words which would not improve Captain Dove\'s prospects of an early departure from Genoa, but might, conversely, increase by a little his own scanty time-allowance in that desperate bout with fortune to which he had committed himself. He knew that Captain Dove was intent on coaling and sailing again without the loss of a minute that might be saved.

He had all his own movements mapped out in anticipation. He drove to an hotel at which he had stayed once before, and, after a Turkish bath and breakfast, went on to the Crédit Lyonnais office to cash his draft. Then he made a number of purchases in inconspicuous shops, where he had to spend a good deal of time in bargaining, looked in at the Motor-Car Mart & Exchange, where he saw a big touring-car over which he argued for some minutes with the salesman; and, after a belated but liberal lunch in a first-class restaurant, he turned back toward the sale-room.

A man in an elaborate chauffeur\'s uniform, and evidently English, stopped him in the street outside, to ask whether he would care to buy a gold cigarette-case, a bargain. Slyne looked him over, and sized him up at a glance.

"Stranded?" he asked, and the man nodded sulkily.

"Want a few days\' work?"

The chauffeur\'s dissipated face brightened.

"Yes, sir," said he, "I do."

"Wait here, then," said Slyne, and went inside.

"Well," he asked the salesman, "have you thought it over? What\'s the last word?"

"Fifteen thousand lire, milor—not a soldo less," declared the dapper, frock-coated salesman, in a tone of final decision which Slyne\'s sharp ears judged unfeigned. "The car is worth twice as much. Indeed, I could not let it go at such a ruinous loss were it not—But, ecco! The owner himself. He would probably be very ill pleased to hear it was actually sold at that ridiculous price."

Slyne looked round at the grey-haired, portly, prosperous-looking individual threading his way through the agglomeration of cars in the background, and his half-parted lips snapped together again.

He wanted that particular car and had made up his mind to buy it, rash though such an investment might prove, but he had surmised from a lynx-like glance at the seller that he might be able to get it for even less than the salesman was authorised to accept. And, since his own pockets were so poorly lined for the expensive part he was playing, he, who despised chaffering, was yet bent on making the very best bargain he could.

"It\'s more than I\'ve got about me," he told the salesman in a very audible voice, as the fat man in the fur coat halted indeterminately a few paces away. And at the words the new-comer\'s puffy face lighted up, as if with relief, behind the pince-nez he was wearing. He came forward and spoke.

"An Englishman, by Jove!" he remarked with a great semblance of geniality. "So am I. Very happy to meet you, sir. You\'re interested in my car?"

"Not at the price," Slyne returned, with an indifferent hauteur which he judged likely to be effective with one in the stranger\'s presumable plight. And the fat man\'s lips drooped visibly, the pouches under his uneasy eyes became more marked. He was obviously disappointed, and felt himself snubbed. He did not seem quite sure what to say or do next.

Slyne, congratulating himself on his talent for character reading, turned away, to look at a cheap runabout, as carelessly as though he had all time at his disposal, instead of being, as he was, in a fever of ill-restrained impatience. The salesman figuratively washed his hands of them both; he could already foresee a forced sale at a calamitous sacrifice. And so it fell out.

Slyne, cavalier to the verge of rudeness, finally bought the big scarlet car, which the other almost forced upon him, for about half its market value, and paid for it there and then, in the new French notes which had almost been burning a hole in his pocket since he had left the Crédit Lyonnais office—so eager was he to be off on his last forlorn hope of winning Sallie.

"If you had allowed me only a few hours longer, I could have got you twice that amount," said the disappointed salesman in a stage aside to the seller as he counted over his own diminished commission. But the fat man merely bestowed on him a look of contemptuous annoyance, and, having signed the receipt Slyne required, tucked away in an empty pocket-book the balance of the crisply-rustling bills he had just received.

Even then he did not appear to know what next to do with himself. For, having glanced at his watch, he gave vent to a grunt of disgust, and hung on his heel undecidedly, after making a move to go.

"It\'s only about a hundred miles to Monaco, isn\'t it?" Slyne asked the salesman; and was answered in the affirmative.

The fat man gasped and choked for a moment, and then spoke again, with more confidence: a change due, perhaps, to the improvement in his finances.

"Pardon me, sir," said he, "but—if you\'re going that way, I wonder—It would be a most tremendous favour to me, and I haven\'t haggled over giving you the best of our bargain. The train\'s just gone, and—"

Slyne, chin in air, once more looked him over appraisingly, as he stammered and hesitated; and was very much disposed to cut him adrift without more ado. But some indefinable impulse, some feeling that here was a bird of a feather very sadly astray, caused him to alter his mind. "I\'ll be glad to give you a lift," he said, more graciously, "if you\'re ready to start now. But I can\'t wait."

The fat man\'s face lighted up again. "My luck\'s on the mend at last!" he declared. "I\'m in as great a hurry as you can be, sir. I\'m more than obliged to you for your courtesy. May I offer you my card?"

Slyne glanced at the slip of pasteboard conferred upon him while the car was being shifted out of the showroom into the street, where his elaborate chauffeur was in waiting. And, "Jump in, Mr. Jobling," ............