The Message. Louis Tracy

me for a sucker.”

      Figuero hastened to the hotel, saw that his sable friends were well supplied with gin and cigarettes, bade them lie perdu till he came back, and made his way to the quay again. Peter was still there, apparently without occupation.

      “You lib for take me to yacht Sans Souci an’ I dash you five shillin’?” he said.

      “Right–o, jump in,” cried Peter, but he added under his breath, “Sink me if he don’t use a queer lingo, but money talks.”

      He used all his artifices to get Figuero to discuss his business in Cowes, but he met a man who could turn aside such conversational arrows without effort. At any rate, Peter was now sure he was not mistaken in believing that his fare was the “Portuguese slave–trader and gin–runner” spoken of by Warden, and he had not failed to notice the hotel which Figuero had visited so hurriedly.

      There was a check at the yacht. Mr. Baumgartner had gone ashore, but would return for luncheon. So Peter demanded an extra half crown for the return journey, and met a wondering Chris with a broad smile.

      “You’re goin’ shoppin’, sonny,” he exclaimed. “I’ve been earnin’ good money to–day. Sheer off for ‘arf an hour, an’ I’ll tie up the dinghy. I’ve got a notion that a pint would be a treat.”

      Thus it came to pass that while Señor Miguel Figuero was puzzling, even alarming the millionaire yacht–owner with his broken talk of Captain Varden, Dep’ty Commissioner and leader of bush expeditions—alarming him so thoroughly that he never dreamed of associating Miss Evelyn Dane with the Polly Perkins of Peter’s juvenile memories—Arthur Warden himself was driving in a hansom from Waterloo to the Foreign Office, and wondering what new phase of existence would open up before him when his news became known to the men who control the destinies of Outer Britain.