ired quietly.

"Implicitly," Laverick assured him.

"She spoke herself?"

"No, she sent a message. Excuse me, Bellamy, won't you, but I
must really go."

"By all means," Bellamy answered.

They stood at the entrance to the hotel together while a taxicab
was summoned. Laverick stepped quickly in.

"25, Jermyn Street," he ordered.

Bellamy watched him drive off. Then he sighed.

"I think, my friend Laverick," he said softly, "that you will need
some one to look after you to-night."

CHAPTER XXXII

MORRISON IS DESPERATE

Certainly it was a strange little gathering that waited in Morrison's
room for the coming of Laverick. There was Lassen--flushed, ugly,
breathing heavily, and watching the door with fixed, beady eyes.
There was Adolf Kahn, the man who had strolled out from the Milan
Hotel as Laverick had entered it, leaving the forged order behind
him. There was Streuss--stern, and desperate with anxiety. There
was Morrison himself, in the clothes of a workman, worn to a shadow,
with the furtive gleam of terrified guilt shining in his sunken
eyes, and the slouched shoulders and broken mien of the habitual
criminal. There was Zoe, around whom they were all standing, with
anger burning in her cheeks and gleaming out of her passion-filled
eyes. She, too, like the others, watched the door. So they waited.

Streuss, not for the first time, moved to the window and drawing
aside the curtains looked down into the street.

"Will he come--this Englishman?" he muttered. "Has he courage?"

"More courage than you who keep a girl here against her will!" Zoe
panted, looking at him defiantly. "More courage than my poor
brother, who stands there like a coward!"

"Shut up, Zoe!" Morrison exclaimed harshly. "There is nothing for
you to be furious about or frightened. No one wants to ill-treat
you. These gentlemen all want to behave kindly to us. It is
Laverick they want."

"And you," she cried, "are content to stand by and let him walk
into a trap--you let them even use my name to bring him here!
Arthur, be a man! Have nothing more to do with them. Help me to
get away from this place. Call out. Do something instead of
standing there and wasting the precious minutes."

He came towards her--ugly and threatening.

"I'll do something in a minute," he declared savagely,--"something
you won't like, either. Keep your mouth shut, I tell you. It's me
or him, and, by Heavens, he deserves what he'll