there were other regions
where gold was useless and law without power. Twenty-four hours ago she
would have declared it impossible that such an experience as she had
suffered could happen to anyone; she would have talked airily about
civilization and the nineteenth century, and progress and the police.
But her experience was teaching her that human nature remains always
the same, and that beneath the thin crust of security on which we good
citizens exist the dark and secret forces of crime continue to move,
just as they did in the days when you couldn't go from Cheapside to
Chelsea without being set upon by thieves. Her experience was in a fair
way to teach her this lesson better than she could have learnt it
even in the bureaux of the detective police of Paris, London, and St
Petersburg.

'Good morning,' the man repeated, and she glanced at him with a sullen,
angry gaze.

'You!' she exclaimed, 'You, Mr Thomas Jackson, if that is your name!
Loose me from this chair, and I will talk to you.' Her eyes flashed as
she spoke, and the contempt in them added mightily to her beauty. Mr
Thomas Jackson, otherwise Jules, erstwhile head waiter at the Grand
Babylon, considered himself a connoisseur in feminine loveliness, and
the vision of Nella Racksole smote him like an exquisite blow.

'With pleasure,' he replied. 'I had forgotten that to prevent you from
falling I had secured you to the chair'; and with a quick movement he
unfastened the band. Nella stood up, quivering with fiery annoyance and
scorn.

'Now,' she said, fronting him, 'what is the meaning of this?'

'You fainted,' he replied imperturbably. 'Perhaps you don't remember.'

The man offered her a deck-chair with a characteristic gesture. Nella
was obliged to acknowledge, in spite of herself, that the fellow had
distinction, an air of breeding. No one would have guessed that for
twenty years he had been an hotel waiter. His long, lithe figure, and
easy, careless carriage seemed to be the figure and carriage of an
aristocrat, and his voice was quiet, restrained, and authoritative.

'That has nothing to do with my being carried off in this yacht of
yours.'

'It is not my yacht,' he said, 'but that is a minor detail. As to the
more important matter, forgive me that I remind you that only a few
hours ago you were threatening a lady in my house with a revolver.'

'Then it was your house?'

'Why not? May I not possess a house?' He smiled.

'I must request you to