ere's nothing in it! I shouldn't have
noticed, had it been some chap I'd never heard of. And then, Kidd's
Pines, don't you know! That's a famous place. There was a picture of it
in the Sunday _Times_, and something about its history. I've always
wanted to see the house. May I come down, Miss Moore? There might be
ways I could help you--your father, I mean--if I could look around and
study the situation. For instance, it might pay me--actually _pay_ me
(no question of obligations)--to lend money on the place enough to set
Mr. Moore right with his creditors and enough over to begin again."

"I don't understand," said Pat.

"Oh, you _spider_!" said I, in my mind, also perhaps with my eyes. I
refrained from saying it with my lips, however, because after all, you
see, I was a new friend of Pat's and mustn't stick my fingers into the
mechanism of her fate without being sure I could improve its working.
Jack and I aren't millionaires, especially since the war broke out and
all our pet investments slumped. That convalescent home for soldiers
we're financing at Folkestone eats up piles of money, to say nothing of
the Belgian refugees to whom we've given up Edencourt. There are
fourteen families, and not less than seven children in the smallest, the
largest has sixteen--the average is ten. Is your brain equal to the
calculation? Mine isn't, but our purse _has_ to be; for we've guaranteed
to clothe as well as feed the lot for the duration of the war, and I
hear we're keeping a shoe factory working double time. I felt that the
most we could do in a financial way for dear Pat would be to pay duty on
her car and clothes, and see that, personally, she lacked for nothing.
Whatever Mr. Caspian's motives might be, I dared not choke him off on
my own responsibility, and Jack said not a word. So I swallowed that
"spider," but just as I was choking it down and Caspian was beginning to
explain his noble, disinterested scheme, Mrs. Shuster and the S. M. (for
that in future please read Ship's Mystery) bore down upon the letter
"M."

For an instant I supposed that Pirate Shuster had captured Storm as a
reluctant prize, but his expression told me that this was not the case.
He came willingly, had even the air of leading the expedition; and his
look of interested curiosity Caspian-ward was only equalled by mine at
him. Remembering vividly the strange, brilliant, and puzzling glance he
had thrown to me as I left him with Mrs. Shuster, I threw hi