ickel-plated counter. It
appeared to contain pure sparkling water, but the liquor it held was
knock-out whisky, a tintless drink of exceeding potency, above proof. The
Australian shook his head. But he laughed under his neat moustache as he
turned away, and the bar-tender concluded to carry his joke through. He
dealt out the drinks to their respective owners, and with a dexterous
sweep of a shirt-sleeved arm brought the innocent-seeming carafe and a
gleaming, polished tumbler immediately before the square-faced hulking
doctor with the queer blue eyes, whose pretty bride of three days was
waiting for him in their room upon the third floor of the humming,
overcrowded caravanserai. Saxham, absorbed by the thought of her, poured
out a tumblerful of the clear, sparkling stuff, and had half emptied it
before he realised the trick. His eyes grew red with injected blood, and
his hair bristled on his head. He struck out once across the narrow
counter. The long wall-mirror behind the bar-tender cracked and starred
with the crashing impact of the joker's skull, and the man fell senseless,
bleeding from the mouth and nostrils.

Another attendant came running at the crash, and the exclamations of those
who had seen the swift retaliation wreaked. Saxham, leaving a banknote
lying on the counter, wheeled abruptly, and went out of the bar.

His brain was on fire. His blood ran riot in his burning veins, and the
vice he had deemed dead stirred in the depths of his being, lifted its
slender head, and hissed, quivered a forked tongue, and struck with
poisoned fangs. He went out into the purple night that wedded lovers would
have found so perfect. The great white stars winked down at him jeeringly,
and a little mocking breeze sniggered among the mimosas and palms of the
hotel gardens. He passed out of them into the many-tongued Babel of the
streets, packed with humanity, throbbing with virile life, and tramped the
magnificent avenues and wide electric-lighted streets of Cape Town with
the thousands who had no beds at all, and the ten thousand who had, but
preferred not to occupy them. To his narrow couch in the dressing-room
adjoining Lynette's bedroom her husband dared not go.

So he wore the night out, doggedly wrestling with the demon that boils the
blood of strong fierce men to forgetfulness of compacts and breach of
oaths. Daybreak touched him with a chilly shivering finger, a hulking
figure dozing on one of the white-painted iron sea