oney out the next! Clear, what?"

Ricardo, with his trick of looking one way and moving another approached
Schomberg slowly.

"To get his money?" he purred.

"Gewiss," snapped Schomberg with impatient superiority. "What else? That
is, only the money he had with the Tesmans. What he has buried or put
away on the island, devil only knows. When you think of the lot of hard
cash that passed through that man's hands, for wages and stores and all
that--and he's just a cunning thief, I tell you." Ricardo's hard stare
discomposed the hotel-keeper, and he added in an embarrassed tone: "I
mean a common, sneaking thief--no account at all. And he calls himself a
Swedish baron, too! Tfui!"

"He's a baron, is he? That foreign nobility ain't much," commented Mr.
Ricardo seriously. "And then what? He hung about here!"

"Yes, he hung about," said Schomberg, making a wry mouth. "He--hung
about. That's it. Hung--"

His voice died out. Curiosity was depicted in Ricardo's countenance.

"Just like that; for nothing? And then turned about and went back to
that island again?"

"And went back to that island again," Schomberg echoed lifelessly,
fixing his gaze on the floor.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Ricardo with genuine surprise. "What
is it?"

Schomberg, without looking up, made an impatient gesture. His face was
crimson, and he kept it lowered. Ricardo went back to the point.

"Well, but how do you account for it? What was his reason? What did he
go back to the island for?"

"Honeymoon!" spat out Schomberg viciously.

Perfectly still, his eyes downcast, he suddenly, with no preliminary
stir, hit the table with his fist a blow which caused the utterly
unprepared Ricardo to leap aside. And only then did Schomberg look up
with a dull, resentful expression.

Ricardo stared hard for a moment, spun on his heel, walked to the end
of the room, came back smartly, and muttered a profound "Ay! Ay!" above
Schomberg's rigid head. That the hotel-keeper was capable of a
great moral effort was proved by a gradual return of his severe,
Lieutenant-of-the-Reserve manner.

"Ay, ay!" repeated Ricardo more deliberately than before, and as if
after a further survey of the circumstances, "I wish I hadn't asked you,
or that you had told me a lie. It don't suit me to know that there's a
woman mixed up in this affair. What's she like? It's the girl you--"

"Leave off!" muttered Schomberg, utterly pitiful behind his stiff
military front.