d if you
only knew how--eh, what? Plague too good for them? Ha, ha, ha!"

He bent down to stare at Schomberg who sat unstirring with stony eyes
and set features, and apparently deaf to the rasping derision of that
laughter so close to his red fleshy ear.

"Black plague too good for them, ha, ha!" Ricardo pressed the point on
the tormented hotel-keeper. Schomberg kept his eyes down obstinately.

"I don't wish any harm to the girl--" he muttered.

"But did she bolt from you? A fair bilk? Come!"

"Devil only knows what that villainous Swede had done to her--what he
promised her, how he frightened her. She couldn't have cared for him,
I know." Schomberg's vanity clung to the belief in some atrocious,
extraordinary means of seduction employed by Heyst. "Look how he
bewitched that poor Morrison," he murmured.

"Ah, Morrison--got all his money, what?"

"Yes--and his life."

"Terrible fellow, that Swedish baron! How is one to get at him?"

Schomberg exploded.

"Three against one! Are you shy? Do you want me to give you a letter of
introduction?"

"You ought to look at yourself in a glass," Ricardo said quietly. "Dash
me if you don't get a stroke of some kind presently. And this is the
fellow who says women can do nothing! That one will do for you, unless
you manage to forget her."

"I wish I could," Schomberg admitted earnestly. "And it's all the doing
of that Swede. I don't get enough sleep, Mr. Ricardo. And then, to
finish me off, you gentlemen turn up . . . as if I hadn't enough worry."

"That's done you good," suggested the secretary with ironic seriousness.
"Takes your mind off that silly trouble. At your age too."

He checked himself, as if in pity, and changing his tone:

"I would really like to oblige you while doing a stroke of business at
the same time."

"A good stroke," insisted Schomberg, as if it were mechanically. In his
simplicity he was not able to give up the idea which had entered his
head. An idea must be driven out by another idea, and with Schomberg
ideas were rare and therefore tenacious. "Minted gold," he murmured with
a sort of anguish.

Such an expressive combination of words was not without effect upon
Ricardo. Both these men were amenable to the influence of verbal
suggestions. The secretary of "plain Mr. Jones" sighed and murmured.

"Yes. But how is one to get at it?"

"Being three to one," said Schomberg, "I suppose you could get it for
the asking."

"One would think the f