at the plunder of treachery, duplicity, and
all the moral abominations of Heyst had been there. But no; the blamed
thing was open.

"It might have been there at one time or another," he commented
gloomily, "but it isn't there now."

"The man did not elect to live in this house," remarked Mr. Jones. "And
by the by, what could he have meant by speaking of circumstances which
prevented him lodging us in the other bungalow? You remember what he
said, Martin? Sounded cryptic."

Martin, who remembered and understood the phrase as directly motived by
the existence of the girl, waited a little before saying:

"Some of his artfulness, sir; and not the worst of it either. That
manner of his to us, this asking no questions, is some more of his
artfulness. A man's bound to be curious, and he is; yet he goes on as if
he didn't care. He does care--or else what was he doing up with a cigar
in the middle of the night, doing a think? I don't like it."

"He may be outside, observing the light here, and saying the very same
thing to himself of our own wakefulness," gravely suggested Ricardo's
governor.

"He may be, sir; but this is too important to be talked over in the
dark. And the light is all right, it can be accounted for. There's a
light in this bungalow in the middle of the night because--why, because
you are not well. Not well, sir--that's what's the matter, and you will
have to act up to it."

The consideration had suddenly occurred to the faithful henchman, in the
light of a felicitous expedient to keep his governor and the girl apart
as long as possible. Mr. Jones received the suggestion without the
slightest stir, even in the deep sockets of his eyes, where a steady,
faint gleam was the only thing telling of life and attention in his
attenuated body. But Ricardo, as soon as he had enunciated his happy
thought, perceived in it other possibilities more to the point and of
greater practical advantage.

"With your looks, sir, it will be easy enough," he went on evenly, as
if no silence had intervened, always respectful, but frank, with
perfect simplicity of purpose. "All you've got to do is just to lie down
quietly. I noticed him looking sort of surprised at you on the wharf,
sir."

At these words, a naive tribute to the aspect of his physique, even more
suggestive of the grave than of the sick-bed, a fold appeared on that
side of the governor's face which was exposed to the dim light--a deep,
shadowy, semicircular fol