, before venturing
on some steps to get in touch with her behind that Swedish baron's back.
His theoretical view of the girl was such that he was quite prepared,
on the strength of that distant examination, to show himself
discreetly--perhaps even make a sign. It all depended on his reading of
the face. She couldn't be much. He knew that sort!

By protruding his head a little he commanded, through the foliage of a
festooning creeper, a view of the three bungalows. Irregularly disposed
along a flat curve, over the veranda rail of the farthermost one hung a
dark rug of a tartan pattern, amazingly conspicuous. Ricardo could see
the very checks. A brisk fire of sticks was burning on the ground in
front of the steps, and in the sunlight the thin, fluttering flame had
paled almost to invisibility--a mere rosy stir under a faint wreath of
smoke. He could see the white bandage on the head of Pedro bending over
it, and the wisps of black hair standing up weirdly. He had wound that
bandage himself, after breaking that shaggy and enormous head. The
creature balanced it like a load, staggering towards the steps. Ricardo
could see a small, long-handled saucepan at the end of a great hairy
paw.

Yes, he could see all that there was to be seen, far and near. Excellent
eyes! The only thing they could not penetrate was the dark oblong of the
doorway on the veranda under the low eaves of the bungalow's roof. And
that was vexing. It was an outrage. Ricardo was easily outraged. Surely
she would come out presently! Why didn't she? Surely the fellow did not
tie her up to the bedpost before leaving the house!

Nothing appeared. Ricardo was as still as the leafy cables of creepers
depending in a convenient curtain from the mighty limb sixty feet above
his head. His very eyelids were still, and this unblinking watchfulness
gave him the dreamy air of a cat posed on a hearth-rug contemplating the
fire. Was he dreaming? There, in plain sight, he had before him a white,
blouse-like jacket, short blue trousers, a pair of bare yellow calves, a
pigtail, long and slender--

"The confounded Chink!" he muttered, astounded.

He was not conscious of having looked away; and yet right there, in the
middle of the picture, without having come round the right-hand corner
or the left-hand corner of the house, without falling from the sky or
surging up from the ground, Wang had become visible, large as life,
and engaged in the young-ladyish occupation of pic