an appeal
as this. Conscience, humanity, justice! He was calling on my manhood to
send her back to Azuria, out of my arms, out of my life. And she would
go; I felt it, I knew it. I realized now that Tommy, in preambling up to
this point, intended to settle it once and for all. And I realized how
much farther his clear vision had penetrated the situation than my own
poor addled mind.

Leaning forward, he said in the same soft voice--though Monsieur did not
recognize the deadly purpose behind it:

"Professor, if you seriously want to see Azuria again I think we'd
better arrange this thing, somehow. You came here to look for a
princess; Jack came--pardon me, Jack, but it's unavoidable--for a
sweetheart. Every man to his trade, you know!"

"Yes, and if I find Her Serene Highness I shall most certainly restore
her to----"

"You'll most certainly do nothing of the kind," Tommy interrupted him.
"You see, old fellow, we couldn't trust her to you--it wouldn't be fair.
The fact is, you've been acting mighty queerly of late, saying all kinds
of strange things!"

A puzzled look came into the professor's eyes as he glanced at me and
then back at Tommy, who now leaned confidentially nearer.

"Do you realize," he soothingly continued, "that you thought someone was
trying to blow up our yacht?"

"Trying to blow it up? Did I not have the bomb in my hands?"

"He still believes it, Jack," Tommy sighed. "There's nothing to be done,
I reckon, but take him back to Key West. They've a pretty fair hospital
there."

Monsieur's face turned so livid and looked so weird in its frame of
straw-colored hair that I began to think all the hospitals on earth
could not save him. Sputtering, he appealed to me:

"The truth, my boy Jack--he is cut-upping?"

But Tommy was saying:

"We're awfully sorry, you dear old manatou; we'll miss you, take my word
for it."

"You boys dare do this," he sprang to his feet, too angry for further
protest.

"Sit down, sir," Tommy spoke now in a different tone. "Of course, I
don't believe it, nor does Jack; but others will if we take you to the
Key West hospital tied up in ropes and say you've got that blowing-up
bug in your bonnet. Get the point?"

"I get no points," he furiously pounded the table.

"Well, here it is, and its name is Compromise! Either compromise, or the
wow-wow house. We won't force the issue; you must decide nicely, without
being pressed one way or the other. But these are the facts: