see her!"

"Well, I've got to get ready to land; I'm not going to waste any time,"
Prale said. "I'm glad that I met you--and perhaps we'll meet again in
the city."

"Hope we do!" said Shepley, grasping Prale's hand. "Our factories are
out in Ohio, but the company headquarters are in New York, of course.
Here's my business card, my boy. And I generally put up at the
Graymore."

Sidney Prale took the card, thanked Rufus Shepley, and hurried down the
deck toward his stateroom, one of the best on the ship. Rufus Shepley
looked after him sharply.

"Went straight to Honduras and stayed there for ten years, eh?" Rufus
Shepley said to himself. "Um! Looks bad! I never put much stock in those
Honduras chaps--but this one seems to be all right. Never can tell,
though!"

Sidney Prale, still smiling, and humming a Spanish love song, reached
his stateroom and threw open the door; and just inside, he came to a
stop, astonished.

Somebody had been in that stateroom and had been going through his
things. The contents of his suit case were spilled on the floor. A bag
was wide open; he had left it closed and in a corner less than an hour
before.

Prale went down on his knees and made a quick inspection. There did not
seem to be anything missing. A package of papers--business documents for
the greater part--had been examined, he could tell at a glance, but none
had been taken.

"Peculiar!" Prale told himself. "Some sneak thief, I suppose. No sense
in complaining to the ship's officers at this late hour, especially
since nothing has been stolen. Makes a man angry, though!"

He put the suit case on the table and began repacking the things that
had been scattered on the floor. Then he gathered up his toilet
articles, bits of clothing he had left out until the last minute, a few
souvenirs of Honduras he had been showing a tourist the evening before.
He turned toward the berth to pick up his light overcoat.

There was a sheet of paper pinned to the pillow, paper that might have
been taken from an ordinary writing tablet. Sidney Prale took it up and
glanced at it. A few words of handwriting were upon the paper, words
that looked as if they had been scrawled hurriedly with a pencil that
needed sharpening badly.

"Retribution is inevitable and comes when you least expect it."

The smile fled from Sidney Prale's lips, and the Spanish love song he
had been humming died in his throat. He frowned, and read the message
again.

"Now w