when he had left the stateroom. It
had been put there as he had made his way through the crowd of
passengers along the rail. Who could have stuck it there--and why?

Now the passengers were streaming ashore, and Sidney Prale stepped to
one side and watched them. Perhaps he had some business enemy on board,
he told himself, some man he had not noticed, and who was trying to
frighten him after a childish fashion. He searched the faces of the
landing passengers, but saw nobody he had known in Central America,
nobody who looked at all suspicious.

"Either a joke--or a mistake," Prale told himself again.

He started ashore. He saw Kate Gilbert just ahead of him, the bulky maid
at her heels. An elderly man met her, but did not greet her as a father
would have been expected to do. Prale saw them hold a whispered
conversation, and it seemed to him that the elderly man gave him a
searching glance.

"I must look like a swindler!" Prale mused.

Finally, as he went out upon the street to engage a taxicab and start
for a hotel, he saw Kate Gilbert and her maid and the elderly man again,
getting into a limousine. The girl held a piece of paper in her hand,
and was reading something from it to the elderly man. As she got into
the car, she dropped the piece of paper to the curb.

The limousine was gone before Prale reached the curb. He put his suit
case down and picked up the piece of paper. There was nothing on it
except a couple of names that meant nothing to Sidney Prale. But his
eyes bulged, nevertheless, as he read them.

For the paper was similar to that upon which had been written the note
that he had found on the pillow in the stateroom--and the coarse
handwriting was the same!

"What the deuce----" Prale caught himself saying.

Had Kate Gilbert written that message about retribution and had her maid
leave it in the stateroom? Had Kate Gilbert written that single word and
had her maid paste it on his suit case as he passed, or pasted it there
herself?

Why had Kate Gilbert--whom he never had seen and of whom he never had
heard until she appeared at the ball in Tegucigalpa--avoided him in such
a peculiar manner? And why had the misnamed Marie glared at him, and
expressed loathing and anger when her eyes met his?

"What the deuce----" Prale asked himself again.

Then a taxicab drew up at the curb, and he got in.

CHAPTER III

SOME DISCOURTESIES

Sidney Prale obtained accommodations in a prominent hostel