head smilingly.

"But I tell you I'm speaking seriously," he went on. "I'll do my best to
look after you. I'll have a man watching you day and night."

"But you mustn't," she protested. "There's no immediate cause for
worry."

He saw her to the door of the restaurant and showed her into the
taxi-cab which came at his whistle, and she leant out of the window and
waved her hand in farewell as she drove off.

Two men stood on the opposite side of the road and watched her depart.

"That's the girl," said Crewe.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TAKING OF MAISIE WHITE

A week passed without anything exceptional happening, and Maisie White
had ceased even to harbour doubts as to her own safety--doubts which had
been present, in spite of the courageous showing she had made before
Stafford King. Undeterred by her previous experience, she had made
arrangements with another and a more responsible detective agency and
had chosen a new watcher, though she had small hopes of obtaining
results. She knew his task was one of almost insuperable difficulty, and
she was frank in exposing to him what those difficulties were. Still,
there was a faint chance that he might discover something, and moreover
she had another purpose to serve.

She had seen Pinto Silva once. He had called, and she had noticed with
surprise that the debonair, self-confident man she had known, whose air
of conscious superiority had been so annoying to her, had undergone a
considerable change. He was ill-at-ease, almost incoherent at moments,
and it was a long time before she could discover his business.

This time she received him in her tiny sitting-room, for Pinto was
somehow less alarming to her than he had been. Perhaps she was conscious
that at the corner of the street stood a quietly dressed man doing
nothing particular, who was relieved at the eighth hour by an even less
obtrusive-looking gentleman from Scotland Yard.

She waited for Pinto to disclose his business, and the Portuguese was
apparently in no hurry to do so. Presently he blurted it out.

"Look here, Maisie," he said, "you've got things all wrong. Things are
going to be very rotten for you unless--unless----" he floundered.

"Unless what?" she asked.

"Unless you make up with me," he said in a low voice. "I'm not so bad,
Maisie, and I'll treat you fair. I've always been in love with you----"

"Stop," she said quietly. "I dare say it is a great honour for a girl
that any man should be in