voice, brief and profane.

With but one idea in his mind--burglars--he crossed to the drawing-room
door and flung it wide. That he was unarmed did not enter his thoughts.

The drawing-room was in utter darkness. He reached for the nearby
switch and flooded the room in a blaze of light.

CHAPTER XVIII

About an hour before this Arthur Holliday left the Restaurant des
Ambassadeurs and, with a slight frown on his face, got into his car and
drove rapidly to La Californie. When he reached the Villa Firenze all
was in darkness. He left his car in a turning out of the main road,
then quietly slipped into the garden and walked across the grass around
to the paved terrace at the side of the salon. As he set foot on the
flat stones the doors opened softly and Therese Clifford put out her
hands and drew him inside.

"Ah, I thought you would never come!" she sighed a little fretfully,
standing for a moment with her whole body against his.

His arms held her in a perfunctory embrace, while his eyes glanced
restlessly about. The big room was lit by only a single lamp, which
shed a pool of rose-coloured light over the satin-covered chaise-longue
and a tiny table, upon which was a pile of illustrated journals.

"Damned silly getting me here like this," he remarked, turning and
drawing the thick curtains carefully over the doors behind him. "I
don't half like it."

"There is no risk, none whatever. Everyone is in bed except the
night-nurse, and up in that room one can't hear anything."

"Still, if anyone did find me here, there'd be a devil of a mess.
Roger'll be coming home, too; I saw him having dinner with that nurse
girl."

She made a slight grimace.

"Oh, they will be hours yet. Listen! I sent you that message because
I simply had to see you. You were dining with that creature to-night,
and I could not have closed my eyes till I had made sure you had done
nothing stupid. Tell me, Arthur darling--what has she been saying to
you?"

She clutched him tightly with both hands, probing into his shallow eyes
as if to tear the truth from them.

"Oh, the usual thing; she's getting more and more fed up. She suspects
now that I'm playing with her. She says she must make arrangements,
send cables and so on, and she's got to have a straight answer--yes or
no--at once."

"Yes, and then what?"

Her hold on his shoulders tightened avidly.

"She's booked sailings for herself and the girl for the 8th, and she