the Green Rust, and that man is Beale."

"Beale!"

"You have met the gentleman, I believe? I hope you don't have to meet
him again. The Green Rust may mean little. It may mean no more than that
you will lose your money, and I should imagine that is the least which
will happen to you. On the other hand, Mr. White, I do not disguise from
you the fact that it may also mean your death at the hands of the law."

White made a gurgling noise in his throat and held on to the desk for
support.

"I have only the haziest information as to what it is all about, but
somehow"--McNorton knit his brows in a frown and was speaking half to
himself--"I seem to feel that it is a bad business--a damnably bad
business."

He took up his hat from the table and walked to the door.

"I don't know whether to say au revoir or good-bye," he said with
twitching lips.

"Good-bye--ah--is a very good old-fashioned word," said Mr. White, in an
heroic attempt to imitate the other's good humour.

CHAPTER XVIII

BRIDGERS BREAKS LOOSE

Dr. van Heerden sat by the side of the big four-poster bed, where the
girl lay, and his cold blue eyes held a spark of amusement.

"You look very foolish," he said.

Oliva Cresswell turned her head sharply so as to remove the man from her
line of vision.

More than this she could not do, for her hands and feet were strapped,
and on the pillow, near her head, was a big bath-towel saturated with
water which had been employed in stifling her healthy screams which
marked her return to understanding.

"You look very foolish," said the doctor, chewing at the end of his
cigar, "and you look no more foolish than you have been. Bridgers let
you out, eh? Nice man, Mr. Bridgers; what had he been telling you?"

She turned her head again and favoured him with a stare. Then she looked
at the angry red mark on her wrists where the straps chafed.

"How Hun-like!" she said; but this time he smiled.

"You will not make me lose my temper again, Little-wife-to-be," he
mocked her; "you may call me Hun or Heinz or Fritz or any of the
barbarous and vulgar names which the outside world employ to vilify my
countrymen, but nothing you say will distress or annoy me. To-morrow you
and I will be man and wife."

"This is not Germany," she said scornfully. "You cannot make a woman
marry you against her will, this is----"

"The land of the free," he interrupted suavely. "Yes--I know those
lands, on both sides of the Atlanti