, Mr.--Mr.--" She paused suggestively.

But the man would not fill in the blank. He smoked on in silence.

The vessel was rolling somewhat heavily, and the splash of the drifting
foam reached them occasionally where they stood. There were no other
ladies in sight. Suddenly the clear, American voice broke through the
man's barrier of silence.

"I know quite well what you are, you know. You may just as well tell me
your name as leave me to find it out for myself."

He looked at her then for the first time, keenly, even critically. His
clean-shaven mouth wore a very curious expression.

"My name is West," he said, after a moment.

She nodded briskly.

"Your professional name, I suppose. You are a professional, of course?"

His eyes continued to watch her narrowly. They were blue eyes,
piercingly, icily blue.

"Why 'of course,' if one may ask?"

She laughed a light, sweet laugh, inexpressibly gay. Cynthia Mortimer
could be charmingly inconsequent when she chose.

"I don't think you are a bit clever, you know," she said. "I knew what
you were directly I saw you standing by the gangway watching the people
coming on board. You looked really professional then, just as if you
didn't care a red cent whether you caught your man or not. I knew you
did care though, and I was ready to dance when I knew you hadn't got
him. Think you'll track him down on our side?"

West turned his eyes once more upon the heaving, grey water, carelessly
flicking the ash from his cigarette.

"I don't think," he said briefly. "I know."

"You--know?" The wide eyes opened wider, but they gathered no
information from the unresponsive profile that smoked the cigarette.
"You know where Mr. Nat Verney is?" she breathed, almost in a whisper.
"You don't say! Then--then you weren't really watching out for him at
the gangway?"

He jerked up his head with an enigmatical laugh.

"My methods are not so simple as that," he said.

Cynthia joined quite generously in his laugh, notwithstanding its hard
note of ridicule. She had become keenly interested in this man, in spite
of--possibly in consequence of--the rebuffs he so unsparingly
administered. She was not accustomed to rebuffs, this girl with her
delicate, flower-like beauty. They held for her something of the charm
of novelty, and abashed her not at all.

"And you really think you'll catch him?" she questioned, a note of
honest regret in her voice.

"Don't you want him to be caught?"

He p