of that timely but
eldritch yell. Now, by his careless admission about the tears of
Dorothy, he had opened the matter, and let himself in for a rating.

But Sir Tancred was silent, musing, and Tinker returned to his idle
consideration of the Mediterranean.

Presently he said, "She would make you a nice little wife, sir."

Sir Tancred started. "There are times," he said, "when I feel you
would take my breath away, if I hadn't very good lungs."

"I thought that that was what you were thinking about," said the
ingenuous Tinker.

"If you add thought-reading to your other accomplishments, it will be
too much," said Sir Tancred with conviction.

Of a sudden there came bustling round the right-hand horn of the bay a
most disreputable, bedraggled-looking vessel. By her lines a yacht,
her decks would have been a disgrace to the oldest and most battered
tin-pot of an ocean tramp. Her masts had gone, there were gaps in her
bulwarks, and the smoke of her furnaces, pouring through a hole in her
deck over which her funnel had once reared itself, had taken advantage
of this rare and golden opportunity to blacken her after-part to a very
fair semblance of imitation ebony, and to transform her crew to an even
fairer imitation of negroes dressed in black.

"She is in a mess!" said Tinker.

"Of the Atlantic's making, to judge by its completeness," said Sir
Tancred. "Whose yacht is it?"

"I don't know," said Tinker, staring at it with all his eyes.

"You ought to," said Sir Tancred with some severity. "You've been on
it. It's Meyer's."

"So it is," said Tinker, mortified. "I am stupid not to have
recognised it!"

"Your new clairvoyant faculty must be weakening your power of
observation. I shouldn't give way to it, if I were you."

Tinker wriggled.

A hundred yards from the jetty the yacht's engines were reversed; and
the way was scarcely off her, when her only remaining boat fell smartly
on the water, and was rowed quickly to the steps.

"They seem in a hurry," said Sir Tancred.

For a while they busied themselves in conjectures as to what errand had
brought the yacht to Monaco; Sir Tancred lighted another cigarette, and
they watched the crew of the yacht set to work at once to wash the
decks.

Some twenty minutes later a little group hurried into the gardens, the
manager of the Hotel des Princes, a tall, bearded, grimy man, and a
stout, clean-shaven, grimy man. They came straight to Sir Tancred and
Tinker,