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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,
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