st, could in any way be complicated with the wanton
designs of the beast in Len Yang. Yet here was evidence, damning her,
if not as a wilful tool of the cinnabar king, then at least as a
room-breaker. Why had she come into his room? And how?

He searched the room, then dragged his suit-case from under the bunk to
the middle of the blue carpet, and spilled its contents angrily upon
the floor. It took him less than ten seconds to discover what was
missing; not his money, nor the few jewels he had collected in his
peregrinations, for they were untouched in the small leather bag.

Peter looked again, carefully shaking each garment, hoping, and
refusing to hope, that the revolver would make its appearance. It was
an American revolver, an automatic, a gift from Bobbie MacLaurin. And
now this excellent weapon was missing.

He felt that eyes were upon him, that ears were listening slyly to his
breathing, that lips were rustling in bated whispered comments upon the
fury with which he took this important loss.

Snapping off the light, he plunged down the murky corridor, with the
guilty rose cameo clutched in his sweating hand, and came at length to
the purser's office. This dignitary was absent, at midnight lunch
probably; so Peter rifled the upper drawer in the desk, and brought out
the passenger-register, finding the name and room number he sought
after an instant of search.

Carefully he replaced the ledger in its original position, closed the
drawer, and darted back up the corridor.

In front of a room not far from his own he paused and rapped. His
knock, sharp and insistent, was one of practice, a summons which would
not be mistaken by the occupants of adjoining staterooms, nor was it
likely to disturb them.

After a moment, light showed at the opened transom. Some one rustled
about within, and in another instant the door opened far enough to
admit a head from which dark masses of hair floated, framing a face
that was white and inquisitive.

At sight of her midnight visitor Romola Borria opened her door wide and
smiled a little sleepily. She had paused long enough in arising to
slip into a negligee, a kimono of blackest satin, revealing at the
baglike sleeves and the fold which fell back from her throat a lining
of blood-red silk.

One hand was caught up to her throat in a gesture of surprise, and the
other was concealed behind her, catching, as Peter surmised, nothing if
not his own automatic revolver,