The Judgment House | Page 9

told me to come to-day at this very hour," he added, suddenly,
and paused in his walk towards the door.
"But I want no triangular tea-parties," he continued to reflect.... "Well,
there'll be work to do at the Foreign Office, that's sure. France, Austria,
Russia can spit out their venom now and look to their mobilization.
And won't Kaiser William throw up his cap if Dr. Jim gets caught!
What a mess it will be! Well--well--well!"
He sighed, and went on his way brooding darkly; for he knew that this
was the beginning of a great trial for England and all British people.

CHAPTER III
A DAUGHTER OF TYRE
"Monsieur voleur!"

Jasmine looked at him again, as she had done the night before at the
opera, standing quite confidentially close to him, her hand resting in his
big palm like a pad of rose-leaves; while a delicate perfume greeted his
senses. Byng beamed down on her, mystified and eager, yet by no
means impatient, since the situation was one wholly agreeable to him,
and he had been called robber in his time with greater violence and
with a different voice. Now he merely shook his head in humorous
protest, and gave her an indulgent look of inquiry. Somehow he felt
quite at home with her; while yet he was abashed by so much delicacy
and beauty and bloom.
"Why, what else are you but a robber?" she added, withdrawing her
hand rather quickly from the too frank friendliness of his grasp. "You
ran off with my opera-cloak last night, and a very pretty and expensive
one it was."
"Expensive isn't the word," he rejoined; "it was unpurchasable."
She preened herself a little at the phrase. "I returned your overcoat this
morning--before breakfast; and I didn't even receive a note of thanks
for it. I might properly have kept it till my opera cloak came back."
"It's never coming back," he answered; "and as for my overcoat, I didn't
know it had been returned. I was out all the morning."
"In the Row?" she asked, with an undertone of meaning.
"Well, not exactly. I was out looking for your cloak."
"Without breakfast?" she urged with a whimsical glance.
"Well, I got breakfast while I was looking."
"And while you were indulging material tastes, the cloak hid itself--or
went out and hanged itself?"
He settled himself comfortably in the huge chair which seemed made
especially for him. With a rare sense for details she had had this very

chair brought from the library beyond, where her stepmother, in full
view, was writing letters. He laughed at her words--a deep, round
chuckle it was.
"It didn't exactly hang itself; it lay over the back of a Chesterfield
where I could see it and breakfast too."
"A Chesterfield in a breakfast-room! That's more like the furniture of a
boudoir."
"Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself.
"Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't she?"
"Not so good a breakfast as I got."
"That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a little
smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like those Nelson
loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while at all.
"T didn't see where you were leading me," he gasped, helplessly. "I
give up. I can't talk in your way."
"What is my way?" she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her
eyes.
"Why, no frontal attacks--only flank movements, and getting round the
kopjes, with an ambush in a drift here and there."
"That sounds like Paul Kruger or General Joubert," she cried in mock
dismay. "Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?"
His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness
suddenly settled in his strong jaw. "Yes," he answered, presently,
"that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch
Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop
or thereabouts, if I know myself--and Oom Paul."
Her face flushed prettily with excitement. "I want to hear all about this

empire-making, or losing, affair; but there are other things to be settled
first. There's my opera-cloak and the breakfast in the prima donna's
boudoir, and--"
"But, how did you know it was Al'mah?" he asked blankly.
"Why, where else would my cloak be?" she inquired with a little laugh.
"Not at the costumier's or the cleaner's so soon. But, all this horrid
flippancy aside, do you really think I should have talked like this, or
been so exigent about the cloak, if I hadn't known everything; if I hadn't
been to see Al'mah, and spent an hour with her and knew that she was
recovering