He gave it up as a bad job! “Hang it!” he thought. “It may have been some other chap. Very likely!” It was the strange story of a sharp encounter with the hostile Kookies, in which a couple of English mountain guns, long before abandoned by a British expeditionary force, had been served with due professional skill and most desperate dash by a reckless man, easily recognized as an English refugee artillerist. The wounded escaped British soldier, who had died after denouncing the deserting adventurer, had left his parting advice to the Royal Artillery to burn the fearless renegade, should he ever be captured. It was the Story of a nameless traitor! But, the vague distrust of the curled darling of Fortune soon faded away under Hawke’s measured social leading. A silver wine cooler stood behind their chairs, and the old yarn of a British officer playing Olivier Pain became very misty under the subtle influence of the Pommery Sec. Alan Hawke guarded the expected story of his own wanderings, waiting craftily until Bacchus and Venus had sufficiently mollified Anstruther. He duplicated the champagne, knowing well the warming influence of “t’other bottle.” The Major of a shadowy rank had early learned the graceful art of effacing himself, and on this occasion, it stood greatly to his credit. Anstruther was now quite sure that the graceful head of the beautiful neighbor swayed in an unconscious recognition of his witty sallies. A true son of Mars--ardent, headlong, and gallant as regarded le beau sexe--he talked brilliantly and well, aiming his boomerang remarks at a woman whom he knew to be young and graceful, and whose beauty he was gayly taking upon trust; an old, old interlude, played many a time and oft. “What is going on here in this beastly slow old town? Nothing much for to-night, I fancy,” said the aid-de-camp, wondering if a promenade au clair de la lune or a carriage ride to Ferney would be possible! He already had noted the purity of the French accent of the fair unknown. No guttural Swiss patois there, but that crisp elegance of tone which promised him a flirtation en vraie Parisienne. “Only Philemon and Baucis, an antique opera, at the Grand Opera House, and sung by a band of relics of better days, wandering over here!” said Hawke. And then it finally dawned upon the blase young staff officer that he had met Alan Hawke in certain circles where plunging had chased away the tedium of Indian club life with the delightful sensations of raking in other people’s money. “Better come up to my rooms then, and have a weed and a bit of ecarte!” slowly said Anstruther. “We may manage a ride afterward!” Alan Hawke nodded, and a thirsty gleam lit up his crafty eyes. He instinctively felt for the little card case containing that solitary twenty-pound note; it was a gentleman’s stake after all. And the would-be suicide silently invoked the fickle goddess Fortuna!