The next day at noon the chauffeurs from Paris reported for duty, and five gleaming French devil-wagons steamed off through the crowd in the direction of Venice. Through Brescia and Verona and Vicenza they passed, scattering largess of silver in their wake and leaving a trail of breathless wonder. Brewster found the pace too fast and by the time they reached Venice he had a wistful longing to take this radiant country more slowly. "But this is purely a business trip," he thought, "and I can't expect to enjoy it. Some day I'll come back and do it differently. I could spend hours in a gondola if the blamed things were not more expensive by the trip." It was there that he was suddenly recalled to his duty from dreams of moonlight on the water by a cablegram which demanded $324.00 before it could be read. It contained word for word the parable of the ten talents and ended with the simple word "Jones." CHAPTER XXIII AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE The summer is scarcely a good time to visit Egypt, but Monty and his guests had a desire to see even a little of the northern coast of Africa. It was decided, therefore, that after Athens, the "Flitter" should go south. The yacht had met them at Naples after the automobile procession,--a kind of triumphal progress,--was disbanded in Florence, and they had taken a hurried survey of Rome. By the middle of July the party was leaving the heat of Egypt and finding it not half bad. New York was not more than a month away as Brewster reckoned time and distance, and there was still too much money in the treasury. As September drew nearer he got into the habit of frequently forgetting Swearengen Jones until it was too late to retrace his steps. He was coming to the "death struggle," as he termed it, and there was something rather terrorizing in the fear that "the million might die hard." And so these last days and nights were glorious ones, if one could have looked at them with unbiased, untroubled eyes. But every member of his party was praying for the day when the "Flitter" would be well into the broad Atlantic and the worst over. At Alexandria Brewster had letters to some Englishmen, and in the few entertainments that he gave succeeded once again in fairly outdoing Aladdin.