An hour later he sat at ease in an armchair, reading over the proclamation that was to appear in every London newspaper the next morning. It was a notice absolutely without precedent in the history of crime--an ultimatum set out with all the cold-blooded arrogant effrontery of a Note from an unscrupulous Great Power to an insignificant Power--a manifesto that was staggering in its presumptuous authoritativeness, before which the imagination reeled away with uneasy incredulity. CHAPTER XII TOURS IN BILLINGSGATE Respectable young ladies of gentle nurture do not as a rule haunt the obscure purlieus which lie east of London Bridge, down towards the river, at one o'clock in the morning; but then, although Susan Hawthorne might have pleaded guilty to the gentle nurture part of the clause, it is doubtful whether she would have admitted her respectability. Respectability and old Smiler, her beloved father, tutor, friend, and companion in the all-important years between fourteen and twenty, were two factors which in the eyes of the initiated were about as likely to merge successfully as oil and water. Certainly, when Adventure loomed ahead, the teaching of old Smiler took no stock of convention. "If there's Trouble with a big T at the end of anything," was his oft-inculcated maxim, "life isn't worth living unless you're making a bee-line for it. And if, on the way, you come up against something you know you CAN'T do, and it's in the way, well--DO IT, and hell to the consequences." A pernicious doctrine by almost any ethical standard, but one which by frequent repetition had become as much a part of Susan's life as old Hawthorne himself. Which goes to explain why she sauntered down Lower Thames Street on a certain evening on felony bent. There was no hesitation in her lissom stride--she even hummed a little tune. Nerves? You don't know her! Susan Hawthorne, who on one occasion had stuck up His Excellency the President of Olvidada at the end of a six-shooter, in his own Illustrious Palace, for six measured hours, what time she--er--persuaded him to issue divers orders anent the constitution of that misruled Republic--orders which made His Excellency shudder and gasp and fume impotently--Susan Hawthorne, I say, and nerves? Not in your sweet natural, stranger! Nothing so amateurish as taut muscles, quivering ganglions, and a disconcerting void in the gastric regions--nothing more tremulous than a faint pleasurable tingling of anticipation.