"With a number--the number expected?" the man asked. "If you are clever en route--yes," she answered, with a smile. "Wine, remember, is Billy Capper's best friend--and worst enemy." "Then I will hear from you as to the time and route of departure for Alexandria?" "To the very hour, yes. And, now, dear friend----" Interruption came suddenly from the stage. The manager, in shirt-sleeves and with hair wildly rumpled over his eyes, came prancing out from the wings. He held up a pudgy hand to check the orchestra. Hundreds about the tables rose in a gust of excitement, of questioning wonder. "_Herren!_" The stage manager's bellow carried to the farthest arches of the Winter Garden. "News just published by the general staff: Russia has mobilized five divisions on the frontier of East Prussia and Galicia!" Not a sound save the sharp catching of breath over all the acre of tables. Then the stage manager nodded to the orchestra leader, and in a fury the brass mouths began to bray. Men climbed on table tops, women stood on chairs, and all--all sang in tremendous chorus: "_Deutschland, Deutschland üeber alles!_" CHAPTER III BILLY CAPPER AT PLAY The night of July twenty-sixth. The scene is the table-cluttered sidewalk before the Café Pytheas, where the Cours St. Louis flings its night tide of idlers into the broader stream of the Cannebière, Marseilles' Broadway--the white street of the great Provençal port. Here at the crossing of these two streets summer nights are incidents to stick in the traveler's mind long after he sees the gray walls of the Château d'If fade below the steamer's rail. The flower girls in their little pulpits pressing dewy violets and fragrant clusters of rosebuds upon the strollers with persuasive eloquence; the mystical eyes of hooded Moors who see everything as they pass, yet seem to see so little; jostling Greeks, Levantines, burnoosed Jews from Algiers and red-trousered Senegalese--all the color from the hot lands of the Mediterranean is there.