"All is as we hoped, Almer. He comes on the _Princess Mary_--a cablegram from Koch just got through to-day. I wanted----" "You mean----" Almer thrust his head forward in his eagerness, and his eyes were bright beads. "Captain Woodhouse--our Captain Woodhouse!" The girl's voice trembled in exultation. "And his number--his Wilhelmstrasse number--is--listen carefully: Nineteen Thirty-two." "Nineteen Thirty-two," Almer repeated, under his breath. Then aloud: "On the _Princess Mary_, you say?" "Yes; she is already anchored in the straits. The tenders are coming ashore. He will come here, for such were his directions in Alexandria." Louisa started to move toward the street door. "But you," Almer stopped her; "the English are making a round-up of suspects on the Rock. They will ask questions--perhaps arrest----" "Me? No, I think not. Just because I was away from Gibraltar for six weeks and have returned so recently is not enough to rouse suspicion. Haven't I been Josepha, the cigar girl, to every Tommy in the garrison for nearly a year? No--no, señor; you are wrong. These are the purest cigars made south of Madrid. Indeed, señor." [Illustration: "Haven't I been Josepha for nearly a year?"] The girl had suddenly changed her tone to one of professional wheedling, for she saw three entering the door. Almer lifted his voice angrily: "Josepha, your mother is substituting with these cigars. Take them back and tell her if I catch her doing this again it means the cells for her." The cigar girl bowed her head in simulated fright, sped past the incoming tourists, and lost herself in the shifting crowd on the street. Almer permitted himself to mutter angrily as he turned back to his books. "You see, mother? See that hotel keeper lose his temper and tongue-lash that poor girl? Just what I tell you--these foreigners don't know how to be polite to ladies." Henry J. Sherman--"yes, sir, of Kewanee, Illynoy"--mopped his bald pink dome and glared truculently at the insulting back of Joseph Almer. Mrs. Sherman, the lady of direct impulses who had contrived to stare Captain Woodhouse out of countenance in the Winter Garden not long back, cast herself despondently on the decrepit lounge and appeared to need little invitation to be precipitated into a crying spell. Her daughter Kitty, a winsome little slip, stood behind her, arms about the mother's neck, and her hands stroking the maternal cheeks. "There--there, mother; everything'll come out right," Kitty vaguely assured. Mrs. Sherman, determined to have no eye for the cloud's silver lining, rocked back and forth on the sofa and gave voice to her woe: