"Not as much as I'd like ter. Used ter belong to a man in Chicago. Yesterday the caretaker told me she'd been rented fer the winter. Seen him to-night in a gin mill with money to throw to the birds. Looks funny to me." "Thanks." "Man came this afternoon and painted out her old name. Changed it t' _Lileth_. Mighty suspicious." "What was the old name?" "The _Lady Evelyn_. If I was you, I'd get outside a drink, and quick. Good night." As Minot dashed up the bank, he heard the swish of the old man's oars behind. He ran all the way to his rooms, and after a hot bath and the liquid refreshment suggested by the waterman, called Mr. Thacker on the telephone. "Well, Richard?" that gentleman inquired. "Sad news. Little Cupid's had a set-back. Tossed into the Hudson when he tried to board the yacht that is taking Lord Harrowby south." "No? Is that so?" Mr. Thacker's tone was contemplative. "Well, Richard, the Palm Beach Special leaves at midnight. Better be on it. Better go down and help the bride with her trousseau." "Yes, sir. I'll do that. And I'll see to it that she has her lamp trimmed and burning. Considering that her father's in the oil business, that ought not to be--" "I can't hear you, Richard. What are you saying?" "Nothing--er--Mr. Thacker. Look up a yacht called the _Lady Evelyn_. Chicago man, I think--find out if he's rented it, and to whom. It's the boat Harrowby went south on." "All right, Richard. Good-by, my boy. Write me whenever you need money." "Perhaps I can't write as often as that. But I'll send you bulletins from time to time." "I depend on you, Richard. Jephson must not lose." "Leave it to me. The Palm Beach Special at midnight. And after that--Miss Cynthia Meyrick!" CHAPTER III JOURNEYS END IN--TAXI BILLS No matter how swiftly your train has sped through the Carolinas and Georgia, when it crosses the line into Florida a wasting languor overtakes it. Then it hesitates, sighs and creeps across the fiat yellow landscape like an aged alligator. Now and again it stops completely in the midst of nothing, as who should say: "You came down to see the South, didn't you? Well, look about you." The Palm Beach Special on which Mr. Minot rode was no exception to this rule. It entered Florida and a state of innocuous desuetude at one and the same time. After a tremendous struggle, it gasped its way into Jacksonville about nine o'clock of the Monday morning following. Reluctant as Romeo in his famous exit from Juliet's boudoir, it got out of Jacksonville an hour later. And San Marco was just two hours away, according to that excellent book of light fiction so widely read in the South--the time-table.