"I know," he said helplessly, "you're terribly disappointed. And I don't blame you. But you will find out that you've done me an injustice. I'm going--" "One thing," said she, smiling a smile that could have cut glass, "you are going to do. I know that you won't fail this time, because I shall personally see you through with it. You're going to stop making a fool of me." "Tell me," pleaded Billy Magee. "Tell me who you are--what this is all about. Can't you see I'm working in the dark? You must--" She threw open the card-room door. "An English officer," she remarked loudly, stepping out into the other room, "taught the admiral the game. At least, so he said. It added so much romance to it in the eyes of the rocking-chair fleet. Can't you see--India--the hot sun--the Kipling local color--a silent, tanned, handsome man eternally playing solitaire on the porch of the barracks? Has the barracks a porch?" Roused, humiliated, baffled, Mr. Magee felt his cheeks burn. "We shall see what we shall see," he muttered. "Why coin the inevitable into a bromide," she asked. Mr. Magee joined the group by the fire. Never before in his life had he been so determined on anything as he was now that the package of money should return to his keeping. But how? How trace through this maze of humans the present holder of that precious bundle of collateral? He looked at Mr. Max, sneering his lemon-colored sneer at the mayor's side; at the mayor himself, nonchalant as the admiral being photographed; at Bland, author of the Arabella fiction, sprawling at ease before the fire; at the tawdry Mrs. Norton, and at Myra Thornhill, who had by her pleading the night before made him ridiculous. Who of these had the money now? Who but Cargan and Max, their faces serene, their eyes eagerly on the preparations for lunch, their plans for leaving Baldpate Inn no doubt already made? And then Mr. Magee saw coming down the stairs another figure--one he had forgot--Professor Thaddeus Bolton, he of the mysterious dialogue by the annex door. On the professor's forehead was a surprising red scratch, and his eyes, no longer hidden by the double convex lenses, stood revealed a washed-out gray in the light of noon. "A most unfortunate accident," explained the old man. "Most distressing. I have broken my glasses. I am almost blind without them." "How'd it happen, Doc?" asked Mr. Cargan easily. "I came into unexpected juxtaposition with an open door," returned Professor Bolton. "Stupid of me, but I'm always doing it. Really, the agility displayed by doors in getting in my path is surprising." "You and Mr. Max can sympathize with each other," said Magee, "I thought for a moment your injuries might have been received in the same cause." "Don't worry, Doc," Mr. Bland soothed him, "we'll all keep a weather eye out for reporters that want to connect you up with the peroxide blondes."