Lady Tozer adjusted her gold-rimmed eye-glasses with an air of
dignified aggressiveness. She had lived too many years in the Far East.
In Hong Kong she was known as the "Mandarin." Her powers of merciless
inquisition suggested torments long drawn out. The commander of the
_Sirdar_, homeward bound from Shanghai, knew that he was about to
be stretched on the rack when he took his seat at the saloon table.

"Is it true, captain, that we are running into a typhoon?" demanded her
ladyship.

"From whom did you learn that, Lady Tozer?" Captain Ross was wary,
though somewhat surprised.

"From Miss Deane. I understood her a moment ago to say that you had
told her."

"I?"

"Didn't you? Some one told me this morning. I couldn't have guessed it,
could I?" Miss Iris Deane's large blue eyes surveyed him with innocent
indifference to strict accuracy. Incidentally, she had obtained the
information from her maid, a nose-tilted coquette who extracted ship's
secrets from a youthful quartermaster.

"Well--er--I had forgotten," explained the tactful sailor.

"Is it true?"

Lady Tozer _was_ unusually abrupt today. But she was annoyed by