"I?" Zora started away to the corner of the car, and gazed on him in blank
amazement. "I? What in the world have I to do with it?"

"I don't know yet," said Sypher. "I have an intuition. I'm a believer in
intuitions. I've followed them all my life, and they've never played me
false. The moment I learned that you had never heard of me, I felt it."

Zora breathed comfortably again. It was not an implied declaration.

"I'm fighting against the Powers of Darkness," he continued. "I once read a
bit of Spenser's 'Faërie Queene.' There was a Red Cross Knight who slew a
Dragon--but he had a fabulous kind of woman behind him. When I saw you, you
seemed that fabulous kind of woman."

At a sharp wall corner a clump of tall poinsettias flamed against the sky.
Zora laughed full-heartedly.

"Here we are in the middle of a Fairy Tale. What are the Powers of Darkness
in your case, Sir Red Cross Knight?"

"Jebusa Jones's Cuticle Remedy," said Sypher savagely.




CHAPTER V


That was Clem Sypher's Dragon--Jebusa Jones's Cuticle Remedy. He drew so
vivid a picture of its foul iniquity that Zora was convinced that the earth