forced to come forward and show up UNDER A FALSE NAME and gets five
years. Suppose he escapes after three and a half, and goes home,
saying that he has been in America, cattle ranching--having always
been a scapegrace, and a ne'er-do-well, who never wrote home when he
had gone off in a huff. Suppose he had tried all this for the sake
of--a girl, and had carried it through--"

Caleb Harkness had discovered that the identity of the British
Plenipotentiary had become known to some of the more curious of the
President's guests, who were now mooning innocently around them as
they sat. He moved in his chair as if to rise.

"Yes--I can suppose all that," he said.

The Englishman's nerve was marvellous. He saw what Harkness had
seen a moment before, and over his face came the bland smile of an
intelligent English man talking naval matters with an American
admiral.

"Of course," he said, "I am at your mercy."

"I was at yours once; so now we are quits, I take it."

And the two big men rose and passed out of the room together.



THE TALE OF A SCORPION