As the imperturbable Mr. Miller reached the deck of the Santa Margarita, he took stock, for the second time within a few minutes, of his immediate surroundings.

He saw an exceedingly dirty deck on which the smuts from the galley chimney appeared to have become embedded through long years of neglect. He smelt the very rich, nourishing odor of spaghetti fried with garlic, and sniffed unappreciatively, in spite of his hunger. He heard a couple of nasal voices chanting cheerfully, but with an exceedingly labored accent, the Bersaglieri quickstep, and made a tiny grimace of protest. Around him the panorama of sea was empty of all shipping. Land was out of sight.

Muhammed leaned lazily against the tiller and eyed his late employer with the stolid apathy which an Oriental alone can make convincing. Lounging against the panel of the companion hatch, from which Landon and his companion had just emerged, sat the skipper, Signor Luigi, idly whittling a stick, and looking up at his passenger with an amiable indifference.

Miller, it must be remembered, had just passed a night of great discomfort and mental agitation following a most unanticipated shock. His nerves—is it wonderful?—were at tension. In spite of his own imperturbability, on which he set some store, the insouciant aspect of his surroundings jarred on him. Was kidnapping, then, such an everyday affair that men cooked, and sang, and whittled under his very nose while the pirate's gallows very possibly stood awaiting them? He had probably never approached petulance more nearly in the course of his well-ordered existence.

He turned to Landon with a little shrug.

The other was holding out the half of a yard-long roll of bread, with a lump of doubtful-looking cheese.

"I would have suggested a plateful of that spaghetti, my dear Miller," he smiled, "but my watchful eye understood the curl of your nostril. This is at least clean."

Miller drew an edge of tarpaulin over a heaped rope, and, after a regretful glance at his no longer immaculately gray trousers, sat down. He took the bread and cheese and began to eat slowly.

There was something bovine in the manner in which he carefully champed each mouthful, something ruminative about the way in which he looked around him. But behind this stolid mask of indifference his brain was working rapidly. He was putting facts as they appeared to him to the test of logic and experience. His mental summing up was rapid. A felucca, of Italian register: crew, three men and a boy. Engaged in the contraband trade more or less continuously, for the ingeniously contrived lazaret between the cabin and the galley showed an attention to detail made necessary by continual service. The real mast passed through the centre of his prison of the previous night. Yet the half of a mast, a sham half, of course, passed through the partition and showed in the cabin. Doubtless another half was to be seen likewise in the galley. It was a neat idea; there was nothing to indicate to the casual glance of a custom's officer that the partition between the two was not what it appeared to be. Nothing but actual measurements would discover the space which hid the intervening lazaret.

With the tonic of food, his self-reliance was entirely his again. He turned to confront Landon after half a dozen mouthfuls, alert to probe for the limits of his position. Landon had greatly dared. Did he understand how greatly? Miller felt himself restored to a state of energy and resolution which would very quickly find out.

"This," he enunciated slowly, "is of the nature of piracy. Do you and your underlings realize it?"

Landon was lighting a cigarette. He sucked in a full mouthful of smoke and shot it out again before he replied. The act was artificial—far too artificial, Miller told himself—in its indifference.

"My underlings," he answered, "realize that they are well on the way to—what shall we say—a modest competency. Beyond that, their very finite understandings have not advanced. Domani or maÑana are words frequent in their vocabularies, but not in relation to results. Comfortable procrastination—that is the whole sense which they appreciate in them."

"Your own outlook is sufficiently intelligent to pierce beyond to-morrow," said the other, drily.

"Certainly!" agreed Landon. "I dwell upon to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, and the day after that! I engage in prescient revels in their rosy-tinted hours!"

Miller made a little inarticulate sound which expressed a restrained but unequivocal irritation.

"Shall we be business-like?" he proposed. "You have entrapped on board this boat three people, including myself. What advantage do you expect to get out of the situation and, bluntly, how?"

"You are such a rigid man of affairs," complained Landon. "You refuse even to eat your breakfast without distractions."

"I find myself in an extraordinary and unfamiliar situation," said Miller. "It is obvious that I wish to disentangle myself from it as soon as possible. Let me hear and accept or reject your terms. Is there any need to be mysterious?"

"None," said Landon, amiably. "But I have not been a man of successful coups, so far, my dear friend, and you must not grudge me the unaccustomed zests I draw from this one. To clear the situation, I purpose holding you all three to ransom."

"Where?"

Landon laughed.

"That you must allow me to consider a trade secret. I intend to retain your company and that of my cousin and my sister-in-law till I am richer by some forty thousand pounds. There you have the situation in a nutshell. I am willing to take the advice of such a finished man of the world as yourself on business methods. The end in view I cannot consent to vary."

The gray man shrugged his shoulders.

"You are of opinion that money will be paid for me? By whom?"

"I can conceive two sources of supply. The German Government—pray don't allow yourself to be startled—or, in the last resort, yourself. You are not a poor man, unless you have grossly misused your opportunities."

"The German Government has no interests of any kind in my well-being or otherwise."

"I must take your word for it," said Landon, politely. "The alternative remains by us, literally."

"Meanwhile, what about the laws of—whatever country you purpose using the shore of? We do not, I take it, remain afloat—a sort of modern Vanderdecken?"

"Let me assure you that no laws or lawgivers will be of the slightest assistance. My friend Luigi and I propose being a law unto ourselves and you."

"Ah."

Miller's tone was reflective and impassive. He had found out one of the things he wanted to know. As he suspected, they were being taken to some remoteness, probably an island. He digested the information silently.

"You must pardon the want of—of finish in our arrangements," said Landon. "Your capture was entirely unpremeditated; you were a gift from the hand of fate. Your suggestion about my child undid you. The boy has become the pivot of Muhammed's existence. Queer, don't you think? I have never professed to plumb the depths of the Oriental mind."

"And Miss Van Arlen and Aylmer?" questioned Miller. "That was a matter of premeditation?"

"Nothing less than an inspiration, a stroke of genius conceived in a moment in Muhammed's brain. Premeditate? How could we premeditate? We expected you and you only, or your messenger, by the next day's boat."

Miller nodded.

"Miss Van Arlen and her companion are officially drowned," he said. "My own disappearance—how is that accounted for?"

"The matter is now probably engaging the interest of the Melilla police. They need distraction; theirs is a gray life," said Landon, pleasantly.

Again Miller nodded, perhaps unconsciously, and in assent to some deduction of his own mind. He kept his meditative air for a second or two, shrugged his shoulders again pessimistically, and then made a brisk gesture of acquiescence.

"And your terms—to myself—are what?" he asked.

"Ten thousand golden sovereigns," said Landon. "Do I hurt your self-esteem by my moderation?"

Miller smiled again sombrely.

"That is, of course, preposterous," he said. "I do not possess half the sum. I should not pay it, if I did. If the alternative is that you support me for the remaining number of my days, I must accept it."

"That would not be the alternative," answered Landon. "In fact, I hope to be able to prove to you that an alternative is lacking. But, at the same time, I am willing to hear proposals."

"My proposal remains what it was yesterday. Make your peace with your wife's family, give up the child. I shall then be able, I have little doubt, to put you in the way of earning more than the sum you suggest. But that you become a person tolerated in ordinary English society is essential."

"I am, in fact, to work laboriously for what is already in my grasp. You underrate my business capacity, my dear sir, you really do."

The gray shoulders were shrugged.

"I might possibly allow a payment of a thousand—let us say—on account. That would suffice to establish you in a decent and plausible position. The work, as you call it, would not be difficult. I rather fancy you would find it amusing."

"I think you want me badly," said Landon. "I think I must be unique for your purposes."

"Don't assume that it is your intelligence which my employers wish to buy," said Miller, coolly. "It is your social standing, still something of an asset in your caste-ridden land."

"But I refuse to have my intelligence underrated," protested Landon, gaily. "I hug it; it tells me many things which you may not suspect. One of them is that there is a lever which will displace your self-confidence. You are a very bad bearer of—physical pain."

Very faint was the pulse of the emotion which throbbed through Miller's eyes as he turned them towards his companion, but distinct enough for Landon to discover and greet with another amiable little laugh.

"It's where blood tells," he said. "I discovered it accidentally; we spoke of what D'Amade's men had to undergo as prisoners at the hands of the Moors, did we not? I mentioned the eyes gouged out, the fettered wounded flung on slow fires, the impaled. You flinched, my dear sir, you flinched badly and—I tried you again. I harked back to like subjects more than once; the result satisfied me. And then I began to dwell upon your complexion. Is that olive tint from Spain, or was there a near forefather in the gorgeous East? Are you of Hindoo blood, my friend—are you?"

Miller's impassive eyes met his, looked deeply within them, and wandered vaguely towards the empty spaces of the sea. Landon chuckled.

"By God, I wouldn't stop anywhere, with you, you renegade!" he swore with sudden, hot, irrational rancor. "I'd deal with you. Will any one stop me? Ask those men—Mafiaists, every one. Stop me! They'd give me tips; they'd mutilate you as they'd mutilate their own domestic animals, for fun!"

Miller drew back a couple of paces, not with any show of disgust or fear, but with the air of an artist who wishes to regard a finished work from a more distant aspect. And he surveyed Landon keenly.

"So I am being threatened?" he said quietly.

Landon grinned wickedly.

"So you're being threatened," he agreed. "Deliberate the matter; give it your best attention; and all the while remember that there is nothing which will stop me, not a single solitary thing."

"I think you are wrong," said Miller, slowly, and then—the sound of it was bizarre to the last degree between his lips—he whistled a quaint little run, which thrilled and quavered up and down half a dozen bars to end upon a long-drawn note.

There was a queer silence. Landon looked at him with a frown which implied scarcely apprehension, but what is nearly akin to it—bewilderment. For there was no mistaking the intention with which the thing was done. Miller had whistled the tripping little air deliberately.

There was a stirring from below. The two hands appeared, and appeared with a suddenness which left no room for doubt that they had been summoned. The savor of burning spaghetti followed them; the summons had been one exacting instant obedience. They had left the frying-pan upon the fire. Together with their appearance came the sound from the companion of Captain Luigi stumbling to his feet.

"Fling this man overboard!" said Miller, in level, indifferent tones. He pointed to Landon.

Landon gave a shout which brimmed with incredulity as much as fear. His hand flew to his breast pocket fumblingly, but too late. Miller's grip was on his wrist; Miller's thrust flung him into the skipper's waiting arms. As Muhammed relinquished the helm and sprang forward, one of the deck hands ducked, tripped him, and rose between his legs—that deadly Mafiaist trick which never fails of its results. The other had closed in upon Landon as he struggled in the captain's grip. He assisted to drag him relentlessly towards the gunwale.

Landon yelled again. His eyes glared out of the struggle at Miller in a very fury of amazement. He bellowed oaths, blasphemies, obscenities even, the fruits of instinctive passions and automatic to his wrath. And there was something almost devilish in the silence which his two assailants kept. They panted a little, by stress of effort, but they uttered no other sound. They merely edged their victim nearer and yet nearer to the side, forced him against the gunwale, stooped with concerted action for one last heave, and then—fell away from him with a little obsequious shrug. For Miller's voice had been heard again.

"Basta—enough!" he had said, his voice still unraised.

Landon lay where their relinquished efforts had left him, huddled against the gunwale, and staring up at his surroundings with fierce, incredulous eyes. Muhammed was stretched prone beneath his assailant who, as he tripped him, had deftly caught the Moor's right wrist and twisted it behind his back. He sat on his prisoner now, still holding the other's hand, but carelessly and without open concern, perfectly aware that the slightest movement from his human pedestal would break the delicate bone as pipe-clay breaks—in one clean snap.

"Have I made myself plain?" asked Miller, equably.

Landon used a moment of complete silence to stare round the deck, poising his glance on each of his companions in turn. It rested, at last, on Miller's entirely emotionless countenance.

"Yes—and damn you!" said Landon, rising sullenly to his feet.

Miller nodded.

"An amateur cannot break into my particular class of business, my dear Landon," he said. "There are pitfalls for him at every turn. Membership of a dozen organizations is necessary, and they are close corporations; even their humbler servants, as you see, find them rigidly exacting."

Landon shrugged his shoulders, produced his cigarette case and match-box, stuck a match in his mouth, and drew the cigarette across the roughened edge of the box. Miller suffered himself to smile.

"Your nerves are not altogether at their best," he allowed, "but there is no need to emphasize the fact. I have no wish to deal harshly with you. In fact, half of the scheme you have just outlined to me has my approval. I shall not interfere with your desire to receive compensation from your father-in-law, but whatever you receive you will regard, if you please, as from me, provided by my efforts and to be accounted for in full! Is that understood?"

Landon shrugged his shoulders again.

"I welcome your assistance," he said quietly, and put the cigarette to its appointed use.

"But my scheme has, in the final event, to be carried out in all its details," Miller added. "In your bargain with your relations, complete social regeneration and recognition is included."

"But not—the boy?" said Landon, slowly.

"But not the boy," repeated Miller. "The first, I have satisfied myself, cannot be obtained without the surrender of the second. You follow me?"

Landon looked at Muhammed, looked at the deck hand who still sat impassive on the Moor's shoulders, looked at Luigi, looked, lastly, at Miller.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"We are in your hands—literally," he said, and made an amiable gesture of assent.