"Oh," said Kincheloe. "I told her you and I were friends; you staked me."
"That all?"
Kincheloe nodded, while wiping with his hands the water from his hair and face. His mind was quickly clearing, and he understood that Lucas Cullen's call meant peril. "What's happened, sir?" he appealed.
"Fool!" said Lucas heartily, not in particular reference to Kincheloe's admitted disclosure but in general comment. "Where do you wish to go? Japan; China? Or South America?"
"Why?" Kincheloe begged, cringing.
"Pretty boy! Pretty boy!" said Lucas in contemptuous pity. The man had no nerve at all; and now that he sat straightened and sobered by fright, he looked not old and bloated, but amazingly immature. He was wearing a striped silk sleeping garment, only less flimsy and feminine than his bedfellow's; and now, in spite of his terror, he reached for his hairbrush from the stand near by and nervously began making his toilet.
"I've brought money for you to go to Japan," Lucas continued, arbitrarily choosing the destination for him. "You are going to start right away—to-night. You go to Vancouver and take a boat to Yokohama. Here's some money for you. You will not receive any more until you get it through Yokohama."
Kincheloe stood up, uncertainly, staring at his master vacantly. He did not see Lucas; he saw, instead, monstrous men about to arrest him; he saw a cell with himself in it; the death watch; gallows. He turned to a mirror and meticulously perfected the part in his hair and smoothed the brushing; he picked up a pink powdered burnisher and polished his well mani-
