The Brand of Silence. Harrington Strong

charming, not one of the helpless butterfly sort, but a woman who gave indication that she could care for herself if necessary.

      Prale had been surprised to find her aboard the Manatee, but she had told him that she was going home, that her health had been much benefited, and that she felt she could not remain away longer. It had seemed to Prale that she avoided him purposely, and that puzzled him a bit. He could not understand why any woman should absolutely dislike him. His record in Honduras was a clean one; it was known that he did not care much for women, and surely she had learned that he was a man of means, and did not think he might be a fortune hunter wishing to marry a prominent heiress.

      He had not spoken to her half a dozen times during the voyage. She made the acquaintance of others aboard and, for the first few days, had been busy in their company. The last three days had been stormy ones, and Kate Gilbert had not been much in evidence. Prale judged that she was a poor sailor.

      Now she stopped beside him, the middle-aged maid standing just behind her.

      "Well, we're home, Mr. Prale!" she said.

      "I suppose that you are glad to get home?"

      "Surely!" she replied. "And I'll be angry if there are not half a dozen to meet me when I land. I've been trying to spot some friends in that crowd, but it is a hopeless task."

      "I hope you'll not be disappointed," Prale said.

      As he spoke, he glanced past her at the middle-aged maid, and surprised a peculiar expression on the face of the woman. She had been looking straight at him, and her lips were almost curled into a sneer, while her eyes were flashing with something akin to anger.

      Prale did not understand that. Why should the dragon be incensed with him? He was making no attempt to lay siege to the heart of Miss Kate Gilbert. He was no fortune hunter after an heiress. The expression on the face of the maid amused Prale even while he wondered what it could mean.

      "Picked your hotel?" Kate Gilbert was asking.

      "Not yet, but I hope to get in somewhere," Prale told her. "May I be of assistance to you when we land?"

      "Marie will help me, thanks—and there will be others on the wharf," she answered.

      A cold look had come into her face again, and she turned half away from him and looked down at the crowd on the wharf. Sidney Prale looked straight at her, despite the glare of the middle-aged maid. Kate Gilbert was a woman who would appeal to a majority of men, but there seemed to be something peculiar about her, Prale told himself. He knew that she had avoided him purposely during the voyage, and that she had spoken to him purposely now, yet had asked nothing except whether he had chosen a hotel.

      Why should Kate Gilbert wish to know where he was going to stop? Perhaps it had been only an idle question, he explained to himself. In her happiness at getting home, she had merely wished to speak to somebody, and none of her shipboard friends happened to be near.

      He turned from her and glanced at the maid again. She was not the sort to be named Marie, Prale told himself. Marie called up a vision of a petite, trim woman from sunny France, and this Marie was nothing of the sort. She appeared more to be a peasant used to hard labor, Prale decided.

      And he could not understand the expression on the woman's face as she looked at him. It was almost one of loathing.

      "Got me mixed up with somebody else, or somebody has been giving me a bad reputation," Prale mused. "Enough to make a man shiver—that look of hers."

      Kate Gilbert, apparently, did not intend to have anything more to do with him. Smiling a little at her manner, Prale lifted his hat, picked up the suit case, and turned away. Once more he tried to force a passage through the jostling crowd. He had not taken three steps when Kate Gilbert touched him on the arm.

      "Pardon me, Mr. Prale, but there is something sticking on the end of your suit case," she said.

      Prale glanced down. On one end of the suit case was a bit of paper. It had been stuck there by a drop of mucilage, and the mucilage was still wet.

      He thanked Kate Gilbert and picked the paper off, but he did not throw it over the rail into the water. He crumpled it in his hand and, when he was some distance away, he smoothed it out.

      There was a single word written on it, in the same handwriting as that of the note he had found pinned to the pillow in the stateroom—"Retribution."

      Sidney Prale glanced around quickly. Nobody seemed to be paying particular attention to him. Kate Gilbert and her maid had passed him and were preparing to land. Prale put the piece of paper into his coat pocket and picked up his suit case again. That bit of paper, he knew well, had not been on the suit case when he had left the stateroom. It had been put there as he had made his way through the crowd of passengers along the rail. Who could have stuck it there—and why?

      Now the passengers were streaming ashore, and Sidney Prale stepped to one side and watched them. Perhaps he had some business enemy on board, he told himself, some man he had not noticed, and who was trying to frighten him after a childish fashion. He searched the faces of the landing passengers, but saw nobody he had known in Central America, nobody who looked at all suspicious.

      "Either a joke—or a mistake," Prale told himself again.

      He started ashore. He saw Kate Gilbert just ahead of him, the bulky maid at her heels. An elderly man met her, but did not greet her as a father would have been expected to do. Prale saw them hold a whispered conversation, and it seemed to him that the elderly man gave him a searching glance.

      "I must look like a swindler!" Prale mused.

      Finally, as he went out upon the street to engage a taxicab and start for a hotel, he saw Kate Gilbert and her maid and the elderly man again, getting into a limousine. The girl held a piece of paper in her hand, and was reading something from it to the elderly man. As she got into the car, she dropped the piece of paper to the curb.

      The limousine was gone before Prale reached the curb. He put his suit case down and picked up the piece of paper. There was nothing on it except a couple of names that meant nothing to Sidney Prale. But his eyes bulged, nevertheless, as he read them.

      For the paper was similar to that upon which had been written the note that he had found on the pillow in the stateroom—and the coarse handwriting was the same!

      "What the deuce——" Prale caught himself saying.

      Had Kate Gilbert written that message about retribution and had her maid leave it in the stateroom? Had Kate Gilbert written that single word and had her maid paste it on his suit case as he passed, or pasted it there herself?

      Why had Kate Gilbert—whom he never had seen and of whom he never had heard until she appeared at the ball in Tegucigalpa—avoided him in such a peculiar manner? And why had the misnamed Marie glared at him, and expressed loathing and anger when her eyes met his?

      "What the deuce——" Prale asked himself again.

      Then a taxicab drew up at the curb, and he got in.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

SOME DISCOURTESIES

       Table of Contents

      Sidney Prale obtained accommodations in a prominent hostelry on Fifth Avenue, bathed, dressed, ate luncheon, and then went out upon the streets, walking briskly and swinging his stick, going about New York like a stranger who never had seen it before.

      As a matter of fact, he never had seen this New York before. He had expected a multitude of changes, but nothing compared to what he found. He watched the crowds on the Avenue, cut over to Broadway and investigated the electric signs by daylight,