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The Little Blue Devil

it; but unconsciously she stabbed him a dozen times in every hour he spent with her.

The car shot up the straight gravel drive and Tony set his teeth. It was coming now. As Attwood got out he said: “I want to speak to you, sir. Can you give me—ten minutes, after I’ve put the car away?”

“Certainly. I’ll be on the veranda.”

Attwood was mildly apprehensive. Stacy suited him, and he hoped this was not the preliminary to his giving notice, or request for higher wages. That he would not agree to, he paid quite enough already. On second thoughts, it wasn’t like Stacy to want ten minutes in which to say such simple things as those. He was not prodigal of words. Attwood gave it up, lighted his pipe, and waited.

Tony stood before him again after a minute or two, outwardly as calm as he was erect, but inwardly tense to the quivering point. He tried to find a suitable opening, and failing, said abruptly, “I’m afraid I shall have to leave you, sir, as soon as you’ve got another driver.”

“I’m sorry for that, Stacy. You suit—aren’t you satisfied?”

“Yes; but I’m going to get married.”

Attwood removed his pipe. “What on?” was on his lips, but he did not quite say it.

“And we can’t get any money till we cable for it, and—my name’s not Stacy.”

“I’m not very much surprised,” murmured Attwood.

“Nothing shady—only I changed it because I’d died. . . . Did you remember some time ago seeing paragraphs in the papers about———”

Tony checked, and was furious with himself; for the first time in his twenty-three years he felt as if he were blushing.

“—about an Englishman, a Lord Trent, who was lost trying to get overland to Tanami?”

“Ye—es.”