“Are you organizing a strike?” suggested Saltash, a wicked gleam of humour in his eyes.

Dick’s eyes flashed in answer.  “I am not!” he said.  “But—­I’m damned if they haven’t some reason for striking—­if he cares as little as that!”

“How often do you tell ’em so?” said Saltash.

Juliet’s hand slipped quietly from Columbus’s head to Dick’s arm.  “May I have a cigarette, please?” she said.

He turned to her immediately and his fire died down.  He offered her his cigarette-case in silence.

Juliet took one, faintly smiling.  “Do you know,” she said to Saltash, “it was Dick’s cigarettes that first attracted me to him?  When I landed on this desert island, I had only three left.  He came to the rescue—­most nobly, and has kept me supplied ever since.  I don’t know where he gets them from, but they are the best I ever tasted.”

“He probably smuggles ’em,” said Saltash, offering her a match.

“No, I don’t,” said Dick, rather shortly.  “I get them from a man in town.  A fellow I once met—­Ivor Yardley, the K. C.—­first introduced me to them.  I get them through his secretary who has some sort of interest in the trade.”

A sudden silence fell.  Juliet’s cigarette remained poised in the act of kindling, but no smoke came from her lips.  She had the look of one who listens with almost painful intentness.

The flame of the lighted match licked Saltash’s fingers, and he dropped it.  “Pardon my clumsiness!  Let’s try again!  So you know Yardley, do you?” He flung the words at Dick.  “Quite the coming man in his profession.  Rather a brute in some ways, cold-blooded as a fish and wily as a serpent, but interesting—­distinctly interesting.  When did you meet him?”

“Early this year.  I consulted him on a matter of business.  I have no private acquaintance with him.”  Dick was looking straight at Saltash with a certain hardness of contempt in his face.  “You evidently are on terms of intimacy with him.”

“Oh, quite!” said Saltash readily.  “He knows me—­almost as well as you do.  And I know him—­even better.  I was saying to Juliette just now that I believe he shares the general impression that I have got Lady Jo Farringmore somewhere up my sleeve.  She did the rabbit trick, you know, a week or two before the wedding, and because I was to have been the best man I somehow got the blame.  Wonder if he’d have blamed you if you’d been there!”

Dick stiffened.  “I think not,” he said.

“Not disreputable enough?” laughed Saltash.

“Not nearly,” said Juliet, coming out of her silence.  “Dick has rather strong opinions on this subject, Charles, so please don’t be flippant about it!  Will you give me another match?”

He held one for her, his eyebrows cocked at a comical angle, open derision in the odd eyes beneath them.  Then, her cigarette kindled, he sprang up in his abrupt fashion.

“I’m going.  Thanks for putting up with me for so long.  I had to come and see you, Juliette.  You are one of the very few capable of appreciating me at my full value.”