With a key which he selected from a large bunch in his pocket, he opened the door, and stepped out into the garage, carefully closing the door behind him.  An electric pocket-lamp served him with sufficient light to find his way out into the lane, and very shortly he was proceeding along Limehouse Causeway.  At the moment, indignation was the major emotion ruling his mind; he resented the form which his anger assumed, for it was a passion of rebellion, and rebellion is only possible in servants.  It is the part of a slave resenting the lash.  He was an unscrupulous, unmoral man, not lacking in courage of a sort; and upon the conquest of Mahara, the visible mouthpiece of Mr. King, he had entered in much the same spirit as that actuating a Kanaka who dives for pearls in a shark-infested lagoon.  He had sought a slave, and lo! the slave was become the master!  Otherwise whence this spirit of rebellion... this fear?

He occupied himself with such profitless reflections up to the time that he came to the electric trains; but, from thence onward, his mind became otherwise engaged.  On his way to Piccadilly Circus that same evening, he had chanced to find himself upon a crowded pavement walking immediately behind Denise Ryland and Helen Cumberly.  His esthetic, Greek soul had been fired at first sight of the beauty of the latter; and now, his heart had leaped ecstatically.  His first impulse, of course, had been to join the two ladies; but Gianapolis had trained himself to suspect all impulses.

Therefore he had drawn near—­near enough to overhear their conversation without proclaiming himself.  What he had learned by this eavesdropping he counted of peculiar value.

Helen Cumberly was arranging to dine with her friend at the latter’s hotel that evening.  “But I want to be home early,” he had heard the girl say, “so if I leave you at about ten o’clock I can walk to Palace Mansions.  No! you need not come with me; I enjoy a lonely walk through the streets of London in the evening"...

Gianapolis registered a mental vow that Helen’s walk should not be a lonely one.  He did not flatter himself upon the possession of a pleasing exterior, but, from experience, he knew that with women he had a winning way.

Now, his mind aglow with roseate possibilities, he stepped from the tram in the neighborhood of Shoreditch, and chartered a taxi-cab.  From this he descended at the corner of Arundel Street and strolled along westward in the direction of the hotel patronized by Miss Ryland.  At a corner from which he could command a view of the entrance, he paused and consulted his watch.

It was nearly twenty minutes past ten.  Mentally, he cursed Mahara, who perhaps had caused him to let slip this golden opportunity.  But his was not a character easily discouraged; he lighted a cigarette and prepared himself to wait, in the hope that the girl had not yet left her friend.