Her
greatest concern was lest no key of the bunch he had provided her with
should fit the locks. It would have been such a disappointment for
Wilhelm. However, the trunks, she found, had been left open; but her
investigation did not last long. She was frightened of firearms, and
generally of all weapons, not from personal cowardice, but as some women
are, almost superstitiously, from an abstract horror of violence and
murder. She was out again on the veranda long before Wilhelm had any
occasion for a warning whistle. The instinctive, motiveless fear being
the most difficult to overcome, nothing could induce her to return to
her investigations, neither threatening growls nor ferocious hisses, nor
yet a poke or two in the ribs.
"Stupid female!" muttered the hotel-keeper, perturbed by the notion
of that armoury in one of his bedrooms. This was from no abstract
sentiment, with him it was constitutional. "Get out of my sight," he
snarled. "Go and dress yourself for the table d'hote."
Left to himself, Schomberg had meditated. What the devil did this mean?
His thinking processes were sluggish and spasmodic; but suddenly the
truth came to him.
"By heavens, they are desperadoes!" he thought.
Just then he beheld "plain Mr. Jones" and his secretary with the
ambiguous name of Ricardo entering the grounds of the hotel. They had
been down to the port on some business, and now were returning; Mr.
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