Page:Love Insurance - Earl Biggers (1914).djvu/193



N the same busy night when the Lileth flashed her red signal and Miss Gabrielle Rose arrived with a package of letters that screamed for a Cotrell, two strangers invaded San Marco by means of the eight-nineteen freight south. Frayed, fatigued and famished as they were, it would hardly have been kind to study them as they strolled up San Sebastian Avenue toward the plaza. But had you been so unkind, you would never have guessed that frequently, in various corners of the little round globe, they had known prosperity, the weekly pay envelope, and the buyer's crook of the finger summoning a waiter.

One of the strangers was short, with flaming red hair and in his eye the twinkle without which the collected works of Bernard Shaw are