WORLD'S END

And so on, until the father said: "All right." Lanny was so happy he stood on his head in the stern of the boat and kicked his bare legs in the air.

VI

Beauty insisted upon lending them her car, so that Pierre would go along to help take care of Lanny. They would have a Budd automatic in the car, and Pierre knew how to use it - he couldn't fail to learn in a household where boxes of cartridges lay around like chocolates in other homes. Robbie laughed and said he didn't think Za-haroff had had any murder done for some years; but anyhow, it gave a fourteen-year-old boy more thrills than all the movies produced up to February 1914.

The road from Antibes to Nice is straight and flat, and there were advertising signs and a big racetrack, many motorcars, and in those days still a few carriages. When you pass Nice you travel on one of three roads, called corniches, which means "shelves"; if you wanted scenery you chose the highest shelf, and if you wanted to get there you chose the lowest, but in either case you kept tooting your horn, for no matter how carefully you made the turns, you could never tell what lunatic might come whirling around the next one.

Monaco is a tiny province with a ruler of its own. The "Prince" of those days was interested in oceanography, and had constructed a great aquarium; but this wasn't such a novelty to Lanny, who had learned to expel the air from his lungs and sink down to where the fishes live. "Monte," as the smart people call it, is a small town on a flat rocky height which juts out into the sea. There are terraces be-

low it, carved out of the rock, and you can look over the water from your hotel windows; down below you hear incessant shooting, for next to playing roulette and baccarat, the favorite amusement of the visitors is killing pigeons. The tender-minded comfort themselves with the thought that somebody eats those that fall, and presumably the hawks end the troubles of those that fly away wounded.

Lanny had been here before, and there was nothing new to him in a street of fashionable shops and hotels. They went to the most expensive of the latter, and Robbie engaged a suite, and sent up his card to the Turkish dignitary, whose secretary came and requested in polished French that "M. Bood" would be so kind as to return in an hour, as the pasha was "in conference." Robbie said, certainly, and they went out to stroll in the beautiful gardens of the Casino, which- have walks lined with palm trees and flowering shrubs. There was a little circle of flower beds, and as they came to it, Robbie said, in a low voice: "Here he comes."

"Who?" whispered Lanny; and the answer was: "The man we talked about in the boat."

The boy's heart gave a jump. He looked and saw a tall, gray-haired gentleman turning onto the other side of the circle. He paid no attention to them, so Lanny could take a good look.

Basil Zaharoff had been a vigorous man in his youth, but had grown heavy. He wore the garment of an Englishman on formal occasions, which is called a frock coat, cut large as if to hide his central bulk, and hanging down in back all the way to his knees; a smooth, black, and very ugly garment supposed to confer dignity upon its wearer. Added to it were striped trousers, shoes with spats, and on his head a tall cylinder of smooth black silk. The munitions king had a gray mustache and what was called an "imperial," a tuft of hair starting from the front of his chin, and hanging down three or four inches below it. He walked with a cane, stooping slightly, which made his hooked nose the most prominent thing about him and gave the odd impression that he was smelling his way.

"Having his constitutional," said Robbie, after Zaharoff had passed. Lanny took a rear view of the man who was worth so many millions, and had got them by having other men's papers stolen. "He comes here often," explained the father. "He stays at the hotel with his duquesa."

"He is married?" asked the boy, and Robbie told the strange story of this master of Europe who could not buy the one thing he most wanted.