"Well, I have heard of pretty ladies selling kisses and getting all sorts of prices for them—for charity's sake, of course."
The others insisted at once that here was an excellent idea though they hardly expected Carmelita to agree.
"I dare you, Carmelita," Jack Hodge cried. And that was what eventually fetched her.
"I'll do it if you'll make the first bid, Jack?" she flashed at him. He shouted assent. "All right. Come on!" She led the way toward the dance platform. In the wake of the crowd of her fellow conspirators Prince Rao-Singh walked more slowly than the rest and he seemed to be smiling to himself, if one could ever distinguish any emotion upon his inscrutable mask of a face.
Meantime Dudley Drake had been sitting alone in Rao-Singh's study. Mr. Church, who believed in functioning in an executive capacity exclusively even in his charitable pursuits as long as he could find a subordinate to do the actual work, had discovered Dudley standing moodily a little apart from Lucy's boisterous circle and had promptly requisitioned him. "Ah, Drake," he had hailed him, recognizing him from his occasional visits to Drake and Porter's offices as his friend Sanford Drake's chief assistant and nephew, "come in and give me a hand with this accounting business, won't
