"I've been amusing myself by wondering whether you would come here to see me tonight."

"But your note said you were sure I'd come."

"You have come, haven't you?"

"Yes, Scheherazade, I'm here at your bidding, spirit and flesh. But I forgot to bring one thing."

"What?"

"The box which—you have promised yourself."

"Yes, the captain has it, I believe," she returned serenely.

"Oh, Lord! Have you even found out that? I don't know whether I'm much flattered by this surveillance you and your friends maintain over me. I suppose you even know what I had for dinner. Do you?"

"Yes."

"Come, I'll call that bluff, dear lady! What did I have?"

When she told him, carelessly, and without humour, mentioning accurately every detail of his dinner, he lost his gaiety of countenance a little.

"Oh, I say, you know," he protested, "that's going it a trifle too strong. Now, why the devil should your people keep tabs on me to that extent?"

She looked up directly into his eyes:

"Mr. Neeland, I want to tell you why. I asked you here so that I may tell you. The people associated with me are absolutely pledged that neither the French nor the British Government shall have access to the contents of your box. That is why nothing that you do escapes our scrutiny. We are determined to have the papers in that box, and we shall have them."

"You have come to that determination too late," he began; but she stopped him with a slight gesture of protest:

"Please don't interrupt me, Mr. Neeland."

"I won't; go on, dear lady!"

"Then, I'm trying to tell you all I may. I am trying to tell you enough of the truth to make you reflect very seriously.

"This is no ordinary private matter, no vulgar attempt at robbery and crime as you think—or pretend to think—for you are very intelligent, Mr. Neeland, and you know that the contrary is true.

"This affair concerns the secret police, the embassies, the chancelleries, the rulers themselves of nations long since grouped into two formidable alliances radically hostile to one another.

"I don't think you have understood—perhaps even yet you do not understand why the papers you carry are so important to certain governments—why it is impossible that you be permitted to deliver them to the Princess Mistchenka——"

"Where did you ever hear of her!" he demanded in astonishment.

The girl smiled:

"Dear Mr. Neeland, I know the Princess Mistchenka better, perhaps, than you do."

"Do you?"

"Indeed I do. What do you know about her? Nothing at all except that she is handsome, attractive, cultivated, amusing, and apparently wealthy.

"You know her as a traveller, a patroness of music and the fine arts—as a devotee of literature, as a graceful hostess, and an amiable friend who gives promising young artists letters of introduction to publishers who are in a position to offer them employment."

That this girl should know so much about the Princess Mistchenka and about his own relations with her amazed Neeland. He did not pretend to account for it; he did not try; he sat silent, serious, and surprised, looking into the pretty and almost smiling face of a girl who apparently had been responsible for three separate attempts to kill him—perhaps even a fourth attempt; and who now sat beside him talking in a soft and agreeable voice about matters concerning which he had never dreamed she had heard.

For a few moments she sat silent, observing in his changing expression the effects of what she had said to him. Then, with a smile:

"Ask me whatever questions you desire to ask, Mr. Neeland. I shall do my best to answer them."

"Very well," he said bluntly; "how do you happen to know so much about me?"

"I know something about the friends of the Princess Mistchenka. I have to."

"Did you know who I was there in the house at Brookhollow?"

"No."

"When, then?"

"When you yourself told me your name, I recognised it."

"I surprised you by interrupting you in Brookhollow?"

"Yes."

"You expected no interruption?"

"None."

"How did you happen to go there? Where did you ever hear of the olive-wood box?"

"I had advices by cable from abroad—directions to go to Brookhollow and secure the box."

"Then somebody must be watching the Princess Mistchenka."

"Of course," she said simply.

"Why 'of course'?"

"Mr. Neeland, the Princess Mistchenka and her youthful protegee, Miss Carew——"

"What!!!"

The girl smiled wearily:

"Really," she said, "you are such a boy to be mixed in with matters of this colour. I think that's the reason you have defeated us—the trained fencer dreads a left-handed novice more than any classic master of the foils.

"And that is what you have done to us—blundered—if you'll forgive me—into momentary victory.

"But such victories are only momentary, Mr. Neeland. Please believe it. Please try to understand, too, that this is no battle with masks and plastrons and nicely padded buttons. No; it is no comedy, but a grave and serious affair that must inevitably end in tragedy—for somebody."

"For me?" he asked without smiling.

She turned on him abruptly and laid one hand lightly on his arm with a pretty gesture, at once warning, appealing, and protective.

"I asked you to come here," she said, "because—because I want you to escape the tragedy."

"You want me to escape?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I—am sorry for you."

He said nothing.

"And—I like you, Mr. Neeland."

The avowal in the soft, prettily modulated voice, lost none of its charm and surprise because the voice was a trifle tremulous, and the girl's face was tinted with a delicate colour.

"I like to believe what you say, Scheherazade," he said pleasantly. "Somehow or other I never did think you hated me personally—except once——"

She flushed, and he was silent, remembering her humiliation in the Brookhollow house.

"I don't know," she said in a colder tone, "why I should feel at all friendly toward you, Mr. Neeland, except that you are personally courageous, and you have shown yourself generous under a severe temptation to be otherwise.

"As for—any personal humiliation—inflicted upon me——" She looked down thoughtfully and pretended to sort out a bonbon to her taste, while the hot colour cooled in her cheeks.

"I know," he said, "I've also jeered at you, jested, nagged you, taunted you, kiss——" He checked himself and he smiled and ostentatiously lighted a cigarette.

"Well," he said, blowing a cloud of aromatic smoke toward the ceiling, "I believe that this is as strange a week as any man ever lived. It's like a story book—like one of your wonderful stories, Scheherazade. It doesn't seem real, now that it is ended——"

"It is not ended," she interrupted in a low voice.

He smiled.

"You know," he said, "there's no use trying to frighten such an idiot as I am."

She lifted her troubled eyes:

"That is what frightens me," she said. "I am afraid you don't know enough to be afraid."

He laughed.

"But I want you to be afraid. A really brave man knows what fear is. I want you to know."

"What do you wish me to do, Scheherazade?"

"Keep away from that box."

"I can't do that."

"Yes, you can. You can leave it in charge of the captain of this ship and let him see that an attempt is made to deliver it to the Princess Mistchenka."

She was in deadly earnest; he saw that. And, in spite of himself, a slight thrill that was almost a chill passed over him, checked instantly by the hot wave of sheer exhilaration at the hint of actual danger.

"Oho!" he said gaily. "Then you and your friends are not yet finished with me?"

"Yes, if you will consider your mission accomplished."

"And leave the rest to the captain of the Volhynia?"

"Yes."

"Scheherazade," he said, "did you suppose me to be a coward?"

"No. You have done all that you can. A reserve officer of the British Navy has the box in his charge. Let him, protected by his Government, send it toward its destination."

In her even voice the implied menace was the more sinister for her calmness.

He looked at her, perplexed, and shook his head.

"I ask you," she went on, "to keep out of this affair—to disassociate yourself from it. I ask it because you have been considerate and brave, and because I do not wish you harm."

He turned toward her, leaning a little forward on the lounge:

"No use," he said, smiling. "I'm in it until it ends——"

"Let it end then!" said a soft, thick voice directly behind him. And Neeland turned and found the man he had seen on deck standing beside him. One of his fat white hands held an automatic pistol, covering him; the other was carefully closing the door which he had noiselessly opened to admit him.

"Karl!" exclaimed Ilse Dumont.

"It is safaire that you do not stir, either, to interfere," he said, squinting for a second at her out of his eyes set too near together.

"Karl!" she cried. "I asked him to come in order to persuade him! I gave him my word of honour!"

"Did you do so? Then all the bettaire. I think we shall persuade him. Do not venture to move, young man; I shoot veree willingly."

And Neeland, looking at him along the blunt barrel of the automatic pistol, was inclined to believe him.

His sensations were not agreeable; he managed to maintain a calm exterior; choke back the hot chagrin that reddened his face to the temples; and cast a half humorous, half contemptuous glance at Ilse Dumont.

"You prove true, don't you?" he said coolly. "—True to your trade of story-telling, Scheherazade!"

"I knew—nothing—of this!" she stammered.

But Neeland only laughed disagreeably.

Then the door opened again softly, and Golden Beard came in without his crutches.



CHAPTER XXI

METHOD AND FORESIGHT

Without a word—with merely a careless glance at Neeland, who remained seated under the level threat of Ali Baba's pistol, the big, handsome German removed his overcoat. Under it was another coat. He threw this off in a brisk, businesslike manner, unbuckled a brace of pistols, laid them aside, unwound from his body a long silk rope ladder which dropped to the floor at Ilse Dumont's feet.

The girl had turned very pale. She stooped, picked up the silk ladder, and, holding it in both hands, looked hard at Golden Beard.

"Johann," she said, "I gave my word of honour to this young man that if he came here no harm would happen to him."

"I read the note you have shoved under his door," said Golden Beard. "That iss why we are here, Karl and I."

Neeland remembered the wax in the keyhole then. He turned his eyes on Ilse Dumont, curiously, less certain of her treachery now.

Meanwhile, Golden Beard continued busily unwinding things from his apparently too stout person, and presently disengaged three life-belts.

One of these he adjusted to his own person, then, putting on his voluminous overcoat, took the pistol from Ali Baba, who, in turn, adjusted one of the remaining life-belts to his body.

Neeland, deeply perplexed and uncomfortable, watched these operations in silence, trying to divine some reason for them.

"Now, then!" said Golden Beard to the girl; and his voice sounded cold and incisive in the silence.

"This is not the way to do it," she said in a low tone. "I gave him my word of honour."

"You will be good enough to buckle on that belt," returned Golden Beard, staring at her.

Slowly she bent over, picked up the life-belt, and, looping the silk rope over her arm, began to put on the belt. Golden Beard, impatient, presently came to her assistance; then he unhooked from the wall a cloak and threw it over her shoulders.

"Now, Karl!" he said. "Shoot him dead if he stirs!" And he snatched a sheet from the bed, tore it into strips, walked over to Neeland, and deftly tied him hand and foot and gagged him.

Then Golden Beard and Ali Baba, between them, lifted the young man and seated him on the iron bed and tied him fast to it.

"Go out on deck!" said Golden Beard to Ilse Dumont.

"Let me stay——"

"No! You have acted like a fool. Go to the lower deck where is our accustomed rendezvous."

"I wish to remain, Johann. I shall not interfere——"

"Go to the lower deck, I tell you, and be ready to tie that rope ladder!"

Ali Baba, down on his knees, had pulled out a steamer trunk from under the bed, opened it, and was lifting out three big steel cylinders.

These he laid on the bed in a row beside the tied man; and Golden Beard, still facing Ilse Dumont, turned his head to look.

The instant his head was turned the girl snatched a pistol from the brace of weapons on the washstand and thrust it under her cloak. Neither Golden Beard nor Ali Baba noticed the incident; the latter was busy connecting the three cylinders with coils of wire; the former, deeply interested, followed the operation for a moment or two, then walking over to the trunk, he lifted from it a curious little clock with two dials and set it on the railed shelf of glass above the washstand.

"Karl, haf you ship's time?"

Ali Baba paused to fish out his watch, and the two compared timepieces. Then Golden Beard wound the clock, set the hands of one dial at the time indicated by their watches; set the hands of the other dial at 2:13; and Ali Baba, carrying a reel of copper wire from the bed to the washstand, fastened one end of it to the mechanism of the clock.

Golden Beard turned sharply on Ilse Dumont:

"I said go on deck! Did you not understand?"

The girl replied steadily:

"I understood that we had abandoned this idea for a better one."

"There iss no better one!"

"There is! Of what advantage would it be to blow up the captain's cabin and the bridge when it is not certain that the papers will be destroyed?"

"Listen once!" returned Golden Beard, wagging his finger in her face:

"Cabin and bridge are directly above us and there remains not a splinter large like a pin! I know. I know my bombs! I know——"

The soft voice of Ali Baba interrupted, and his shallow, lightish eyes peered around at them:

"Eet ees veree excellent plan, Johann. We do not require these papers; eet ees to destroy them we are mooch anxious"—he bent a deathly stare on Neeland—"and this yoong gentleman who may again annoy us." He nodded confidently to himself and continued to connect the wires. "Yes, yes," he murmured absently, "eet ees veree good plan—veree good plan to blow him into leetle pieces so beeg as a pin."

"It is a clumsy plan!" said the girl, desperately. "There is no need for wanton killing like this, when we can——"

"Killing?" repeated Golden Beard. "That makes nothing. This English captain he iss of the naval reserve. Und this young man"—nodding coolly toward Neeland—"knows too much already. That iss not wanton killing. Also! You talk too much. Do you hear? We are due to drop anchor about 2:30. God knows there will be enough rushing to and fro at 2:13.

"Go on deck, I say, and fasten that rope ladder! Weishelm's fishing smack will be watching; und if we do not swim for it we are caught on board! Und that iss the end of it all for us!"

"Johann," she began tremulously, "listen to me——"

"Nein! Nein! What for a Frauenzimmer haff we here!" retorted Golden Beard, losing his patience and catching her by the arm. "Go out und fix for us our ladder und keep it coiled on the rail und lean ofer it like you was looking at those stars once!"

He forced her toward the door; she turned, struggling, to confront him:

"Then for God's sake, give this man a chance! Don't leave him tied here to be blown to atoms! Give him a chance—anything except this! Throw him out of the port, there!" She pointed at the closed port, evaded Golden Beard, sprang upon the sofa, unscrewed the glass cover, and swung it open.

The port was too small even to admit the passage of her own body; she realised it; Golden Beard laughed and turned to examine the result of Ali Baba's wiring.

For a second the girl gazed wildly around her, as though seeking some help in her terrible dilemma, then she snatched up a bit of the torn sheeting, tied it to the screw of the porthole cover, and flung the end out where it fluttered in the darkness.

As she sprang to the floor Golden Beard swung round in renewed anger at her for still loitering.

"Sacreminton!" he exclaimed. "It is time you do your part! Go to your post then! We remain here until five minutes is left us. Then we join you."

The girl nodded, turned to the door.

"Wait! You understand the plan?"

"Yes."

"You understand that you do not go overboard until we arrive, no matter what happens?"

"Yes."

He stood looking at her for a moment, then with a shrug he went over and patted her shoulder.

"That's my brave girl! I also do not desire to kill anybody. But when the Fatherland is in danger, then killing signifies nothing—is of no consequence—pouf!—no lives are of importance then—not even our own!" He laughed in a fashion almost kindly and clapped her lightly once more on her shoulder: "Go, my child. The Fatherland is in danger!"

She went, not looking back. He closed and locked the door behind her and calmly turned to aid Ali Baba who was still fussing with the wires. Presently, however, he mounted the bed where Neeland sat tied and gagged; pulled from his pockets an auger with its bit, a screw-eye, and block and tackle; and, standing on the bed, began to bore a hole in the ceiling.

In a few moments he had fastened the screw-eye, rigged his block, made a sling for his bombs out of a blanket, and had hoisted the three cylinders up flat against the ceiling from whence the connecting wires sagged over the foot of the bedstead to the alarm clock on the washstand.

To give the clock more room on the glass shelf, Ali Baba removed the toilet accessories and set them on the washstand; but he had no room for a large jug of water, and, casting about for a place to set it, noticed a railed bracket over the head of the bed, and placed it there.

Then, apparently satisfied with his labours, he sat down Turk fashion on the sofa, lighted a cigarette, selected a bonbon from the box beside him, and calmly regaled himself.

Presently Golden Beard tied the cord which held up the sling in which the bombs were slung against the ceiling. He fastened it tightly to the iron frame of the bed, stepped back to view the effect, then leisurely pulled out and filled his porcelain pipe, and seated himself on the sofa beside Ali Baba.

Neither spoke; twice Golden Beard drew his watch from his waistcoat pocket and compared it carefully with the dial of the alarm clock on the washstand shelf. The third time he did this he tapped Ali Baba on the shoulder, rose, knocked out his pipe and flung it out of the open port.

Together they walked over to Neeland, examined the gag and ligatures as impersonally as though the prisoner were not there, nodded their satisfaction, turned off the electric light, and, letting themselves out, locked the door on the outside.

It lacked five minutes of the time indicated on the alarm dial.



CHAPTER XXII

TWO THIRTEEN

To Neeland, the entire affair had seemed as though it were some rather obvious screen-picture at which he was looking—some photo-play too crudely staged, and in which he himself was no more concerned than any casual spectator.

Until now, Neeland had not been scared; Ali Baba and his automatic pistol were only part of this unreality; his appearance on the scene had been fantastically classical; he entered when his cue was given by Scheherazade—this oily, hawk-nosed Eurasian with his pale eyes set too closely and his moustache hiding under his nose a la Enver Pasha—a faultless make-up, an entry properly timed and prepared. And then, always well-timed for dramatic effect, Golden Beard had appeared. Everything was en regle, every unity nicely preserved. Scheherazade had protested; and her protest sounded genuine. Also entirely convincing was the binding and gagging of himself at the point of an automatic pistol; and, as for the rest of the business, it was practically all action and little dialogue—an achievement really in these days of dissertation.

All, as he looked on at it over the bandage which closed his mouth, had seemed unreal, impersonal, even when his forced attitude had caused him inconvenience and finally pain.

But now, with the light extinguished and the closing of the door behind Golden Beard and Ali Baba, he experienced a shock which began to awaken him to the almost incredible and instant reality of things.

It actually began to look as though these story-book conspirators—these hirelings of a foreign government who had not been convincing because they were too obvious, too well done—actually intended to expose him to serious injury.

In spite of their sinister intentions in regard to him, in spite of their attempts to harm him, he had not, so far, been able to take them seriously or even to reconcile them and their behaviour with the commonplaces of the twentieth century in which he lived.

But now, in the darkness, with the clock on the washstand shelf ticking steadily, he began to take the matter very seriously. The gag in his mouth hurt him cruelly; the bands of linen that held it in began to stifle him so that his breath came in quick gasps through his nostrils; sweat started at the roots of his hair; his heart leaped, beat madly, stood still, and leaped again; and he threw himself against the strips that held him and twisted and writhed with all his strength.

Suddenly fear pierced him like a poignard; for a moment panic seized him and chaos reigned in his bursting brain. He swayed and strained convulsively; he strove to hurl all the inward and inert reserve of strength against the bonds that held him.

After what seemed an age of terrible effort he found himself breathing fast and heavily as though his lungs would burst through his straining, dilating nostrils, seated exactly as he had been without a band loosened, and the icy sweat pouring over his twitching face.

He heard himself trying to shout—heard the imprisoned groan shattered in his own throat, dying there within him.

Suddenly a key rattled; the door was torn open; the light switched on. Golden Beard stood there, his blue eyes glaring furious inquiry. He gave one glance around the room, caught sight of the clock, recoiled, shut off the light again, and slammed and locked the door.

But in that instant Neeland's starting eyes had seen the clock. The fixed hands on one of the dials still pointed to 2:13; the moving hands on the other lacked three minutes of that hour.

And, seated there in the pitch darkness, he suddenly realised that he had only three minutes more of life on earth.

All panic was gone; his mind was quite clear. He heard every tick of the clock and knew what each one meant.

Also he heard a sudden sound across the room, as though outside the port something was rustling against the ship's side.

Suddenly there came a click and the room sprang into full light; an arm, entering the open port from the darkness outside, let go the electric button, was withdrawn, only to reappear immediately clutching an automatic pistol. And the next instant the arm and the head of Ilse Dumont were thrust through the port into the room.

Her face was pale as death as her eyes fell on the dial of the clock. With a gasp she stretched out her arm and fired straight at the clock, shattering both dials and knocking the timepiece into the washbasin below.

For a moment she struggled to force her other shoulder and her body through the port, but it was too narrow. Then she called across to the bound figure seated on the bed and staring at her with eyes that fairly started from their sockets:

"Mr. Neeland, can't you move? Try! Try to break loose——"

Her voice died away in a whisper as a flash of bluish flame broke out close to the ceiling overhead, where the three bombs were slung.

"Oh, God!" she faltered. "The fuses are afire!"

For an instant her brain reeled; she instinctively recoiled as though to fling herself out into the darkness. Then, in a second, her extended arm grew rigid, slanted upward; the pistol exploded once, twice, the third time; the lighted bombs in their sling, released by the severed rope, fell to the bed, the fuses sputtering and fizzling.

Instantly the girl fired again at the big jug of water on the bracket over the head of the bed; a deluge drenched the bed underneath; two fuses were out; one still snapped and glimmered and sent up little jets and rings of vapour; but as the water soaked into the match the cinder slowly died until the last spark fell from the charred wet end and went out on the drenched blanket.

She waited a little longer, then with an indescribable look at the helpless man below, she withdrew her head, pushed herself free, hung to the invisible rope ladder for a moment, swaying against the open port. His eyes were fastened on her where she dangled there against the darkness betwixt sky and sea, oscillating with the movement of the ship, her pendant figure now gilded by the light from the room, now phantom dim as she swung outward.

As the roll of the ship brought her head to the level of the port once more, she held up her pistol, shook it, and laughed at him:

"Now do you believe that I can shoot?" she called out. "Answer me some time when that mocking tongue of yours is free!"

Then, climbing slowly upward into darkness, the light, falling now across her body, now athwart her skirt, gilded at last the heels of her shoes; suddenly she was gone; then stars glittered through the meshes of the shadowy, twitching ladder which still barred the open port. And finally the ladder was pulled upward out of sight.

He waited. After a little while—an interminable interval to him—he heard somebody stealthily trying the handle of the door; then came a pause, silence, followed by a metallic noise as though the lock were being explored or picked.

For a while the scraping, metallic sounds continued steadily, then abruptly ceased as though the unseen meddler had been interrupted.

A voice—evidently the voice of the lock-picker—pitched to a cautious key, was heard in protest as though objecting to some intentions evident in the new arrival. Whispered expostulations continued for a while, then the voices became quarrelsome and louder; and somebody suddenly rapped on the door.

Then a thick, soft voice that he recognised with a chill, grew angrily audible:

"I say to you, steward, that I forbid you to entaire that room. I forbid you to disturb thees yoong lady. Do you know who I am?"

"I don't care who you are——"

"I have authority. I shall employ it. You shall lose your berth! Thees yoong lady within thees room ees my fiancee! I forbid you to enter forcibly——"

"Haven't I knocked? Wot's spilin' you? I am doing my duty. Back away from this 'ere door, I tell you!"

"You spik thees-a-way, so impolite——"

"Get out o' my way! Blime d'you think I'll stand 'ere jawin' any longer?"

"I am membaire of Parliament——"

And the defiant voice of Jim's own little cockney steward retorted, interrupting:

"Ahr, stow it! Don't I tell you as how a lydy telephones me just now that my young gentleman is in there? Get away from that door, you blighter, or I'll bash your beak in!"

The door trembled under a sudden and terrific kick; the wordy quarrel ceased; hurried steps retreated along the corridor; a pass key rattled in the lock, and the door was flung wide open:

"Mr. Neeland, sir—oh, my Gawd, wot ever 'ave they gone and done, sir, to find you 'ere in such a 'orrid state!"

But the little cockney lost no time; fingers and pen-knife flew; Neeland, his arms free, tore the bandage from his mouth and spat out the wad of cloth.

"I'll do the rest," he gasped, forcing the words from his bruised and distorted lips; "follow that man who was outside talking to you! Find him if you can. He had been planning to blow up this ship!"

"That man, sir!"

"Yes! Did you know him?"

"Yes, sir; but I darsn't let on to him I knew him—what with 'earing that you was in here——"

"You did know him?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who is he?"

"Mr. Neeland, sir, that there cove is wot he says he is, a member of Parliament, and his name is Wilson——"

"You're mad! He's an Eurasian, a spy; his name is Karl Breslau—I heard it from the others—and he tried to blow up the captain's cabin and the bridge with those three bombs lying there on the bed!"

"My God, sir—what you tell me may be so, but what I say is true, sir; that gentleman you heard talking outside the door to me is Charles Wilson, member of Parliament, representing Glebe and Wotherness; and I knew it w'en I 'anded 'im the 'ot stuff!—'strewth I did, sir—and took my chance you'd 'elp me out if I got in too rotten with the company!"

Neeland said:

"Certainly you may count on me. You're a brick!" He continued to rub and slap and pinch his arms and legs to restore the circulation, and finally ventured to rise to his shaky feet. The steward offered an arm; together they hobbled to the door, summoned another steward, placed him in charge of the room, and went on in quest of Captain West, to whom an immediate report was now imperative.



CHAPTER XXIII

ON HIS WAY

The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-red beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke from tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain of the Volhynia and young Neeland sat together in low-voiced conference in the captain's cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and pistol, stood outside the locked and bolted door.

Off the port bow, Liverpool spread as far as the eye could see through the shredded fog; to starboard, off Birkenhead, through a haze of pearl and lavender, the tall phantom of an old-time battleship loomed. She was probably one of Nelson's ships, now only an apparition; but to Neeland, as he caught sight of her dimly revealed, still dominating the water, the old ship seemed like a menacing ghost, never to be laid until the sceptre of sea power fell from an enervated empire and the glory of Great Britain departed for all time. And in his Yankee heart he hoped devoutly that such disaster to the world might never come upon it.

Few passengers were yet astir; the tender had not yet come alongside; the monstrous city beyond had not awakened.

But a boat manned by Liverpool police lay off the Volhynia's port; Neeland's steamer trunk was already in it; and now the captain accompanied him to the ladder, where a sailor took his suitcase and the olive-wood box and ran down the landing stairs like a monkey.

"Good luck," said the captain of the Volhynia. "And keep it in your mind every minute that those two men and that woman probably are at this moment aboard some German fishing craft, and headed for France.

"Remember, too, that they are merely units in a vast system; that they are certain to communicate with other units; that between you and Paris are people who will be notified to watch for you, follow you, rob you."

Neeland nodded thoughtfully.

The captain said again:

"Good luck! I wish you were free to turn over that box to us. But if you've given your word to deliver it in person, the whole matter involves, naturally, a point of honour."

"Yes. I have no discretion in the matter, you see." He laughed. "You're thinking, Captain West, that I haven't much discretion anyway."

"I don't think you have very much," admitted the captain, smiling and shaking the hand which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely one symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye. And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious one and not as a lark."

They exchanged a firm clasp; then Neeland descended and entered the boat; the Inspector of Police took the tiller; the policemen bent to the oars, and the boat shot away through a mist which was turning to a golden vapour.

It was within a few boat-lengths of the landing stairs that Neeland, turning for a last look into the steaming golden glory behind him, saw the most splendid sight of his life. And that sight was the British Empire assuming sovereignty.

For there, before his eyes, militant, magnificent, the British fleet was taking the sea, gliding out to accept its fealty, moving majestically in mass after mass of steel under flowing torrents of smoke, with the phantom battle flags whipping aloft in the blinding smother of mist and sun and the fawning cut-water hurrying too, as though even every littlest wave were mobilised and hastening seaward in the service of its mistress, Ruler of all Waters, untroubled by a man-made Kiel.

And now there was no more time to be lost; no more stops until he arrived in Paris. A taxicab rushed him and his luggage across the almost empty city; a train, hours earlier than the regular steamer train, carried him to London where, as he drove through the crowded, sunlit streets, in a hansom cab, he could see news-venders holding up strips of paper on which was printed in great, black letters:

THE BRITISH FLEET SAILS

SPY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

CHARLES WILSON, M. P., ACCUSED

MISSING MEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE KARL BRESLAU, INTERNATIONAL SPY

And he noticed knots of people pausing to buy the latest editions of the papers offered.

But Neeland had no time to see much more of London than that—glimpses of stately grey buildings and green trees; of monuments and palaces where soldiers in red tunics stood guard; the crush of traffic in the city; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads, disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing everything with calm and undisturbed precision; a squadron of cavalry in brilliant uniforms leisurely emerging from some park between iron railings under stately trees; then the crowded confusion of a railroad station, but not the usual incidents of booking and departure, because he was to travel by a fast goods train under telegraphed authority of the British Government.

And that is about all that Neeland saw of the mightiest city in the world on the eve of the greatest conflict among the human races that the earth has ever witnessed, or ever shall, D. V.

The flying goods train that took him to the Channel port whence a freight packet was departing, offered him the luxury of a leather padded armchair in a sealed and grated mail van.

Nobody disturbed him; nobody questioned him; the train officials were civil and incurious, and went calmly about their business with all the traditional stolidity of official John Bull.

Neeland had plenty of leisure to think as he sat there in his heavy chair which vibrated but did not sway very much; and his mind was fully occupied with his reflections, for, so far, he had not had time to catalogue, index, and arrange them in proper order, so rapid and so startling had been the sequence of events since he had left his studio in New York for Paris, via Brookhollow, London, and other points east.

One thing in particular continued to perplex and astonish him: the identity of a member of Parliament, known as Charles Wilson, suddenly revealed as Karl Breslau, an international spy.

The wildest flight of fancy of an irresponsible novelist had never created such a character in penny-dreadful fiction. It remained incomprehensible, almost incredible to Neeland that such a thing could be true.

Also, the young man had plenty of food for reflection, if not for luncheon, in trying to imagine exactly how Golden Beard and Ali Baba, and that strange, illogical young girl, Ilse Dumont, had escaped from the Volhynia.

Probably, in the darkness, the fishing boat which they expected had signalled in some way or other. No doubt the precious trio had taken to the water in their life-jackets and had been picked up even before armed sailors on the Volhynia descended to their empty state-rooms and took possession of what luggage could be discovered, and of the three bombs with their charred wicks still soaking on the sopping bed.

And now the affair had finally ended, Neeland believed, in spite of Captain West's warnings. For how could three industrious conspirators in a fishing smack off the Lizard do him any further damage?

If they had managed to relay information concerning him to their friends ashore by some set of preconcerted signals, possibly the regular steamer train to and out of London might be watched.

Thinking of this, it presently occurred to Neeland that friends in France, also, might be stirred up in time to offer him their marked attentions. This, no doubt, was what Captain West meant; and Neeland considered the possibility as the flying train whirled him toward the Channel.

He asked if he might smoke, and was informed that he might; and he lighted a cigarette and stretched out on his chair, a little hungry from lack of luncheon, a trifle tired from lack of sleep, but, in virtue of his vigorous and youthful years, comfortable, contented, and happy.

Never, he admitted, had he had such a good time in all his life, despite the fact that chance alone, and not his own skill and alertness and perspicacity, had saved his neck.

No, he could not congratulate himself on his cleverness and wisdom; sheer accident had saved his skin—and once the complex and unaccountable vagary of a feminine mind had saved him from annihilation so utter that it slightly sickened him to remember his position in Ilse Dumont's stateroom as she lifted her pistol and coolly made good her boast as a dead-shot. But he forced himself to take it lightly.

"Good Lord!" he thought to himself. "Was ever a man in such a hellish position, except in melodrama? And what a movie that would have made! And what a shot that girl proved herself to be! Certainly she could have killed me there at Brookhollow! She could have riddled me before I ducked, even with that nickel-plated affair about which I was ass enough to taunt her!"

Lying in his chair, cheek on arm, he continued to ponder on what had happened, until the monotonous vibration no longer interfered with his inclination for a nap. On the contrary, the slight, rhythmic jolting soothed him and gradually induced slumber; and he slept there on the rushing train, his feet crossed and resting on the olive-wood box.

* * * * *

A hand on his arm aroused him; the sea wind blowing through the open doors of the mail-van dashed in his face like a splash of cool water as he sat up and looked around him.

As he descended from the van an officer of the freight packet greeted him by name; a sailor piled his luggage on a barrow; and Neeland walked through the vista of covered docks to the pier.

There was a lively wind whipping that notoriously bad-mannered streak of water known as the English Channel. Possibly, had it been christened the French Channel its manners might have been more polite. But there was now nothing visible about it to justify its sentimental pseudonym of Silver Streak.

It was a dirty colour, ominous of ill-temper beyond the great breakwater to the northward; and it fretted and fumed inshore and made white and ghastly faces from the open sea.

But Neeland, dining from a tray in a portholed pit consecrated to the use of a casual supercargo, rejoiced because he adored the sea, inland lubber that he had been born and where the tides of fate had stranded him. For, to a New Yorker, the sea seems far away—as far as it seems to the Parisian. And only when chance business takes him to the Battery does a New Yorker realise the nearness of the ocean to that vast volume of ceaseless dissonance called New York.

* * * * *

Neeland ate cold meat and bread and cheese, and washed it down with bitters.

He was nearly asleep on his sofa when the packet cast off.

He was sound asleep when, somewhere in the raging darkness of the Channel, he was hurled from the sofa against the bunk opposite—into which he presently crawled and lay, still half asleep, mechanically rubbing a maltreated shin.

Twice more the bad-mannered British Channel was violently rude to him; each time he crawled back to stick like a limpet in the depths of his bunk.

Except when the Channel was too discourteous, he slept as a sea bird sleeps afloat, tossing outside thundering combers which batter basalt rocks.

Even in his deep, refreshing sea sleep, the subtle sense of exhilaration—of well-being—which contact with the sea always brought to him, possessed him. And, deep within him, the drop of Irish seethed and purred as a kettle purrs through the watches of the night over a banked but steady fire.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE ROAD TO PARIS

Over the drenched sea wall gulls whirled and eddied above the spouting spray; the grey breakwater was smothered under exploding combers; quai, docks, white-washed lighthouse, swept with spindrift, appeared and disappeared through the stormy obscurity as the tender from the Channel packet fought its way shoreward with Neeland's luggage lashed in the cabin, and Neeland himself sticking to the deck like a fly to a frantic mustang, enchanted with the whole business.

For the sea, at last, was satisfying this young man; he savoured now what he had longed for as a little boy, guiding a home-made raft on the waters of Neeland's mill pond in the teeth of a summer breeze. Before he had ever seen the ocean he wanted all it had to give short of shipwreck and early decease. He had experienced it on the Channel during the night.

There was only one other passenger aboard—a tall, lean, immaculately dressed man with a ghastly pallor, a fox face, and ratty eyes, who looked like an American and who had been dreadfully sick. Not caring for his appearance, Neeland did not speak to him. Besides, he was having too good a time to pay attention to anybody or anything except the sea.

A sailor had lent Neeland some oilskins and a sou'-wester; and he hated to put them off—hated the calmer waters inside the basin where the tender now lay rocking; longed for the gale and the heavy seas again, sorry the crossing was ended.

He cast a last glance of regret at the white fury raging beyond the breakwater as he disembarked among a crowd of porters, gendarmes, soldiers, and assorted officials; then, following his porter to the customs, he prepared to submit to the unvarying indignities incident to luggage examination in France.

He had leisure, while awaiting his turn, to buy a novel, "Les Bizarettes," of Maurice Bertrand; time, also, to telegraph to the Princess Mistchenka. The fox-faced man, who looked like an American, was now speaking French like one to a perplexed official, inquiring where the Paris train was to be found. Neeland listened to the fluent information on his own account, then returned to the customs bench.

But the unusually minute search among his effects did not trouble him; the papers from the olive-wood box were buttoned in his breast pocket; and after a while the customs officials let him go to the train which stood beside an uncovered concrete platform beyond the quai, and toward which the fox-faced American had preceded him on legs that still wobbled with seasickness.

There were no Pullmans attached to the train, only the usual first, second, and third class carriages with compartments; and a new style corridor car with central aisle and lettered doors to compartments holding four.

Into one of these compartments Neeland stepped, hoping for seclusion, but backed out again, the place being full of artillery officers playing cards.

In vain he bribed the guard, who offered to do his best; but the human contents of a Channel passenger steamer had unwillingly spent the night in the quaint French port, and the Paris-bound train was already full.

The best Neeland could do was to find a seat in a compartment where he interrupted conversation between three men who turned sullen heads to look at him, resenting in silence the intrusion. One of them was the fox-faced man he had already noticed on the packet, tender, and customs dock.

But Neeland, whose sojourn in a raw and mannerless metropolis had not blotted out all memory of gentler cosmopolitan conventions, lifted his hat and smilingly excused his intrusion in the fluent and agreeable French of student days, before he noticed that he had to do with men of his own race.

None of the men returned his salute; one of them merely emitted an irritated grunt; and Neeland recognised that they all must be his own delightful country-men—for even the British are more dignified in their stolidity.

A second glance satisfied him that all three were undoubtedly Americans; the cut of their straw hats and apparel distinguished them as such; the nameless grace of Mart, Haffner and Sharx marked the tailoring of the three; only Honest Werner could have manufactured such headgear; only New York such footwear.

And Neeland looked at them once more and understood that Broadway itself sat there in front of him, pasty, close-shaven, furtive, sullen-eyed, the New York Paris Herald in its seal-ringed fingers; its fancy waistcoat pockets bulging with cigars.

"Sports," he thought to himself; and decided to maintain incognito and pass as a Frenchman, if necessary, to escape conversation with the three tired-eyed ones.

So he hung up his hat, opened his novel, and settled back to endure the trip through the rain, now beginning to fall from a low-sagging cloud of watery grey.

After a few minutes the train moved. Later the guard passed and accomplished his duties. Neeland inquired politely of him in French whether there was any political news, and the guard replied politely that he knew of none. But he looked very serious when he said it.

Half an hour from the coast the rain dwindled to a rainbow and ceased; and presently a hot sun was gilding wet green fields and hedges and glistening roofs which steamed vapour from every wet tile.

Without asking anybody's opinion, one of the men opposite raised the window. But Neeland did not object; the rain-washed air was deliciously fragrant; and he leaned his elbow on his chair arm and looked out across the loveliest land in Europe.

"Say, friend," said an East Side voice at his elbow, "does smoking go?"

He glanced back over his shoulder at the speaker—a little, pallid, sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like two holes burnt in a lump of dough.

"Pardon, monsieur?" he said politely.

"Can't you even pick a Frenchman, Ben?" sneered one of the men opposite—a square, smoothly shaven man with slow, heavy-lidded eyes of a greenish tinge.

The fox-faced man said:

"He had me fooled, too, Eddie. If Ben Stull didn't get his number it don't surprise me none, becuz he was on the damn boat I crossed in, and I certainly picked him for New York."

"Aw," said the pasty-faced little man referred to as Ben Stull, "Eddie knows it all. He never makes no breaks, of course. You make 'em, Doc, but he doesn't. That's why me and him and you is travelling here—this minute—because the great Eddie Brandes never makes no breaks——"

"Go on and smoke and shut up," said Brandes, with a slow, sidewise glance at Neeland, whose eyes remained fastened on the pages of "Les Bizarettes," but whose ears were now very wide open.

"Smoke," repeated Stull, "when this here Frenchman may make a holler?"

"Wait till I ask him," said the man addressed as Doc, with dignity. And to Neeland:

"Pardong, musseer, permitty vous moi de fumy ung cigar?"

"Mais comment, donc, monsieur! Je vous en prie——"

"He says politely," translated Doc, "that we can smoke and be damned to us."

They lighted three obese cigars; Neeland, his eyes on his page, listened attentively and stole a glance at the man they called Brandes.

So this was the scoundrel who had attempted to deceive the young girl who had come to him that night in his studio, bewildered with what she believed to be her hopeless disgrace!

This was the man—this short, square, round-faced individual with his minutely shaven face and slow greenish eyes, and his hair combed back and still reeking with perfumed tonic—this shiny, scented, and overgroomed sport with rings on his fat, blunt fingers and the silk laces on his tan oxfords as fastidiously tied as though a valet had done it!

Ben Stull began to speak; and presently Neeland discovered that the fox-faced man's name was Doc Curfoot; that he had just arrived from London on receipt of a telegram from them; and that they themselves had landed the night before from a transatlantic liner to await him here.

Doc Curfoot checked the conversation, which was becoming general now, saying that they'd better be very sure that the man opposite understood no English before they became careless.

"Musseer," he added suavely to Neeland, who looked up with a polite smile, "parly voo Anglay?"

"Je parle Francais, monsieur."

"I get him," said Stull, sourly. "I knew it anyway. He's got the sissy manners of a Frenchy, even if he don't look the part. No white man tips his lid to nobody except a swell skirt."

"I seen two dudes do it to each other on Fifth Avenue," remarked Curfoot, and spat from the window.

Brandes, imperturbable, rolled his cigar into the corner of his mouth and screwed his greenish eyes to narrow slits.

"You got our wire, Doc?"

"Why am I here if I didn't!"

"Sure. Have an easy passage?"

Doc Curfoot's foxy visage still wore traces of the greenish pallor; he looked pityingly at Brandes—self-pityingly:

"Say, Eddie, that was the worst I ever seen. A freight boat, too. God! I was that sick I hoped she'd turn turtle! And nab it from me; if you hadn't wired me S O S, I'd have waited over for the steamer train and the regular boat!"

"Well, it's S O S all right, Doc. I got a cable from Quint this morning saying our place in Paris is ready, and we're to be there and open up tonight——"

"What place?" demanded Curfoot.

"Sure, I forgot. You don't know anything yet, do you?"

"Eddie," interrupted Stull, "let me do the talking this time, if you please."

And, to Curfoot:

"Listen, Doc. We was up against it. You heard. Every little thing has went wrong since Eddie done what he done—every damn thing! Look what's happened since Maxy Venem got sore and he and Minna started out to get him! Morris Stein takes away the Silhouette Theatre from us and we can't get no time for 'Lilith' on Broadway. We go on the road and bust. All our Saratoga winnings goes, also what we got invested with Parson Smawley when the bulls pulled Quint's——!"

"Ah, f'r the lov' o' Mike!" began Brandes. "Can that stuff!"

"All right, Eddie. I'm tellin' Doc, that's all. I ain't aiming to be no crape-hanger; I only want you both to listen to me this time. If you'd listened to me before, we'd have been in Saratoga today in our own machines. But no; you done what you done—God! Did anyone ever hear of such a thing!—taking chances with that little rube from Brookhollow—that freckled-faced mill-hand—that yap-skirt! And Minna and Max having you watched all the time! You big boob! No—don't interrupt! Listen to me! Where are you now? You had good money; you had a theaytre, you had backing! Quint was doing elegant; Doc and Parson and you and me had it all our way and comin' faster every day. Wait, I tell you! This ain't a autopsy. This is business. I'm tellin' you two guys all this becuz I want you to realise that what Eddie done was against my advice. Come on, now; wasn't it?"

"It sure was," admitted Curfoot, removing his cigar from his lean, pointed visage of a greyhound, and squinting thoughtfully at the smoke eddying in the draught from the open window.

"Am I right, Eddie?" demanded Stull, fixing his black, smeary eyes on Brandes.

"Well, go on," returned the latter between thin lips that scarcely moved.

"All right, then. Here's the situation, Doc. We're broke. If Quint hadn't staked us to this here new game we're playin', where'd we be, I ask you?

"We got no income now. Quint's is shut up; Maxy Venem and Minna Minti fixed us at Saratoga so we can't go back there for a while. They won't let us touch a card on the liners. Every pug is leery of us since Eddie flimflammed that Battling Smoke; and I told you he'd holler, too! Didn't I?" turning on Brandes, who merely let his slow eyes rest on him without replying.

"Go on, Ben," said Curfoot.

"I'm going on. We guys gotta do something——"

"We ought to have fixed Max Venem," said Curfoot coolly.

There was a silence; all three men glanced stealthily at Neeland, who quietly turned the page of his book as though absorbed in his story.

"That squealer, Max," continued Curfoot with placid ferocity blazing in his eyes, "ought to have been put away. Quint and Parson wanted us to have it done. Was it any stunt to get that dirty little shyster in some roadhouse last May?"

Brandes said:

"I'm not mixing with any gunmen after the Rosenthal business."

"Becuz a lot of squealers done a amateur job like that, does it say that a honest job can't be pulled?" demanded Curfoot. "Did Quint and me ask you to go to Dopey or Clabber or Pete the Wop, or any of them cheap gangsters?"

"Ah, can the gun-stuff," said Brandes. "I'm not for it. It's punk."

"What's punk?"

"Gun-play."

"Didn't you pull a pop on Maxy Venem the night him and Hyman Adams and Minna beat you up in front of the Knickerbocker?"

"Eddie was stalling," interrupted Stull, as Brandes' face turned a dull beef-red. "You talk like a bad actor, Doc. There's other ways of getting Max in wrong. Guns ain't what they was once. Gun-play is old stuff. But listen, now. Quint has staked us and we gotta make good. And this is a big thing, though it looks like it was out of our line."

"Go on; what's the idea?" inquired Curfoot, interested.

Brandes, the dull red still staining his heavy face, watched the flying landscape from the open window.

Stull leaned forward; Curfoot bent his lean, narrow head nearer; Neeland, staring fixedly at his open book, pricked up his ears.

"Now," said Stull in a low voice, "I'll tell you guys all Eddie and I know about this here business of Captain Quint's. It's like this, Doc: Some big feller comes to Quint after they close him up—he won't tell who—and puts up this here proposition: Quint is to open a elegant place in Paris on the Q. T. In fact, it's ready now. There'll be all the backing Quint needs. He's to send over three men he can trust—three men who can shoot at a pinch! He picks us three and stakes us. Get me?"

Doc nodded.

Brandes said in his narrow-eyed, sleepy way:

"There was a time when they called us gunmen—Ben and me. But, so help me God, Doc, we never did any work like that ourselves. We never fired a shot to croak any living guy. Did we, Ben?"

"All right," said Stull impatiently. And, to Curfoot: "Eddie and I know what we're to do. If it's on the cards that we shoot—well, then, we'll shoot. The place is to be small, select, private, and first class. Doc, you act as capper. You deal, too. Eddie sets 'em up. I deal or spin. All right. We three guys attend to anything American that blows our way. Get that?"

Curfoot nodded.

"Then for the foreigners, there's to be a guy called Karl Breslau."

Neeland managed to repress a start, but the blood tingled in his cheeks, and he turned his head a trifle as though seeking better light on the open pages in his hands.

"This here man Breslau," continued Stull, "speaks all kinds of languages. He is to have two friends with him, a fellow named Kestner and one called Weishelm. They trim the foreigners, they do; and——"

"Well, I don't see nothing new about this——" began Curfoot; but Stull interrupted:

"Wait, can't you! This ain't the usual. We run a place for Quint. The place is like Quint's. We trim guys same as he does—or did. But there's more to it."

He let his eyes rest on Neeland, obliquely, for a full minute. The others watched him, too. Presently the young man cut another page of his book with his pen-knife and turned it with eager impatience, as though the story absorbed him.

"Don't worry about Frenchy," murmured Brandes with a shrug. "Go ahead, Ben."

Stull laid one hand on Curfoot's shoulder, drawing that gentleman a trifle nearer and sinking his voice:

"Here's the new stuff, Doc," he said. "And it's brand new to us, too. There's big money into it. Quint swore we'd get ours. And as we was on our uppers we went in. It's like this: We lay for Americans from the Embassy or from any of the Consulates. They are our special game. It ain't so much that we trim them; we also get next to them; we make 'em talk right out in church. Any political dope they have we try to get. We get it any way we can. If they'll accelerate we accelerate 'em; if not, we dope 'em and take their papers. The main idee is to get a holt on 'em!

"That's what Quint wants; that's what he's payin' for and gettin' paid for—inside information from the Embassy and Consulates——"

"What does Quint want of that?" demanded Curfoot, astonished.

"How do I know? Blackmail? Graft? I can't call the dope. But listen here! Don't forget that it ain't Quint who wants it. It's the big feller behind him who's backin' him. It's some swell guy higher up who's payin' Quint. And Quint, he pays us. So where's the squeal coming?"

"Yes, but——"

"Where's the holler?" insisted Stull.

"I ain't hollerin', am I? Only this here is new stuff to me——"

"Listen, Doc. I don't know what it is, but all these here European kings is settin' watchin' one another like toms in a back alley. I think that some foreign political high-upper wants dope on what our people are finding out over here. Like this, he says to himself: 'I hear this Kink is building ten sooper ferry boats. If that's right, I oughta know. And I hear that the Queen of Marmora has ordered a million new nifty fifty-shot bean-shooters for the boy scouts! That is indeed serious news!' So he goes to his broker, who goes to a big feller, who goes to Quint, who goes to us. Flag me?"

"Sure."

"That's all. There's nothing to it, Doc. Says Quint to us: 'Trim a few guys for me and get their letters,' says Quint; 'and there's somethin' in it for me and you!' And that's the new stuff, Doc."

"You mean we're spies?"

"Spies? I don't know. We're on a salary. We get a big bonus for every letter we find on the carpet——" He winked at Curfoot and relighted his cigar.

"Say," said the latter, "it's like a creeping joint. It's a panel game, Ben——"

"It's politics like they play 'em in Albany, only it's ambassadors and kinks we trim, not corporations."

"We can't do it! What the hell do we know about kinks and attaches?"

"No; Weishelm, Breslau and Kestner do that. We lay for the attaches or spin or deal or act handy at the bar and buffet with homesick Americans. No; the fine work—the high-up stuff, is done by Breslau and Weishelm. And I guess there's some fancy skirts somewhere in the game. But they're silent partners; and anyway Weishelm manages that part."

Curfoot, one lank knee over the other, swung his foot thoughtfully to and fro, his ratty eyes lost in dreamy revery. Brandes tossed his half-consumed cigar out of the open window and set fire to another. Stull waited for Curfoot to make up his mind. After several minutes the latter looked up from his cunning abstraction:

"Well, Ben, put it any way you like, but we're just plain political spies. And what the hell do they hand us over here if we're pinched?"

"I don't know. What of it?"

"Nothing. If there's good money in it, I'll take a chance."

"There is. Quint backs us. When we get 'em coming——"

"Ah," said Doc with a wry face, "that's all right for the cards or the wheel. But this pocket picking——"

"Say; that ain't what I mean. It's like this: Young Fitznoodle of the Embassy staff gets soused and starts out lookin' for a quiet game. We furnish the game. We don't go through his pockets; we just pick up whatever falls out and take shorthand copies. Then back go the letters into Fitznoodle's pocket——"

"Yes. Who reads 'em first?"

"Breslau. Or some skirt, maybe."

"What's Breslau?"

"Search me. He's a Dutchman or a Rooshian or some sort of Dodo. What do you care?"

"I don't. All right, Ben. You've got to show me; that's all."

"Show you what?"

"Spot cash!"

"You're in when you handle it?"

"If you show me real money—yes."

"You're on. I'll cash a cheque of Quint's for you at Monroe's soon as we hit the asphalt! And when you finish counting out your gold nickels put 'em in your pants and play the game! Is that right?"

"Yes."

They exchanged a wary handshake; then, one after another, they leaned back in their seats with the air of honest men who had done their day's work.

Curfoot blinked at Brandes, at his excessively groomed person, at his rings.

"You look prosperous, Eddie."

"It's his business to," remarked Stull.

Brandes yawned:

"It would be a raw deal if there's a war over here," he said listlessly.

"Ah," said Curfoot, "there won't be none."

"Why?"

"The Jews and bankers won't let these kinks mix it."

"That's right, too," nodded Brandes.

But Stull said nothing and his sour, pasty visage turned sourer. It was the one possibility that disturbed him—the only fly in the amber—the only mote that troubled his clairvoyance. Also, he was the only man among the three who didn't think a thing was certain to happen merely because he wanted it to happen.

There was another matter, too, which troubled him. Brandes was unreliable. And who but little Stull should know how unreliable?

For Brandes had always been that. And now Stull knew him to be more than that—knew him to be treacherous.

Whatever in Brandes had been decent, or had, blindly perhaps, aspired toward decency, was now in abeyance. Something within him had gone to smash since Minna Minti had struck him that night in the frightened presence of Rue Carew.

And from that night, when he had lost the only woman who had ever stirred in him the faintest aspiration to better things, the man had gradually changed. Whatever in his nature had been unreliable became treacherous; his stolidity became sullenness. A slow ferocity burned within him; embers of a rage which no brooding ever quenched slumbered red in his brain until his endless meditation became a monomania. And his monomania was the ruin of this woman who had taken from him in the very moment of consummation all that he had ever really loved in the world—a thin, awkward, freckled, red-haired country girl, in whom, for the first and only time in all his life, he saw the vague and phantom promise of that trinity which he had never known—a wife, a child, and a home.

He sat there by the car window glaring out of his dull green eyes at the pleasant countryside, his thin lips tightening and relaxing on his cigar.

Curfoot, still pondering over the "new stuff" offered him, brooded silently in his corner, watching the others out of his tiny, bright eyes.

"Do anything in London?" inquired Stull.

"No."

"Who was you working for?"

"A jock and a swell skirt. But Scotland Yard got next and chased the main guy over the water."

"What was your lay?"

"Same thing. I dealt for the jock and the skirt trimmed the squabs."

"Anybody holler?"

"Aw—the kind we squeezed was too high up to holler. Them young lords take their medicine like they wanted it. They ain't like the home bunch that is named after swell hotels."

After a silence he looked up at Brandes:

"What ever become of Minna Minti?" he asked.

Brandes' heavy features remained stolid.

"She got her divorce, didn't she?" insisted Curfoot.

"Yes."

"Alimony?"

"No. She didn't ask any."

"How about Venem?"

Brandes remained silent, but Stull said:

"I guess she chucked him. She wouldn't stand for that snake. I got to hand it to her; she ain't that kind."

"What kind is she?"

"I tell you I got to hand it to her. I can't complain of her. She acted white all right until Venem stirred her up. Eddie's got himself to blame; he got in wrong and Venem had him followed and showed him up to Minna."

"You got tired of her, didn't you?" said Curfoot to Brandes. But Stull answered for him again:

"Like any man, Eddie needed a vacation now and then. But no skirt understands."

Brandes said slowly:

"I'll live to fix Minna yet."

"What fixed you," snapped Stull, "was that there Brookhollow stuff——"

"Can it!" retorted Brandes, turning a deep red.

"Aw—don't hand me the true-love stuff, Eddie! If you'd meant it with that little haymaker you'd have respected her——"

Brandes' large face became crimson with rage:

"You say another word about her and I'll push your block off—you little dough-faced kike!"

Stull shrugged and presently whispered to Curfoot:

"That's the play he always makes. I've waited two years, but he won't ring down on the love stuff. I guess he was hit hard that trip. It took a little red-headed, freckled country girl to stop him. But it was comin' to Eddie Brandes, and it certainly looks like it was there to stay a while."

"He's still stuck on her?"

"I guess she's still the fly paper," nodded Stull.

Suddenly Brandes turned on Stull such a look of concentrated hatred that the little gambler's pallid features stiffened with surprise:

"Ben," said Brandes in a low voice, which was too indistinct for Neeland to catch, "I'll tell you something now that you don't know. I saw Quint alone; I talked with him. Do you know who is handling the big stuff in this deal?"

"Who?" asked Stull, amazed.

"The Turkish Embassy in Paris. And do you know who plays the fine Italian hand for that bunch of Turks?"

"No."

"Minna!"

"You're crazy!"

Brandes took no notice, but went on with a sort of hushed ferocity that silenced both Stull and Curfoot:

"That's why I went in. To get Minna. And I'll get her if it costs every cent I've got or ever hope to get. That's why I'm in this deal; that's why I came; that's why I'm here telling you this. I'm in it to get Minna, not for the money, not for anything in all God's world except to get the woman who has done what Minna did to me."

Neeland listened in vain to the murmuring voice; he could not catch a word.

Stull whispered:

"Aw, f'r God's sake, Eddie, that ain't the game. Do you want to double-cross Quint?"

"I have double-crossed him."

"What! Do you mean to sell him out?"

"I have sold him out."

"Jesus! Who to?"

"To the British Secret Service. And there's to be one hundred thousand dollars in it, Doc, for you and me to divide. And fifty thousand more when we put the French bulls on to Minna and Breslau. Now, how does one hundred and fifty thousand dollars against five thousand apiece strike you two poor, cheap guys?"

But the magnitude of Brandes' treachery and the splendour of the deal left the two gamblers stunned.

Only by their expressions could Neeland judge that they were discussing matters of vital importance to themselves and probably to him. He listened; he could not hear what they were whispering. And only at intervals he dared glance over his book in their direction.

"Well," said Brandes under his breath, "go on. Spit it out. What's the squeal?"

"My God!" whispered Stull. "Quint will kill you."

Brandes laughed unpleasantly:

"Not me, Ben. I've got that geezer where I want him on a dirty deal he pulled off with the police."

Curfoot turned his pointed muzzle toward the window and sneered at the sunny landscape.

A few minutes later, far across the rolling plain set with villas and farms, and green with hedgerows, gardens, bouquets of trees and cultivated fields, he caught sight of a fairy structure outlined against the sky. Turning to Brandes:

"There's the Eiffel Tower," remarked Curfoot. "Where are we stopping, Eddie?"

"Caffy des Bulgars."

"Where's that?"

"It's where we go to work—Roo Vilna."

Stull's smile was ghastly, but Curfoot winked at Brandes.

Neeland listened, his eyes following the printed pages of his book.



CHAPTER XXV

CUP AND LIP

Through the crowded Paris terminal Neeland pushed his way, carrying the olive-wood box in his hand and keeping an eye on his porter, who preceded him carrying the remainder of his luggage and repeating:

"Place, s'il vous plait, m'sieu', dames!"

To Neeland it was like a homecoming after many years' exile; the subtle but perfectly specific odour of Paris assailed his nostrils once again; the rapid, emphatic, lively language of France sounded once more delightfully in his eager ears; vivacity and intelligence sparkled in every eye that met his own. It was a throng of rapid movement, of animated speech, of gesticulation. And, as it was in the beginning when he first arrived there as a student, he fell in love with it at first sight and contact.

All around him moved porters, passengers, railroad officials; the red kepis of soldiers dotted the crowd; a priest or two in shovel hat and buckled shoes, a Sister of Charity from the Rue de Bac lent graver accents to the throng; and everywhere were the pretty bourgeois women of the capital gathered to welcome relatives or friends, or themselves starting on some brief summer voyage so dear to those who seldom find it in their hearts to leave Paris for longer than a fortnight at a time.

As he pressed onward he witnessed characteristic reunions between voyagers and friends who awaited them—animated, cordial, gay scenes complicated by many embraces on both cheeks.

And, of a sudden, he noticed the prettiest girl he had ever seen in his life. She was in white, with a black straw hat, and her face and figure were lovely beyond words. Evidently she was awaiting friends; there was a charming expectancy on her fresh young face, a slight forward inclination of her body, as though expectancy and happy impatience alone controlled her.

Her beauty almost took his breath away.

"Lord!" he thought to himself. "If such a girl as that ever stood waiting for me——"

At the same moment her golden-grey eyes, sweeping the passing crowd, met his; a sharp thrill of amazement passed through him as she held out both gloved hands with a soft exclamation of recognition:

"Jim! Jim Neeland!"

"Rue Carew!" He could scarcely credit his eyesight, where he stood, hat in hand, holding both her little hands in one of his.

No, there was no use in trying to disguise his astonishment. He looked into the face of this tall young girl, searched it for familiar features, recognised a lovely paraphrase of the freckled face and thin figure he remembered, and remained dumb before this radiant reincarnation of that other unhappy, shabby, and meagre child he had known two years ago.

Ruhannah, laughing and flushed, withdrew her hands.

"Have I changed? You haven't. And I always thought you the most wonderful and ornamental young man on this planet. I knew you at once, Jim Neeland. Would you have passed without recognising me?"

"Perhaps I wouldn't have passed after seeing you——"

"Jim Neeland! What a remark!" She laughed. "Anyway, it's nice to believe myself attractive enough to be noticed. And I'm so glad to see you. Naia is here, somewhere, watching for you"—turning her pretty, eager head to search for the Princess Mistchenka. "Oh, there she is! She doesn't see us——"

They made their way between the passing ranks of passengers and porters; the Princess caught sight of them, came hastily toward them.

"Jim! It's nice to see you. Thank you for coming! So you, found him, Rue? How are you, Jim? And where is the olive-wood box?"

"I'm well, and there's that devilish box!" he replied, laughing and lifting it in his hand to exhibit it. "Naia, the next time you want it, send an escort of artillery and two battleships!"

"Did you have trouble?"

"Trouble? I had the time of my life. No moving picture can ever again excite me; no best seller. I've been both since I had your cable to get this box and bring it to you."

He laughed as he spoke, but the Princess continued to regard him very seriously, and Rue Carew's smile came and waned like sunlight in a wood, for she was not quite sure whether he had really encountered any dangers on this mission which he had fulfilled so well.

"Our car is waiting outside," said the Princess. "Where is your porter, Jim?"

Neeland glanced about him, discovered the porter, made a sign for him to follow, and they moved together toward the entrance to the huge terminal.

"I haven't decided where to stop yet," began Neeland, but the Princess checked him with a pretty gesture:

"You stop with us, Jim."

"Thank you so much, but——"

"Please. Must I beg of you?"

"Do you really wish it?"

"Certainly," she replied absently, glancing about her. She added: "I don't see my car. I don't see my footman. I told him to wait here. Rue, do you see him anywhere?"

"No, I don't," said the girl.

"How annoying!" said the Princess. "He's a new man. My own footman was set upon and almost killed by Apaches a week ago. So I had to find a substitute. How stupid of him! Where on earth can he be waiting?"

They traversed the court of the terminal. Many automobiles were parked there or just leaving; liveried footmen stood awaiting masters and mistresses; but nowhere was the car of the Princess Mistchenka in sight.

They stood there, Neeland's porter behind with his suitcase and luggage, not knowing whether to wait longer or summon a taxicab.

"I don't understand," repeated the Princess impatiently. "I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom misunderstood his instructions."

"Let me go and make some inquiries," said Neeland. "Do you mind waiting here? I'll not be long——"

He went off, carrying the olive-wood box, which his grasp never quitted now; and presently the Princess and Ruhannah saw him disappear among the ranks of automobiles and cabs.

"I don't like it, Rue," repeated the Princess in a low voice. "I neither understand nor relish this situation."

"Have you any idea——"

"Hush, child! I don't know. That new groom, Verdier, was recommended by the Russian Embassy. I don't know what to think of this."

"It can't be anything—queer, can it, dear?" asked Rue.

"Anything can have happened. Nothing is likely to have occurred, however—unless—unless those Apaches were——"

"Naia!"

"It's possible, I suppose. They may have attacked Picard as part of a conspiracy. The Russian Embassy may have been deceived in Verdier. All this may be part of a plan. But—I scarcely believe it.... All the same, I dislike to take a taxicab——"

She caught sight of Neeland returning; both women moved forward to meet him.

"I've solved the mystery," he said. "Naia, your car was run into outside the station a few minutes after you left it. And I'm sorry to say that your chauffeur was badly enough hurt to require an ambulance."

"Where on earth did you learn that?"

"The official at the taxicab control told me. I went to him because that is where one is likely to receive information."

"Caron hurt!" murmured the Princess. "What a shame! Where did they take him, Jim?"

"To the Charite."

"I'll go this afternoon. But where is that imbecile groom of mine?"

"It appears that he and a policeman went to a garage on the repair truck that took your car."

"Was he arrested?"

"I believe so."

"What a contretemps!" exclaimed the Princess Mistchenka. "We shall have to take a taxicab after all!"

"I've ordered one from the control. There it comes now," said Neeland, as a brand new taxicab, which looked like a private car, drew up at the curb, and a smiling and very spick and span chauffeur saluted.

Neeland's porter hoisted trunk and suitcase on top; the Princess stepped into the limousine, followed by Rue and Neeland; the chauffeur took the order, started his car, wheeled out into the square, circled the traffic policeman, and whizzed away into the depths of the most beautiful city in the world.

Neeland, seated with his back to the driver, laid the olive-wood box on his knees, unlocked it, drew from his breast pocket the papers he carried; locked them in the box once more, and looked up laughingly at the Princess and Ruhannah as he placed it at his feet.

"There you are!" he said. "Thank heaven my task and your affair have been accomplished. All the papers are there—and," to Ruhannah, "that pretty gentleman you call the Yellow Devil is inside, along with some assorted firearms, drawing instruments, and photographs. The whole business is here, intact—and so am I—if that irrelevant detail should interest you."

Rue smiled her answer; the Princess scrutinised him keenly:

"Did you have trouble, Jim?"

"Yes, I did."

"Serious trouble?"

"I tell you it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naia. And I've learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic possibilities than any novel or scenario ever contained."

"You're not serious, of course," began Rue Carew, watching the varying expressions on his animated features; but the Princess Mistchenka said, unsmiling:

"A film melodrama is a crude and tawdry thing compared to the real drama so many of us play in every moment of our lives."

Neeland said to Rue, lightly:

"That is true as far as I have been concerned with that amazing box. It's full of the very devil—of that Yellow Devil! When I pick it up now I seem to feel a premonitory tingling all over me—not entirely disagreeable," he added to the Princess, "but the sort of half-scared exhilaration a man feels who takes a chance and is quite sure he'll not have another chance if he loses. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes," said the Princess unsmilingly, her clear, pleasant eyes fixed on him.

In her tranquil, indefinite expression there was something which made him wonder how many such chances this pretty woman had taken in her life of intellectual pleasure and bodily ease.

And now he remembered that Ilse Dumont apparently knew about her—about Ruhannah, too. And Ilse Dumont was the agent of a foreign government.

Was the Princess Mistchenka, patron and amateur of the arts, another such agent? If not, why had he taken this journey for her with this box of papers?

The passage of the Boulevard was slow; at every square traffic was halted; all Paris crowded the streets in the early afternoon sunshine, and the taxicab in which they sat made little speed until the Place de la Concorde opened out and the great Arc—a tiny phantom of lavender and pearl—spanned the vanishing point of a fairy perspective between parallel and endless ramparts of tender green.

"There was a lot of war talk on the Volhynia," said Neeland, "but I haven't heard any since I landed, nor have I seen a paper. I suppose the Chancelleries have come to some agreement."

"No," said the Princess.

"You don't expect trouble, do you? I mean a general European free-for-all fight?"

"I don't know, Jim."

"Haven't you," he asked blandly, "any means of acquiring inside information?"

She did not even pretend to evade the good-humoured malice of his smile and question:

"Yes; I have sources of private information. I have learned nothing, so far."

He looked at Rue, but the smile had faded from her face and she returned his questioning gaze gravely.

"There is great anxiety in Europe," she said in a low voice, "and the tension is increasing. When we arrive home we shall have a chance to converse more freely." She made the slightest gesture with her head toward the chauffeur—a silent reminder and a caution.

The Princess nodded slightly:

"One never knows," she remarked. "We shall have much to say to one another when we are safely home."

But Neeland could not take it very seriously here in the sunshine, with two pretty women facing him—here speeding up the Champs Elysees between the endless green of chestnut trees and the exquisite silvery-grey facades of the wealthy—with motors flashing by on every side and the cool, leafy alleys thronged with children and nurse-maids, and Monsieur Guignol squeaking and drumming in his red-curtained box!

How could a young man believe in a sequel to the almost incredible melodrama in which he had figured, with such a sane and delightful setting, here in the familiar company of two charming women he had known?

Besides, all Paris and her police were at his elbow; the olive-wood box stood between his knees; a smartly respectable taxi and its driver drove them with the quiet eclat and precision of a private employe; the Arc de Triomphe already rose splendidly above them, and everything that had once been familiar and reassuring and delightful lay under his grateful eyes on every side.

And now the taxicab turned into the rue Soleil d'Or—a new street to Neeland, opened since his student days, and only one square long, with a fountain in the middle and young chestnut trees already thickly crowned with foliage lining both sides of the street.

But although the rue Soleil d'Or was a new street to him, Paris construction is also a rapid affair. The street was faced by charming private houses built of grey Caen stone; the fountain with its golden sun-dial, with the seated figure—a life-size replica of Manship's original in the Metropolitan Museum—serenely and beautifully holding its place between the Renaissance facades and rows of slender trees.

Summer had not yet burned foliage or flowers; the freshness of spring itself seemed still to reign there.

Three blue-bloused street-sweepers with hose and broom were washing the asphalt as their cab slowed down, sounding its horn to warn them out of the way. And, the spouting hose still in their hands, the street-cleaners stepped out of the gutter before the pretty private hotel of Madame la Princesse.

Already a butler was opening the grille; already the chauffeur had swung Neeland's steamer trunk and suitcase to the sidewalk; already the Princess and Rue were advancing to the house, while Neeland fumbled in his pocket for the fare.

The butler, bowing, relieved him of the olive-wood box. At the same instant the blue-bloused man with the hose turned the powerful stream of water directly into the butler's face, knocking him flat on the sidewalk; and his two comrades tripped up Neeland, passed a red sash over his head, and hurled him aside, blinded, half strangled, staggering at random, tearing furiously at the wide band of woollen cloth which seemed to suffocate him.

Already the chauffeur had tossed the olive-wood box into the cab; the three blue-bloused men sprang in after it; the chauffeur slipped into his seat, threw in the clutch, and, driving with one hand, turned a pistol on the half drowned butler, who had reeled to his feet and was lurching forward to seize the steering wheel.

The taxicab, gathering speed, was already turning the corner of the rue de la Lune when Neeland managed to free throat and eyes from the swathe of woollen.

The butler, checked by the levelled pistol, stood dripping, still almost blinded by the force of the water from the hose; but he had plenty of pluck, and he followed Neeland on a run to the corner of the street.

The street was absolutely empty, except for the sparrows, and the big, fat, slate-coloured pigeons that strutted and coo-cooed under the shadow of the chestnut trees.



CHAPTER XXVI

RUE SOLEIL D'OR

Marotte, the butler, in dry clothes, had served luncheon—a silent, respectable, self-respecting man, calm in his fury at the incredible outrage perpetrated upon his person.

And now luncheon was over; the Princess at the telephone in her boudoir; Rue in the music-room with Neeland, still excited, anxious, confused.

Astonishment, mortification, anger, had left Neeland silent; and the convention known as luncheon had not appealed to him.

But very little was said during that formality; and in the silence the serious nature of the episode which so suddenly had deprived the Princess of the olive-wood box and the papers it contained impressed Neeland more and more deeply.

The utter unexpectedness of the outrage—the helpless figure he had cut—infuriated him. And the more he reflected the madder he grew when he realised that all he had gone through meant nothing now—that every effort had been sterile, every hour wasted, every step he had taken from Brookhollow to Paris—to the very doorstep where his duty ended—had been taken in vain.

It seemed to him in his anger and humiliation that never had any man been so derided, so heartlessly mocked by the gods.

And now, as he sat there behind lowered blinds in the cool half-light of the music-room, he could feel the hot blood of resentment and chagrin in his cheeks.

"Nobody could have foreseen it," repeated Rue Carew in a pretty, bewildered voice. "And if the Princess Naia had no suspicions, how could I harbour any—or how could you?"

"I've been sufficiently tricked—or I thought I had been—to be on my guard. But it seems not. I ought never to have been caught in such a disgusting trap—such a simple, silly, idiotic cage! But—good Lord! How on earth was a man to suspect anything so—so naturally planned and executed—so simply done. It was an infernal masterpiece, Rue. But—that is no consolation to a man who has been made to appear like a monkey!"

The Princess, entering, overheard; and she seated herself and looked tranquilly at Neeland as he resumed his place on the sofa.

"You were not to blame, Jim," she said. "It was my fault. I had warning enough at the railroad terminal when an accident to my car was reported to me by the control through you." She added, calmly: "There was no accident."

"No accident?" exclaimed Neeland, astonished.

"None at all. My new footman, who followed us to the waiting salon for incoming trains, returned to my chauffeur, Caron, saying that he was to go back to the garage and await orders. I have just called the garage and I had Caron on the wire. There was no accident; he has not been injured; and—the new footman has disappeared!"

"It was a clear case of treachery?" exclaimed Neeland.

"Absolutely a plot. The pretended official at the terminal control was an accomplice of my footman, of the taxicab driver, of the pretended street-cleaners—and of whom else I can, perhaps, imagine."

"Did you call the terminal control?"

"I did. The official in charge and the starter had seen no such accident; had given no such information. Some masquerader in uniform must have intercepted you, Jim."

"I found him coming toward me on the sidewalk not far from the kiosque. He was in uniform; I never dreamed he was not the genuine thing."

"There is no blame attached to you——"

"Naia, it actually sickens me to discover how little sense I possess. I've been through enough to drive both suspicion and caution into this wooden head of mine——"

"What have you been through, Jim?" asked the Princess calmly.

"I'll tell you. I didn't play a brilliant role, I'm sorry to admit. Not common sense but sheer luck pulled me through as far as your own doorstep. And there," he added disgustedly, "the gods no doubt grew tired of such an idiot, and they handed me what was coming to me."

He was so thoroughly and so boyishly ashamed and angry with himself that a faint smile flitted over the Princess Naia's lips.

"Proceed, James," she said.

"All right. Only first may I ask—who is Ilse Dumont?"

For a moment the Princess sat silent, expressionless, intent on the man whose clear, inquiring eyes still questioned her.

The Princess finally answered with a question:

"Did she cause you any trouble, Jim?"

"Every bit I had was due to her. Also—and here's a paradox—I shouldn't be here now if Ilse Dumont had not played square with me. Who is she?"

The Princess Naia did not reply immediately. Instead, she dropped one silken knee over the other, lighted a cigarette, and sat for a few moments gazing into space. Then:

"Ilse Dumont," she said, "is a talented and exceedingly pretty young woman who was born in Alsace of one German and one thoroughly Germanised parent.

"She played two seasons in Chicago in light opera under another name. She had much talent, an acceptable voice and she became a local favourite."

The Princess looked at her cigarette; continued speaking as though addressing it:

"She sang at the Opera Comique here in Paris the year before last and last year. Her roles were minor ones. Early this spring she abruptly broke her contract with the management and went to New York."

Neeland said bluntly:

"Ilse Dumont is an agent in the service of the Turkish Government."

The Princess nodded.

"Did you know it, Naia?"

"I began to suspect it recently."

"May I ask how?"

The Princess glanced at Rue and smiled:

"Ruhannah's friend, Colonel Izzet Bey, was very devoted to Minna Minti——"

"To whom!" exclaimed Neeland, astounded.

"To Ilse Dumont. Minna Minti is her stage name," said the Princess.

Neeland turned and looked at Rue, who, conscious of his excitement, flushed brightly, yet never suspecting what he was about to say.

The Princess said quietly:

"Yes, tell her, Jim. It is better she should know. Until now it has not been necessary to mention the matter, or I should have done so."

Rue, surprised, still prettily flushed with expectancy, looked with new curiosity from one to the other.

Neeland said:

"Ilse Dumont, known on the stage as Minna Minti, is the divorced wife of Eddie Brandes."

At the mention of a name so long hidden away, buried in her memory, and almost forgotten, the girl quivered and straightened up, as though an electric shock had passed through her body.

Then a burning colour flooded her face as at the swift stroke of a lash, and her grey eyes glimmered with the starting tears.

"You'll have to know it, darling," said the Princess in a low voice. "There is no reason why you should not; it no longer can touch you. Don't you know that?"

"Y-yes——" Ruhannah's slowly drooping head was lifted again; held high; and the wet brilliancy slowly dried in her steady eyes.

"Before I tell you," continued Neeland, "what happened to me through Ilse Dumont, I must tell you what occurred in the train on my way to Paris.... May I have a cigarette, Princess Naia?"

"At your elbow in that silver box."

Rue Carew lighted it for him with a smile, but her hand still trembled.

"First," he said, "tell me what particular significance those papers in the olive-wood box have. Then I can tell you more intelligently what happened to me since I went to Brookhollow to find them."

"They are the German plans for the fortification of the mainland commanding the Dardanelles, and for the forts dominating the Gallipoli peninsula."

"Yes, I know that. But of what interest to England or France or Russia——"

"If there is to be war, can't you understand the importance to us of those plans?" asked the Princess in a low, quiet voice.

"To—'us'?" he repeated.

"Yes, to us. I am Russian, am I not?"

"Yes. I now understand how very Russian you are, Princess. But what has Turkey——"

"What is Turkey?"

"An empire——"

"No. A German province."

"I did not know——"

"That is what the Ottoman Empire is today," continued the Princess Mistchenka, "a Turkish province fortified by Berlin, governed from Berlin through a Germanised Turk, Enver Pasha; the army organised, drilled, equipped, officered, and paid by the Kaiser Wilhelm; every internal resource and revenue and development and projected development mortgaged to Germany and under German control; and the Sultan a nobody!"

"I did not know it," repeated Neeland.

"It is the truth, mon ami. It is inevitable that Turkey fights if Germany goes to war. England, France, Russia know it. Ask yourself, then, how enormous to us the value of those plans—tentative, sketchy, perhaps, yet the inception and foundation of those German-made and German-armed fortifications which today line the Dardanelles and the adjacent waters within the sphere of Ottoman influence!"

"So that is why you wanted them," he said with an unhappy glance at Rue. "What idiotic impulse prompted me to put them back in the box I can't imagine. You saw me do it, there in the taxicab."

Ruhannah said:

"The chauffeur saw you, too. He was looking at you in his steering mirror; I saw his face. But it never entered my mind that anything except idle curiosity possessed him."

"Perhaps," said the Princess to Neeland, "what you did with the papers saved your life. Had that chauffeur not seen you place them in the box, he might have shot and robbed you as you left the cab, merely on the chance of your having them on your person."

There was a silence; then Neeland said:

"This is a fine business! As far as I can see murder seems to be the essence of the contract."

"It is often incidental to it," said the Princess Mistchenka serenely. "But you and Ruhannah will soon be out of this affair."

"I?" said the girl, surprised.

"I think so."

"Why, dear?"

"I think there is going to be war. And if there is, France will be concerned. And that means that you and Ruhannah, too, will have to leave France."

"But you?" asked the girl, anxiously.

"I expect to remain. How long can you stay here, Jim?"

Neeland cast an involuntary glance at Rue as he replied:

"I intended to take the next steamer. Why? Can I be of any service to you, Princess Naia?"

The Princess Mistchenka let her dark eyes rest on him for a second, then on Rue Carew.

"I was thinking," she said, "that you might take Ruhannah back with you if war is declared."

"Back to America!" exclaimed the girl. "But where am I to go in America? What am I to do there? I—I didn't think I was quite ready to earn my own living"—looking anxiously at the Princess Naia—"do you think so, dear?"

The Princess said:

"I wanted you to remain. And you must not worry, darling. Some day I shall want you back—— But if there is to be war in Europe you cannot remain here."

"Why not?"

"In the first place, only useful people would be wanted in Paris——"

"But, Naia, darling! Couldn't I be useful to you?" The girl jumped up from the sofa and came and knelt down by the Princess Mistchenka, looking up into her face.

The Princess laid aside her cigarette and put both hands on Rue's shoulders, looking her gravely, tenderly in the eyes.

"Dear," she said, "I want James Neeland to hear this, too. For it is partly a confession.

"When I first saw you, Rue, I was merely sorry for you, and willing to oblige Jim Neeland by keeping an eye on you until you were settled somewhere here in Paris.

"Before we landed I liked you. And, because I saw wonderful possibilities in the little country girl who shared my stateroom, I deliberately made up my mind to develop you, make use of your excellent mind, your quick intelligence, your amazing capacity for absorbing everything that is best, and your very unusual attractions for my own purposes. I meant—to train you—educate you—to aid me."