on and, if you don't mind, an introduction to the parties
concerned. No! don't fear; we won't startle anybody by revealing my
identity or the cause of the visit. Let us say that I'm a vet. to whom
you have appealed for an opinion regarding Nero's queer conduct. All
ready, Mr. Narkom? Then let's be off."

Two minutes later the red limousine was at the door, and, stepping into
it with his two companions, he was whizzed away to Olympia and the
first step toward the solution of the riddle.

II

As it is the custom of those connected with the world of the circus to
eat, sleep, have their whole being, as it were, within the environment
of the show, to the total exclusion of hotels, boarding-houses, or
outside lodgings of any sort, he found on his arrival at his destination
the entire company assembled in what was known as the "living-tent,"
chatting, laughing, reading, playing games and killing time generally
whilst waiting for the call to the "dining-tent," and this gave him an
opportunity to meet all the persons connected with the "case," from the
"chevalier" himself to the Brazilian coffee planter who was "backing"
the show.

He found this latter individual a somewhat sullen and taciturn man of
middle age, who had more the appearance of an Austrian than a Brazilian,
and with a swinging gait and an uprightness of bearing which were not to
be misunderstood.

"Humph! Known military training," was Cleek's mental comment as soon as
he saw the man walk. "Got it in Germany, too; I know that peculiar
'swing.' What's his little game, I wonder? And what's a Brazilian doing
in the army of the Kaiser? And, having been in it, what's he doing
dropping into this line; backing a circus, and traveling with it like a
Bohemian?"

But although these thoughts interested him, he did not put them into
words nor take anybody into his confidence regarding them.

As for the other members of the company, he found "the indifferent
rider," known as Signor Antonio Martinelli, an undoubted Irishman of
about thirty years of age, extremely handsome, but with a certain
"shiftiness" of the eye which was far from inspiring confidence, and
with a trick of the tongue which suggested that his baptismal
certificate probably bore the name of Anthony Martin. He found, too,
that all he had heard regarding the youth and beauty of the chevalier's
second wife was quite correct, and although she devoted herself a great
deal to the Brazilian coffee planter an