g his spectacles and the thick coating of dust upon
his clothes, the solitary passenger of the car was familiar enough to
him. It was the man for whom this plot had been prepared. It was Paul
Douaille, the great Foreign Minister into whose hands even the most
cautious of Premiers had declared himself willing to place the destinies
of his country!

Hunterleys pursued the road no longer. He took a ticket at the next
station and hurried back to Monte Carlo. He went first to his room,
bathed and changed, and, passing along the private passage, made his way
into the Sporting Club. The first person whom he saw, seated in her
accustomed place at her favourite table, was his wife. She beckoned him
to come over to her. There was a vacant chair by her side to which she
pointed.

"Thank you," he said, "I won't sit down. I don't think that I care to
play just now. You are fortunate this afternoon, I trust?"

Something in his face and tone checked that rush of altered feeling of
which she had been more than once passionately conscious since the night
before.

"I am hideously out of luck," she confessed slowly. "I have been losing
all day. I think that I shall give it up."

She rose wearily to her feet and he felt a sudden compassion for her.
She was certainly looking tired. Her eyes were weary, she had the air of
an unhappy woman. After all, perhaps she too sometimes knew what
loneliness was.

"I should like some tea so much," she added, a little piteously.

He opened his lips to invite her to pass through into the restaurant
with him. Then the memory of that forged order still in his pocket,
flashed into his mind. He hesitated. A cold, familiar voice at his elbow
intervened.

"Are you quite ready for tea, Lady Hunterleys? I have been in and taken
a table near the window."

Hunterleys moved at once on one side. Draconmeyer bowed pleasantly.

"Cheerful time we had last night, hadn't we?" he remarked. "Glad to see
your knock didn't lay you up."

Hunterleys disregarded his wife's glance. He was suddenly furious.

"All Monte Carlo seems to be gossiping about that little contretemps,"
Draconmeyer continued. "It was a crude sort of hold-up for a
neighbourhood of criminals, but it very nearly came off. Will you have
some tea with us?"

"Do, Henry," his wife begged.

Once again he hesitated. Somehow or other, he felt that the moment was
critical. Then a hand was laid quietly upon his arm, a man's voice
whispered in his ea