heir vengeance can reach."

"Nor shall I lose any sleep thinking over it," Captain Jack replied,
looking down at her with his baffling smile.

"Your enemies had one trick prepared for you," whispered the Russian,
"that you might have found it hard to meet."

"Yes?"

"Of course you do not suspect it, but we have even one of the waiters
here--a worthless, reckless black--in our pay."

"It may have been he who thrust the paper under our door before--before
the fire?" ventured Jack.

"It was," nodded Mlle. Nadiboff, seriously. "And it was the same
waiter who, on receiving this envelope from me, would have mixed the
contents with the next cup of coffee served you in the dining room of
this hotel. But I am overcome by your generosity, my Captain. Take
this envelope--and do not place what it contains in your coffee."

Though Jack Benson may have started inwardly, his hand did not tremble
in the least as he reached out and took the envelope, which he dropped
into one of his pockets.

"Thank you, Mademoiselle," he said, simply.

"There is nothing about me, my Captain, that you can admire," spoke the
Russian woman, sadly. "I have not led the right kind of life. But I
have just that grain of good in me that enables me to admire one as
fine and manly as I have found you to be. You have given me my
life--a worthless one, at best. So I give you your life--and may you
make as splendid use of it as you have started out to do. And now,
good-bye, my Captain. You cannot continue to know such as I."

Despite what he knew of this dangerous woman, Jack Benson felt himself
touched.

"What is going to become of you, Mademoiselle?" he asked. "Will you
be dragged down in the snares that have entrapped your confederates!"

"I do not know. How could I know?" she asked, looking quickly up at
him. "Yet, if my accomplices escape, and find that I have served you,
my Captain, do you know the forfeit they will exact?"

"Your life?" whispered Benson.

"Yes!"

"Then, if I can, I am going to help you to escape them," promised the
submarine boy. "Yet that can happen only on your most solemn
word--given, pardon me, in a moment of absolute honesty--that you will
never again play the spy, for the secrets of the United States
Government."

"Oh, I will promise that," replied Mlle. Nadiboff, quickly. "Yet I
hardly need to. After what I have done, just now, no one in my
peculiar line of work would ever trust me again. I shall b