his Celtic ancestry equipped him with a mute and sullen antipathy
for his aggressively English fellow travelers. He spent much of his
time in the smoking-room, playing solitaire. When they stopped at
Madras and Bombay he merely emerged from his shell to make sure if no
trace of Binhart were about. He was no more interested in these
heathen cities of a heathen East than in an ash-pile through which he
might have to rake for a hidden coin.

By the time he reached Brindisi he had recovered his lost weight, and
added to it, by many pounds. He had also returned to his earlier habit
of chewing "fine-cut." He gave less thought to his personal
appearance, becoming more and more indifferent as to the impression he
made on those about him. His face, for all his increase in flesh, lost
its ruddiness. It was plain that during the last few months he had
aged, that his hound-like eye had grown more haggard, that his always
ponderous step had lost the last of its resilience.

Yet one hour after he had landed at Brindisi his listlessness seemed a
thing of the past. For there he was able to pick up the trail again,
with clear proof that a man answering to Binhart's description had
sailed for Corfu. From Corfu the scent was followed northward to
Ragusa, and from Ragusa, on to Trieste, where it was lost again.

Two days of hard work, however, convinced Blake that Binhart had sailed
from Fiume to Naples. He started southward by train, at once, vaguely
surprised at the length of Italy, vaguely disconcerted by the unknown
tongue and the unknown country which he had to face.

It was not until he arrived at Naples that he seemed to touch solid
ground again. That city, he felt, stood much nearer home. In it were
many persons not averse to curry favor with a New York official, and
many persons indirectly in touch with the home Department. These
persons he assiduously sought out, one by one, and in twelve hours'
time his net had been woven completely about the city. And, so far as
he could learn, Binhart was still somewhere in that city.

Two days later, when least expecting it, he stepped into the wine-room
of an obscure little pension hotel on the Via Margellina and saw
Binhart before him. Binhart left the room as the other man stepped
into it. He left by way of the window, carrying the casement with him.
Blake followed, but the lighter and younger man out-ran him and was
swallowed up by one of the unknown streets of an unkn