This color gave peculiar
emphasis to the yellow hair and mustache. His face was not handsome,
if one accept the Greek profile as a model of manly beauty, but it
was cleanly and boldly cut, healthful, strong and purposeful, based on
determined jaws and a chin which would have been obstinate but for the
presence of a kindly mouth.

A guard deposited at his feet a new hatbox, a battered traveling bag and
two gun cases which also gave evidence of rough usage. The luggage was
literally covered with mutilated square and oblong slips of paper of
many colors, on which were printed the advertisements of far-sighted
hotel keepers all the way from Bombay to London and half-way back across
the continent.

There was nothing to be seen, however, indicative of the traveler's
name. He surveyed his surroundings with lively interest shining in his
gray eyes, one of which peered through a monocle encircled by a thin rim
of tortoise shell. He watched the fussy customs officials, who, by
some strange mischance, overlooked his belongings. Finally he made an
impatient gesture.

"Find me a cab," he said to the attentive guard, who, with an eye to
the main chance, had waved off the approach of a station porter. "If the
inspectors are in no hurry, I am."

"At once, my lord;" and the guard, as he stooped and lifted the luggage,
did not see the start which this appellation caused the stranger to
make, but who, after a moment, was convinced that the guard had given
him the title merely out of politeness. The guard placed the traps
inside of one of the many vehicles stationed at the street exit of the
terminus. He was an intelligent and deductive servant.

The traveler was some noted English lord who had come to Bleiberg
to shoot the famed golden pheasant, and had secured a second-class
compartment in order to demonstrate his incognito. Persons who traveled
second-class usually did so to save money; yet this tall Englishman,
since the train departed from Vienna, had almost doubled in gratuities
the sum paid for his ticket. The guard stood respectfully at the door
of the cab, doffed his cap, into which a memento was dropped, and went
along about his business.

The Englishman slammed the door, the jehu cracked his whip, and a moment
later the hoarse breathings of the motionless engines became lost in the
sharper noises of the city carts. The unknown leaned against the faded
cushions, curled his mustache, and smiled as if well satisfied with
ev