Sovereigns and to
States, whose interests were world-wide and whose influences were
greater than those of Kings and Ministers--looked at each other in blank
despair.

"We have to face this fact, as Sir Henry points out to you, that at
Petersburg the Department of Finance has no love for us. We put on the
screw a little too heavily when we sold them secretly those three
Argentine cruisers. We made a mistake in not being content with smaller
profit."

"Yes, if it had been a genuinely honest deal on their side," remarked
the Italian. "But it was not. In Russia the crowd made quite as great a
profit as we did."

"And all three ships were sent to the bottom of the sea four months
afterwards," added Frohnmeyer with a grim laugh.

"That isn't the question," Goslin said. "What we have now to face is the
peril of exposure. No one can, of course, allege that we have ever
resorted to any sharper practices than those of other financial groups;
but the fact of our alliance and our impregnable strength will, when it
is known, arouse the fiercest antagonism in certain circles."

"No one suspects the secret of our alliance," the Italian ejaculated.
"It must be kept--kept at all hazards."

Each man seated there knew that exposure of the tactics by which they
were ruling the Bourse would mean the sudden end of their great
prosperity.

"But this is not the first occasion that documents have been stolen from
Sir Henry at Glencardine," remarked the Baron Conrad de Hetzendorf. "I
remember the last time I went there to see him he explained how he had
discovered his daughter with the safe open, and some of the papers
actually in her hands."

"Unfortunately that is so," Goslin answered. "There is every evidence
that we owe our present peril to her initiative. She and her father are
on bad terms, and it seems more than probable that though she is no
longer at Glencardine she has somehow contrived to get hold of the
documents in question--at the instigation of her lover, we believe."

"How do you know that the documents are stolen?" the Baron asked.

"Because three days ago Sir Henry received an anonymous letter bearing
the postmark of 'London, E.C.,' enclosing correct copies of the papers
which our friend Volkonski brought from Petersburg, and asking what sum
he was prepared to pay to obtain repossession of the originals. On
receipt of the letter," continued Goslin, "I rushed to the safe, to find
the papers gone. The door had been u