, and brings me the views of my partners in
Paris, Petersburg, and Vienna. To this careful concealment of our plans,
or of the fact that we are ever in touch with one another, is due the
huge successes we have made from time to time--successes which have
staggered the Bourses of the Continent and caused amazement in Wall
Street. But being unfortunately afflicted as I am, I naturally cannot
travel to meet the others, and, besides, we are compelled always to take
fresh and most elaborate precautions in order to conceal the fact that
we are in connection with each other. If that one fact ever leaked out
it would at once stultify our endeavours and weaken our position. Hence,
at intervals, two or even three of my partners travel here, and I meet
them at night in the little chamber which you, Walter, discovered
to-day, and which until the present has never been found, owing to the
weird fables I have invented regarding the Whispers. To Hetzendorf, too,
once or twice a year, perhaps, the members pay a secret visit in order
to consult the Baron, who, as you perhaps may know, unfortunately enjoys
very precarious health."

"Then meetings of Frohnmeyer, Volkonski, and the rest were held here in
secret sometimes?" echoed Hamilton in surprise.

"On certain occasions, when it is absolutely necessary that I should
meet them," answered Sir Henry. "They stay at the Station Hotel in
Perth, coming over to Auchterarder by the last train at night and
leaving by the first train in the morning from Crieff Junction. They
never approach the house, for fear that servants or one or other of the
guests may recognise them, but go separately along the glen and up the
path to the ruins. When we thus meet, our voices can be heard through
the crack in the roof of the chamber in the courtyard above. On such
occasions I take good care that Stewart and his men are sent on a false
alarm of poachers to another part of the estate, while I can find my way
there myself with my stick," he laughed. "The Baron, I believe, acts on
the same principle at his chateau in Hungary."

"Well," declared Hamilton, "so well has the Baron kept the secret that I
have never had any suspicion until this moment. By Jove! the invention
of the Whispers was certainly a clever mode of preserving the secret,
for nobody cares deliberately to court disaster and death, especially
among a superstitious populace like the villagers here and the Hungarian
peasantry."

Both Gabrielle and