show, nevertheless. There
were also plates for printing francs, pounds and rubles, as well as
those from which the American bills had been made. While Monsieur was
studying one of these more carefully, Tommy reached past him and drew
out a large bundle wrapped in heavy brown paper, securely tied and
sealed. He cut the strings and opened it, then gave a whistle of
surprise, asking:

"Are these counterfeit, too?"

"_Mon Dieu_, no!" the old fellow gasped, and I, also, caught my breath;
for in the bundle were hundreds of unregistered French bonds, of the
highest denomination.

Opening one, I looked at the last coupon, announcing that it bore a date
of about seventeen years ago, whereupon Monsieur cried:

"Ah, I see it! This accounts for the royal seal we found! Here, at last,
is the perpetrator of that grand swindle, lying peacefully behind the
door and not caring what we discover! But he has taken his rue with the
spoils!--he dared not enjoy these because of the lees he saw in the
pleasure cup!"

"Chop that off," Tommy told him. "If you've an inspiration about this
stuff, come across with it!"

"Ah-ha, that man--that _capitaine_ Jess! His name is Karl Schartzmann, a
shrewd, rascally German who vanished after the _coup d'etat_!"

"What swindle, Monsieur?--what _coup d'etat_? Whom do these belong to?"
I was really losing patience; and Tommy murmured:

"Jack, didn't it strike you that only a German mind could have conceived
that revenge on Efaw Kotee?"

"It was certainly true to German form," I admitted, without reluctance.

"The Bank of France!--who else?" Monsieur was saying. "As one of the
trusted, I know! Listen: the dead man behind us, and the one called
Jess, with our Azurian consul in Paris--all scoundrels--hatched a
swindle to sell, through forged state authority and a farcical secret
diplomacy, a portion of Azuria to France. This, you may remember, came
near upsetting the Balkans in 1903. Their crafty scheme lay ready to be
sprung when Efaw Kotee--we will call him that--had to kidnap the
princess in self-defense. From that time but fragmentary facts came
dribbling in from secret agents, as follows:

"First: Two weeks after the kidnaping a foreigner bought a schooner
yacht in New York, fitted it up with great masses of household effects,
and sailed, his papers designating Guayra, Venezuela.

"Second: Still two weeks later Karl Schartzmann and our consul in Paris
transferred the secret bill of sale and