ning intently to Chauvenet's recital, felt his blood quicken, and
his face flushed for a moment. His cigarette case lay upon the edge of
the table, and he snapped it shut and fingered it nervously as he
listened.

"It's my experience," continued Chauvenet, "that we never meet a person
once only--there's always a second meeting somewhere; and I was not at
all surprised when I ran upon my old friend the baron in Germany last
fall."

"At his old tricks, I suppose," observed some one.

"No; that was the strangest part of it. He's struck a deeper game--though
I'm blessed if I can make it out--he's dropped the title altogether, and
now calls himself _Mister_--I've forgotten for the moment the rest of it,
but it is an English name. He's made a stake somehow, and travels about
in decent comfort. He passes now as an American--his English is
excellent--and he hints at large American interests."

"He probably has forged securities to sell," commented the German. "I
know those fellows. The business is best done quietly."

"I dare say," returned Chauvenet.

"Of course, you greeted him as a long-lost friend," remarked Claiborne
leadingly.

"No; I wanted to make sure of him; and, strangely enough, he assisted me
in a very curious way."

All felt that they were now to hear the denouement of the story, and
several men bent forward in their absorption with their elbows on the
table. Chauvenet smiled and resumed, with a little shrug of his
shoulders.

"Well, I must go back a moment to say that the man I knew at Bar Harbor
had a real crest--the ladies to whom he wrote notes treasured them, I
dare say, because of the pretty insignium. He had it engraved on his
cigarette case, a bird of some kind tiptoeing on a helmet, and beneath
there was a motto, _Fide non armis_."

"The devil!" exclaimed the young German. "Why, that's very like--"

"Very like the device of the Austrian Schomburgs. Well, I remembered the
cigarette case, and one night at a concert--in Berlin, you know--I
chanced to sit with some friends at a table quite near where he sat
alone; I had my eye on him, trying to assure myself of his identity,
when, in closing his cigarette case, it fell almost at my feet, and I
bumped heads with a waiter as I picked it up--I wanted to make sure--and
handed it to him, the imitation baron."

"That was your chance to startle him a trifle, I should say," remarked
the German.

"He was the man, beyond doubt. There was no mistaking t