, gradually establishing his suspicions as to their
real occupation.

They had come to Monte Carlo for neither health nor pleasure, but in
order to meet a grey-haired man in spectacles, whom they received twice
in private at the Metropole, where they were staying.

The Englishman had first seen them sitting together one evening at one of
the marble-topped tables at the Cafe Royal in Regent Street, while he had
been idly playing a game of dominoes at the next table with an American
friend. The face of the man was to him somehow familiar. He felt that he
had seen it somewhere, but whether in a photograph in his big album down
at Idsworth or in the flesh he could not decide.

Yet from that moment he had hardly lost sight of them. With that
astuteness which was Fetherston's chief characteristic, he had watched
vigilantly and patiently, establishing the fact that the pair were in
England for some sinister purpose. His powers were little short of
marvellous. He really seemed, as Trendall once put it, to scent the
presence of criminals as pigs scent truffles.

They suddenly left the Midland Hotel at St. Pancras, where they were
staying, and crossed the Channel. But the same boat carried Walter
Fetherston, who took infinite care not to obtrude himself upon their
attention.

Monte Carlo, being in the principality of Monaco, and being peopled by
the most cosmopolitan crowd in the whole world, is in winter the
recognised meeting-place of _chevaliers d'industrie_ and those who
finance and control great crimes.

In the big atrium of those stifling rooms many an assassin has met his
hirer, and in many of those fine hotels have bribes been handed over to
those who will do "dirty work." It is the European exchange of
criminality, for both sexes know it to be a safe place where they may
"accidentally" meet the person controlling them.

It is safe to say that in every code used by the criminal plotters of
every country in Europe there is a cryptic word which signifies a meeting
at Monte Carlo. For that reason was Walter Fetherston much given to
idling on the sunny _terrasse_ of the cafe at a point where he could see
every person who ascended or descended that flight of red-carpeted stairs
which gives entrance to the rooms.

The pair whom he was engaged in watching had been playing at roulette
with five-franc pieces, and the woman was now counting her gains and
laughing gaily with her husband as she slowly sipped her tea flavoure