e for?"

"At Wilna, he says; he'd been away for a week."

"Did he tell you about this Society, and its red symbol?"

"'Pon my soul, you've missed your vocation, Wynn. You ought to have been
a barrister!" drawled Southbourne. "No, I knew all that before. As a
matter of fact, I warned Carson against that very Society,--as I'm
warning you. Von Eckhardt merely told me the bare facts, including that
about the bit of geranium Carson was clutching. I drew my own inference.
Here, you may read his note."

He tossed me a half-sheet of thin note-paper, covered on one side with
Von Eckhardt's crabbed German script.

It was, as he had said, a mere statement of facts, and I mentally
determined to seize an early opportunity of interviewing Von Eckhardt
when I arrived at Petersburg.

"You needn't have troubled to question me," resumed Southbourne, in his
most nonchalant manner. "I meant to tell you the little I know,--for
your own protection. This Society is one of those revolutionary
organizations that abound in Russia, but more cleverly managed than
most of them, and therefore all the more dangerous. Its members are said
to be innumerable, and of every class; and there are branches in every
capital of Europe. A near neighbor of yours, by the way, is under
surveillance at this very moment, though I believe nothing definite has
been traced to him."

"Cassavetti!" I exclaimed with, I am sure, an excellent assumption of
surprise.

"You've guessed it first time; though his name's Vladimir Selinski. If
you see him between now and Monday, when you must start, I advise you
not to mention your destination to him, unless you've already done so.
He was at the Savage Club dinner to-night, wasn't he?"

One of Southbourne's foibles was to pose as a kind of "Sherlock Holmes,"
but I was not in the least impressed by this pretension to omniscience.
He was a member of the club, and ought to have been at the dinner
himself. If he had looked down the list of guests he must have seen
"Miss Anne Pendennis" among the names, and yet I believed he had not the
slightest suspicion that she was the original of that portrait!

"I saw him there," I said, "but I told him nothing of my movements;
though we are on fairly good terms. Do you think I'm quite a fool, Lord
Southbourne?"

He looked amused, and blew another ring before he answered,
enigmatically: "David said in his haste 'all men are liars.' If he'd
said at his leisure 'all men are fools,--wh