, but you
won't mind if I speak plainly, will you? The times are queer--you
understand. Everybody is suspicious; everybody is under suspicion in
these days. And I want to say that the young lady who sent that
curious message to you is as clever as twenty men like you and me."

He was silent.

"If it is a love affair, I'll stop now--not a question, you
understand. If it is not--well, as an older and more battered and
world-worn man, I'm going to make a suggestion to you--with your
permission."

"Make it," he said, quietly.

"Then I will. Don't talk to Mademoiselle Elven. You, Speed, and I
know something about a certain conspiracy; we are going to know more
before we inform the captain of that cruiser out there beyond Point
Paradise. I know Mademoiselle Elven--slightly. I am afraid of her--and
I have not yet decided why. Don't talk to her."

"But--I don't know her," he said; "or, at least I don't know her by
that name."

After a moment I said: "Is the person in question the companion of
the Countess de Vassart?"

"If she is I do not know it," he replied.

"Was she once an actress?"

"It would astonish me to believe it!" he said.

"Then who do you believe sent you that message, Kelly?"

His cheeks began to burn again, and he gave me an uncomfortable look.
A silence, and he sat down in my dressing-room, his boyish head buried
in his hands. After a glance at him I began changing my training-suit
for riding-clothes, whistling the while softly to myself. As I
buttoned a fresh collar he looked up.

"Mr. Scarlett, you are well-born and--you are here in the circus with
the rest of us. You know what we are--you know that two or three of us
have seen better days,... that something has gone wrong with us to
bring us here,... but we never speak of it,... and never ask
questions.... But I should like to tell you about myself;... you are a
gentleman, you know,... and I was not born to anything in
particular.... I was a clerk in the consul's office in Paris when
Monsieur Tissandier took a fancy to me, and I entered his balloon
ateliers to learn to assist him."

He hesitated. I tied my necktie very carefully before a bit of broken
mirror.

"Then the government began to make much of us,... you remember? We
started experiments for the army.... I was intensely interested, and
... there was not much talk about secrecy then,... and my salary was
large, and I was received at the Tuileries. My head was turned;...
life was e