within the space of a few hours, one in
the heart of the most thickly populated capital in the world, and there
was a certain significance attached to this fact which the Ambassador
himself and those others at Washington perfectly well realized. He
glanced once more at the most recent letter on the top of this pile
of correspondence and away again out into the Park. It was a difficult
matter, this. His friends at Washington did not cultivate the art of
obscurity in the words which they used, and it had been suggested to
him in black and white that the murder of these two men, under the
particular circumstances existing, was a matter concerning which he
should speak very plainly indeed to certain August personages. Mr.
Harvey, who was a born diplomatist, understood the difficulties of such
a proceeding a good deal more than those who had propounded it.

There was a knock at the door, and a footman entered, ushering in a
visitor.

"The young lady whom you were expecting, sir," he announced discreetly.

Mr. Harvey rose at once to his feet.

"My dear Penelope," he said, shaking hands with her, "this is charming
of you."

Penelope smiled.

"It seems quite like old times to feel myself at home here once more,"
she declared.

Mr. Harvey did not pursue the subject. He was perfectly well aware
that Penelope, who had been his first wife's greatest friend, had never
altogether forgiven him for his somewhat brief period of mourning. He
drew an easy chair up to the side of his desk and placed a footstool for
her.

"I should not have sent for you," he said, "but I am really and honestly
in a dilemma. Do you know that, apart from endless cables, Washington
has favored me with one hundred and forty pages of foolscap all about
the events of the week before last?"

Penelope shivered a little.

"Poor Dicky!" she murmured, looking away into the fire. "And to think
that it was I who sent him to his death!"

Mr. Harvey shook his head.

"No," he said, "I do not think that you need reproach yourself with
that. As a matter of fact, I think that I should have sent Dicky in
any case. He is not so well known as the others, or rather he wasn't
associated so closely with the Embassy, and he was constantly at the
Savoy on his own account. If I had believed that there was any danger in
the enterprise," he continued, "I should still have sent him. He was as
strong as a young Hercules. The hand which twisted that noose around his
neck