's pause, "and
that this fellow Hamilton Fynes really had something for us, that would
account for his being able to get off the boat and securing his special
train so easily. No one can imagine where he got the pull."

"It accounts, also," Penelope remarked, "for his murder!"

Her companion started.

"You haven't any idea--" he began.

"Nothing so definite as an idea," she interrupted. "I am not going so
far as to say that. I simply know that when a man is practically the
secret agent of his government, and is probably carrying despatches
of an important nature, that an accident such as he has met with, in a
country which is greatly interested in the contents of those despatches,
is a somewhat serious thing."

The young man nodded.

"Say," he admitted "you're dead right. The Pacific cruise, and our
relations with Japan, seem to have rubbed our friends over here
altogether the wrong way. We have irritations enough already to smooth
over, without anything of this sort on the carpet."

"I am going to tell you now," she continued, leaning a little towards
him, "the real reason why I fetched you out of the club this afternoon
and have brought you for this little expedition. The last time I lunched
with Mr. Hamilton Fynes was just after his return from Berlin. He
intrusted me then with a very important mission. He gave me a letter to
deliver to Mr. Blaine Harvey."

"But I don't understand!" he protested. "Why should he give you the
letter when he was in London himself?"

"I asked him that question myself, naturally," she answered. "He told me
that it was an understood thing that when he was over here on business
he was not even to cross the threshold of the Embassy, or hold any
direct communication with any person connected with it. Everything had
to be done through a third party, and generally in duplicate. There
was another man, for instance, who had a copy of the same letter, but I
never came across him or even knew his name."

"Gee whiz!" the young man exclaimed. "You're telling me things, and no
mistake! Why this fellow Fynes made a secret service messenger of you!"

Penelope nodded.

"It was all very simple," she said. "The first Mrs. Harvey, who was
alive then, was my greatest friend, and I was in and out of the place
all the time. Now, perhaps, you can understand the significance of
that marconigram from Hamilton Fynes asking me to lunch with him at the
Carlton today."

Mr. Richard Vanderpole was sit