ong."

"So are a jackass's," retorted Dick.

He was sorry next moment, for the girl received his answer in icy
silence. In his car, which conveyed them from the tarmac to the
Embassy, she received all his overtures in the same silence. A frigid
little bow was her farewell to him, while Dick, struggling between
resentment and humiliation, sat dumb and wretched at the wheel.

Yet the idea that Fredegonde Valmy had any knowledge of the conspiracy
or its leaders never entered Dick's head. He was only miserable that
he had offended her, and he would have done anything to have
straightened out the trouble.

* * * * *

It seemed impossible that in the year 1940 the peace of the civilized
world could be threatened by an international conspiracy bent on
restoring absolutism, and yet each day showed more clearly the immense
ramifications of the plot. Each day, too, brought home to the
investigating governments more clearly the fact that the things they
had discovered were few in number in comparison with those they had
not.

The headquarters of the conspirators had never been discovered, and it
was suspected that the powerful mind behind them was intentionally
leading the investigators along false trails.

The conspiracy was world-wide. It had been behind the revolution that
had recreated an absolutist monarchy in Spain. It had plunged Italy
into civil war. It had thrown England into the convulsions of a
succession of general strikes, using the communist movement as a cloak
for its activities.

But nobody dreamed that America could become a fertile field for its
insidious propaganda. Yet it was behind the millions of adherents of
the so-called Freemen's Party, clamoring for the destruction of the
constitution. Upon the anarchy that would follow the absolutist regime
was to be erected.

Already the mysterious powers had struck. Departments of State had
been entered and important papers abstracted. The _Germania_ had
mysteriously disappeared in mid-Atlantic, and a shipping panic had
ensued. There were tales of mysterious figures materializing out of
nothingness. It was known that the conspirators were in possession of
certain chemical and electrical devices with which they hoped to
achieve their ends.

The Superintendent of the penitentiary had had in his pocket an
authorization to stop the execution of Von Kettler after he stood on
the trap. Dead, he would be a mere mark of vengeance: a