existence?"

"It was an accident." Kolinsky answered haltingly.

"And your candidate for the crown?" asked the Russian in a slight tone
of derision.

"Is a Parisian artist. A good-natured fool." Kolinsky's tone of voice
echoed the other's, whose hand was held out hesitatingly across the
table for the papers. Deliberately Josef drew a bundle from his inside
pocket and opened it before his chief.

The parchments were old and the Latin was in an ancient cramped hand
while the impression of the seal was well-nigh obliterated. When
sufficient time had elapsed for the Russian to make a complete mental
note of their appearance, Josef drew the papers away from him, refolded
them carefully and replaced them in his pocket.

"Kolinsky, you know what will happen should you desert us when once in
Krovitch?"

Josef was standing near the door. He smiled with supreme indifference.

"Do I get the mission, Excellency?" was the only reply he vouchsafed.

"Y-e-s." The superior's single acquiescence was prolonged into three
syllables, urged by the acknowledged supreme ability of Kolinsky and
restrained by a fear of apprehended duplicity.

Aware of this struggle the clever fellow turned back in the doorway to
laugh at the other's perplexity.

"Really, Excellency, you have only one thing to fear." His chief started
up suspiciously.

"What is that?" he asked tersely.

"That I may decide to claim the throne of Krovitch myself," Josef
replied, as with his habitual smile he softly closed the door and
hurried from the house.

IV

THE GRAY MAN

"Do you realize, Carrick, that three weeks have passed since I proposed
this trip to Krovitch?" They were whirling along a badly kept road in
that province of Russia as Calvert Carter made the above remark which
was also an interrogation. The place of their debarkation had been an
unusual one--Danzig--chosen because it had been the more accessible to
the Russian frontier. Slowing down the automobile for obvious reasons,
Carrick turned a ruminating expression in the direction of his master.

"Seems yesterday, sir."

"How's the go-fever? Still working?"

Carrick laughed. "Overtime, sir. Hundred miles an hour till we get there
wouldn't be too fast for me." He turned his attention again to the
machine and the rutty way before him.

The other drew out a road map which he consulted with trained eyes that
correctly approximated both locality and distances. Slowly refolding it
he r