rossed the Save river at Belgrade, and Semlin was
therefore a border town, where in many cases passports had to be
examined.

So it was a hard matter for any stranger to see the consul in person
unless he could prove that his business was of the greatest importance.
His office force did all it could to give him the time he needed to
catch up with his duties, but on a sunny morning late in July there came
a visitor who refused to be put off. The consul heard him as he sat at
his desk, writing frantically.

"I tell you I've got to see him!" That was what the consul heard, in a
voice that caused him to sit straight in his chair in astonishment. For
the voice was that of an American boy. Clear, penetrating, self-reliant,
it rang out like a call from home. The consul smiled and touched a bell
on his desk. And a minute later Dick Warner faced him, bearing out what
his voice had already told about him.

"You want to see me?" said the consul. "Well, sir, what can I do for
you? Lost your folks? Want money to get home? Something like that, eh?"
a note of condescension in his voice.

"No, sir. I just want to get permission to stay here in Semlin. The
police say that I'm English, and that I'll have to go away. But that's
because Mike Hallo has a pull."

"Michael Hallo, the great merchant?" the consul frowned.

"I don't know anything about his being a great merchant, sir, but I know
that he's a great crook! I've chased him here from New York, and now
that I've found him, I'm not going to let him frighten me into going
away before he makes good!"

"Tell me about this, my boy," said the consul. "It sounds as if it
should be interesting."

"That's what I want to do, sir. My name's Dick Warner, and my father's
dead. He and Mike Hallo were partners in New York, and they had a good
business. We always had lots of money until my father died. Then, right
away after that, Mike Hallo said the business began to go wrong and lost
money. And, after a while, it got so bad, he said, that it had to be
closed down, and there wasn't any more money coming in. He sold out, and
gave my mother a little money and said he was going home."

"That might have happened," said the consul.

"Sure--only it didn't, you see! My mother was soft, and she believed
everything Mike Hallo told her. And I wasn't old enough to know anything
about it. So he got away with it all right, and went home. But then we
began to find things out. We found that the busines