ny! At the words the truth rushed like a flash of
inspiration across Cleek's mind. The cause of Germany! What a dolt he
was not to have thought of that before! There was but one phrase ever
used for that among the Kaiser's people, and that phrase--

"'To the day!'" he said, with a burst of sudden laughter. "My wits are
in the moon to-night, _la reine_. 'To the day,' of course--'To the
day!'" And even before she replied to him, he knew that he had guessed
aright.

"Bravo!" she said, with a little hiccough--for the absinthe, of which
she had imbibed so freely to-night, was beginning to take hold of her.
"A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked!
It is well I know thee--it is well it was the word of les Apaches in the
beginning, or I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment!"--putting
her hand to her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice--"wait but a
moment, Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be in your
hand."

The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves as
Cleek's, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must have
cheered.

"Oho! you grin because one's fingers blunder with eagerness,"
hiccoughed Margot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in
getting the fastenings of her bodice undone. "Peste, monsieur! may not a
lady well be modestly careful, when--Name of the devil! what's that?"

It was the note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passage
without--the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set on
watch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathed
hard. A single whistle--short and sharp, such as this one was--was the
signal agreed upon that the real Clodoche was coming, and that he and
Count von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond.

"Soul of a sloth! Will not that hurry you, _la reine_?" he said
excitedly, in reply to Margot's startled question. "It is the signal
Fouchard's son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the place
where I am to meet them. Give me the paper--quick! quick! Tear the
fastenings, if they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a von
Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a bit of lace."

"Pardieu! they have kept better men than he waiting many an hour before
this," she made reply. "But you shall have the thing in a twinkling now.
There! but one more knot, and then it is in your hands."

And, had the fates not decreed other