usiness in a most amazing
manner--the manner of a Yankee who knows what he wants and what his
country ought to want if it knew enough to know it wanted it.

He was the last American to leave Petrograd: he had taken his time; he
left only when he was quite ready to leave.

And this was the man, now seated beside Estridge, who had coolly and
cleverly taken his sporting chance in remaining till the eleventh hour
and the fifty-ninth minute in the service of his country. Then, as the
twelfth hour began to strike, he bluffed his way through.

* * * * *

During the first two or three days of sleigh travel, Brisson learned
all he desired to know about Estridge, and Estridge learned almost
nothing about Brisson except that he possessed a most unholy genius
for wriggling out of trouble.

Nothing, nobody, seemed able to block this young man's progress. He
bluffed his way through White Guards and Red; he squirmed affably out
of the clutches of wandering Cossacks; he jollied officials of all
shades of political opinion; but he always continued his journey from
one etape to the next. Also, he was continually lighting one large
cigar after another. Buttoned snugly into his New York-made arctic
clothing, and far more comfortable at thirty below zero than was
Estridge in Russian costume, he smoked comfortably in the teeth of the
icy gale or conversed soundly on any topic chosen. And the range was
wide.

But about himself and his mission in Russia he never conversed except
to remark, once, that he could buy better Russian clothing in New York
than in Petrograd.

Indeed, his only concession to the customs of the country was in the
fur cap he wore. But it was the galoshes of Manhattan that saved his
feet from freezing. He had two pair and gave one to Estridge.

During several hundreds of miles in sleighs, Brisson's constant regret
was the absence of ferocious wolves. He desired to enjoy the whole
show as depicted by the geographies. He complained to Estridge quite
seriously concerning the lack of enterprise among the wolves.

But there seemed to be no wolves in Russia sufficiently polite to
oblige him; so he comforted himself by patting his stomach where,
sewed inside his outer underclothing, reposed documents destined to
electrify the civilised world with proof infernal of the treachery of
those three men who belong in history and in hell to the fraternity
which includes Benedict Arnold