t understand.
What I do understand, I dislike."

She left him, with an inscrutable look. He made no effort to open the
door for her. He simply stood listening to her departing footsteps,
listened to the shrill summons of the lift-bell, listened to the lift
itself go clanging downwards. Then he resumed his seat at his desk. With
his hands clasped nervously together, an ink smear upon his cheek, his
mouth slightly open, disclosing his irregular and discoloured teeth, he
was not by any means a pleasant looking object.

He blew down a tube by his side and gave a muttered order. In a few
minutes Bright presented himself.

"I am busy," the latter observed curtly, as he closed the door behind
him.

"You've got to be busier in a few minutes," was the harsh reply.
"There's a screw loose somewhere."

Bright stood motionless.

"Any one been disagreeable?" he asked, after a moment's pause.

"Get down to your office at once," Fenn directed briefly. "Have Miss
Abbeway followed. I want reports of her movements every hour. I shall be
here all night."

Bright grinned unpleasantly.

"Another Samson, eh?"

"Go to Hell, and do as you're told!" was the fierce reply. "Put your
best men on the job. I must know, for all our sakes, the name of the
neutral whom Miss Abbeway sees to-night and with whom she is exchanging
confidences."

Bright left the room with a shrug of the shoulders. Nicholas Fenn turned
up the electric light, pulled out a bank book from the drawer of his
desk, and, throwing it on to the fire, watched it until it was consumed.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Baron Hellman, comfortably seated at the brilliantly decorated round
dining table, between Catherine, on one side, and a lady to whom he
had not been introduced, contemplated the menu through his immovable
eyeglass with satisfaction, unfolded his napkin, and continued the
conversation with his hostess, a few places away, which the announcement
of dinner had interrupted.

"You are quite right, Princess," he admitted.

"The position of neutrals, especially in the diplomatic world,
becomes, in the case of a war like this, most difficult and sometimes
embarrassing. To preserve a correct attitude is often a severe strain
upon one's self-restraint."

The Princess nodded sympathetically.

"A very charming young man, the Baron," she confided to the General who
had taken her in to dinner. "I knew his father and his uncle quite well,
in those happy days before the