nyhow?' I asked. 'Do you know more about him than we
knew in the summer? Mary, what did Bommaerts pretend to be?'

'An Englishman.' Mary spoke in the most matter-of-fact tone, as if it
were a perfectly usual thing to be made love to by a spy, and that
rather soothed my annoyance. 'When he asked me to marry him he proposed
to take me to a country-house in Devonshire. I rather think, too, he
had a place in Scotland. But of course he's a German.'

'Ye-es,' said Blenkiron slowly, 'I've got on to his record, and it
isn't a pretty story. It's taken some working out, but I've got all the
links tested now ... He's a Boche and a large-sized nobleman in his own
state. Did you ever hear of the Graf von Schwabing?'

I shook my head.

'I think I have heard Uncle Charlie speak of him,' said Mary, wrinkling
her brows. 'He used to hunt with the Pytchley.'

'That's the man. But he hasn't troubled the Pytchley for the last eight
years. There was a time when he was the last thing in smartness in the
German court--officer in the Guards, ancient family, rich, darned
clever--all the fixings. Kaiser liked him, and it's easy to see why. I
guess a man who had as many personalities as the Graf was amusing
after-dinner company. Specially among the Germans, who in my experience
don't excel in the lighter vein. Anyway, he was William's white-headed
boy, and there wasn't a mother with a daughter who wasn't out gunning
for Otto von Schwabing. He was about as popular in London and Noo
York--and in Paris, too. Ask Sir Walter about him, Dick. He says he had
twice the brains of Kuhlmann, and better manners than the Austrian
fellow he used to yarn about ... Well, one day there came an almighty
court scandal, and the bottom dropped out of the Graf's World. It was a
pretty beastly story, and I don't gather that Schwabing was as deep in
it as some others. But the trouble was that those others had to be
shielded at all costs, and Schwabing was made the scapegoat. His name
came out in the papers and he had to go .'

'What was the case called?' I asked.

Blenkiron mentioned a name, and I knew why the word Schwabiog was
familiar. I had read the story long ago in Rhodesia.

'It was some smash,' Blenkiron went on. 'He was drummed out of the
Guards, out of the clubs, out of the country ... Now, how would you
have felt, Dick, if you had been the Graf? Your life and work and
happiness crossed out, and all to save a mangy princeling. "Bitter as
hell," you say