f the question."

"Then where does Bernadine come in?"

"I do not know," Peter answered.

Violet laughed.

"What is it that you are going to try to find out?" she asked.

"I am trying to discover who it is that Bernadine and Kosuth are waiting
to see," Peter replied. "The worst of it is, I daren't leave here. I
shall have to trust to the others."

She glanced at the clock.

"Well, go and dress," she said. "I'm afraid I've a little of your blood
in me, after all. Life seems more stirring when Bernadine is on the
scene."

* * * * *

The shooting party broke up two days later and Peter and his wife
returned at once to town. The former found the reports which were
awaiting his arrival disappointing. Bernadine and his guest were not in
London, or if they were they had carefully avoided all the usual haunts.
Peter read his reports over again, smoked a very long cigar alone in his
study, and finally drove down to the City and called upon his
stockbroker, who was also a personal friend. Things were flat in the
City, and the latter was glad enough to welcome an important client. He
began talking the usual market shop until his visitor stopped him.

"I have come to you, Edwardes, more for information than anything,"
Peter declared, "although it may mean that I shall need to sell a lot of
stock. Can you tell me of any private financier who could raise a loan
of a million pounds in cash within the course of a week?"

The stockbroker looked dubious.

"In cash?" he repeated. "Money isn't raised that way, you know. I doubt
whether there are many men in the whole city of London who could put up
such an amount with only a week's notice."

"But there must be someone," Peter persisted. "Think! It would probably
be a firm or a man not obtrusively English. I don't think the Jews would
touch it, and a German citizen would be impossible."

"Semi-political, eh?"

Peter nodded.

"It is rather that way," he admitted.

"Would your friend the Count von Hern be likely to be concerned in it?"

"Why?" Peter asked, with immovable face.

"Nothing, only I saw him coming out of Heseltine-Wrigge's office the
other day," the stockbroker remarked, carelessly.

"And who is Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge?"

"A very wealthy American financier," the stockbroker replied, "not at
all an unlikely person for a loan of the sort you mention."

"American citizen?" Peter inquired.

"Without a doubt. Of German descent,