e don't run to brass plates. I am
here because I am curious about that loan. Turkey hasn't a shadow of
security to offer you. Everything which she can pledge is pledged to
guarantee the interest on existing loans to France and England. She is
prevented by treaty from borrowing in Germany. If you make a loan
without security, Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge, I suppose you understand your
position. The loan may be repudiated at any moment."

"Kind of a philanthropist, aren't you?" Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge remarked
quietly.

"Not in the least," Peter assured him. "I know there's some tricky work
going on, and I suppose I haven't brains enough to get to the bottom of
it. That's why I've come blundering in to you, and why, I suppose,
you'll be telling the whole story to the Count von Hern at luncheon in
an hour's time."

Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge smoked in silence for a moment or two.

"This transaction of mine," he said at last, "isn't one I can talk
about. I guess I'm on to what you want to know, but I simply can't tell
you. The security is unusual, but it's good enough for me."

"It seems so to you beyond a doubt," Peter replied. "Still, you have to
do with a remarkably clever young man in the Count von Hern. I don't
want to ask you any questions you feel I ought not to, but I do wish
you'd tell me one thing."

"Go right ahead," Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge invited. "Don't be shy."

"What day are you concluding this affair?"

Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge scratched his chin for a moment thoughtfully and
glanced at his diary.

"Well, I'll risk that," he decided. "A week to-day I hand over the
coin."

Peter drew a little breath of relief. A week was an immense time! He
rose to his feet.

"That ends our business, then, for the present," he said. "Now I am
going to ask both of you a favour. Perhaps I have no right to, but as a
man of honour, Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge, you can take it from me that I ask
it in your interests as well as my own. Don't tell the Count von Hern of
my visit to you."

Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge held out his hand.

"That's all right," he declared. "You hear, Myra?"

"I'll be dumb, Baron," she promised. "Say when do you think Vi can come
and see me?"

Peter was guilty of snobbery. He considered it quite a justifiable
weapon.

"She is at Windsor this afternoon," he remarked.

"What, at the garden party?" Mrs. Heseltine-Wrigge almost shrieked.

Peter nodded.

"I believe there's some fete or other to-morrow," he said; "but we'r