NGE."

CHAPTER X

THE THIRTEENTH ENCOUNTER

The Marquis de Sogrange arrived in Berkeley Square with the grey dawn of
an October morning, showing in his appearance and dress few enough signs
of his night journey. Yet he had travelled without stopping from Paris
by fast motor car and the mail boat.

"They telephoned me from Charing Cross," Peter said, "that you could not
possibly arrive until midday. The clerk assured me that no train had yet
reached Calais."

"They had reason in what they told you," Sogrange remarked, as he leaned
back in a chair and sipped the coffee which had been waiting for him in
the Baron de Grost's study. "The train itself never got more than a mile
away from the Gare du Nord. The engine-driver was shot through the head,
and the metals were torn from the way. Paris is within a year now of a
second and more terrible revolution."

"You really believe this?" Peter asked gravely.

"It is a certainty," Sogrange replied. "Not I alone, but many others can
see this clearly. Everywhere the Socialists have wormed themselves into
places of trust. They are to be met with in every rank of life, under
every form of disguise. The post-office strike has already shown us what
deplorable disasters even a skirmish can bring about. To-day the railway
strike has paralysed France. Our country lies to-day absolutely at the
mercy of any invader. As it happens, no one is, for the moment,
prepared. Who can tell how it may be next time?"

"This is bad news," Peter declared. "If this is really the position of
affairs, the matter is much more serious than the newspapers would have
us believe."

"The newspapers," Sogrange muttered, "ignore what lies behind. Some of
them, I think, are paid to do it. As for the rest, our Press had always
an ostrich-like tendency. The Frenchman of the cafe does not buy his
journal to be made sad."

"You believe, then," Peter asked, "that these strikes have some definite
tendency?"

Sogrange set down his cup and smiled bitterly. In the early sunlight,
still a little cold and unloving, Peter could see that there was a
change in the man. He was no longer the debonair aristocrat of the
racecourses and the boulevards. The shadows under his eyes were deeper,
his cheeks more sunken. He had lost something of the sprightliness of
his bearing. His attitude, indeed, was almost dejected. He was like a
man who sees into the future and finds there strange and gruesome
things.

"I do mo