ylvania_ Quarantine midnight. Strange death Rawaruska. Retain
you in interest steamship company. Thompson, Purser."

Kennedy had torn open the envelope of a wireless message that had come
from somewhere out in the Atlantic and had just been delivered to him at
dinner one evening. He read it quickly and tossed it over to me.

"Rawaruska," I repeated. "Do you suppose that means the clever little
Russian dancer who was in the 'Revue' last year?"

"There could hardly be two of that unusual name who would be referred to
so familiarly," returned Craig. "Curious that we've had nothing in the
wireless news about it."

"Perhaps it has been delayed," I suggested. "Let me ring up the _Star_.
They may have something now."

A few minutes later I rejoined Craig at the table. A report had just
been received that Rawaruska had been discovered, late the night before,
unconscious in her room on the _Sylvania_. The ship's surgeon had been
summoned, but before he was able to do anything for her she died. That
was all the report said. It was meager, but it served to excite our
interest.

Renee Rawaruska, I knew, was a popular little Russian dancer abroad who
had come to America the season previous and had made a big hit on
Broadway. Beautiful, strange, fiery, she incarnated the mysterious Slav.
I knew her to be one of those Russian dancers before whose performances
Parisian audiences had gone wild with admiration, one who had carried
her art beyond anything known in other countries, fascinating, subtle.

Hastily over the telephone Kennedy made arrangements to go down to
Quarantine on a revenue tug that was leaving to meet the _Sylvania_.

It was a weird trip through the choppy winter seas of the upper bay and
the Narrows, in the dark, with the wind cold and bleak.

The tug had scarcely cast off from the Battery, where we met it, when a
man, who had been watching us from a crevice of his turned-up ulster
collar, quietly edged over.

"You are Professor Kennedy, the detective?" he began, more as if
asserting it than asking the question.

Craig eyed him a moment, but said nothing.

"I understand," he went on, not waiting for a reply, "that you are
interested in the case of that little Russian actress, Rawaruska?"

Still Kennedy said nothing.

"My name is Wade--of the Customs Service," pursued the man, nothing
abashed. Sticking his head forward between the corners of his high
collar he added, in a lowered voice, "You have heard,