compartment of his Russia-leather pocketbook, along with the
letter of credit.

"I fear me that the incident is closed," he said. "I would stay here one
year if I thought there was a chance of seeing her again, but if she
wants me to fly I guess I had better fly."

That evening, after an earnest controversy with the manager over a very
complicated bill, studded with "extras," Mr. Alexander H. Pike,
accompanied by dragoman, leather trunks, hat-boxes and hold-alls, drove
away to the transcontinenta express, and slept soundly while crossing
the dangerous frontier.

Possibly he would not have slept so soundly if he had known that at four
o'clock that afternoon the Princess Kalora had been idling her time in
the palace garden, walking back and forth near the high wall.

She had told him not to come, and of course he would not come. No one
could be so audacious and foolhardy as to invite destruction after being
solemnly warned--and yet, if he _did_ come, she wanted to be there to
speak to him again and rebuke him and tell him not to come a third time.

She went back to her apartment much relieved and intensely disappointed.

Such is the perverseness of the feminine nature, even in Morovenia.

IX

AS TO WASHINGTON, D.C.

About the time that Mr. Pike arrived in Vienna, and after Kalora had
been in voluntary retirement for some forty-eight hours, the famous
Koldo, head of the secret police, came into possession of a most
important clue.

Having searched for two days, without finding the trail of the criminal
with the black mustache and the German accent, he bethought himself of
the wisdom of going to the garden where the intruder had engaged in a
desperate struggle with the two guards. Possibly he would discover
incriminating footprints. Instead, he found some scraps of paper, with
printing of a foreign character.

By questioning the guards he learned that these tatters had come from a
printed book which the mysterious stranger had carried, and which he
never relinquished even while reducing his foes to insensibility.

Koldo put these pieces of paper into a strong envelope, which he sealed
and marked "Exhibit A," and delivered his precious find to the
Governor-General.

While Mr. Pike sat in Ronacher's at Vienna, watching a most entertaining
vaudeville performance, Count Selim Malagaski was in his library,
conferring with the wise Popova.

"How did he escape?" asked Count Malagaski again and again, shaki