The Three Of Clubs

Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.

VALENTINE WILLIAMS

THE THREE OF CLUBS

First UK edition:
Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1924

First US edition:
Houghton & Mifflin, Boston and New York, 1924

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2025
Version Date: 2025-07-16

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All original content added by RGL is protected by copyright.

Click here for more books by this author

What mysterious significance has the three of clubs? Stuck in a menu-holder, it marked a corner table at the old Munich Hofbräuhaus, where sundry quiet men conversed in undertones. The Austrian, Von Bartzen, found it fallen face upwards between his elbows at Monte Carlo. It was at Borchardt's restaurant in Berlin that Colonel Trommel, late of the Great General Staff, discovered it lying by his plate. Godol, the Hungarian, had it from a match-seller in the Arcades in Milan. And perversely it united the love and fortunes of Godfrey Cairsdale and Virginia Fitzgerald.

Valentine Williams has never been more successful than in this story of wild adventure in the English secret service. "The Three of Clubs" is a swift and thrilling romance of love and mystery, a game of international intrigue played for colossal stakes and with all Europe for the gaming-table.

Concerning a Humble Playing Card
Chapter I. In Which Virginia FitzGerald Keeps an Appointment
Chapter II. News of Godfrey Cairsdale
Chapter III. The Orient Express
Chapter IV. Kilometre 224
Chapter V. Virginia Comes Into the War
Chapter VI. The Strange Mission of Godfrey Cairsdale
Chapter VII. The Woman on the Hill-Top
Chapter VIII. Advice from Dr. Nagy
Chapter IX. Castle Kés
Chapter X. In which Virginia Meets an Old Friend and Receives an Odd Missive
Chapter XI. The Three of Clubs
Chapter XII. Valérie
Chapter XIII. Wolfstal
Chapter XIV. The Man by the Track
Chapter XV. The House in the Forest
Chapter XVI. In the Hour Before Dawn
Chapter XVII. An Impulse and What Came of It
Chapter XVIII. In which Count Gellert Receives a Rebuff
Chapter XIX. Count Gellert's Workshop
Chapter XX. The Surprising Behaviour of Captain Traugott
Chapter XXI. The Service Stair
Chapter XXII. Virginia Comes to Kés
Chapter XXIII. Valérie Shows her Hand
Chapter XXIV. The Second Club
Chapter XXV. Which Clearly Shows the Difference Between an Austrian and a Prussian
Chapter XXVI. The Third Club
Chapter XXVII. In the Tower Room
Chapter XXVIII. The Empty Cell
Chapter XXIX. In Which the Archduchess Valérie Proves Herself to be the Only Man of the Habsburgs
Chapter XXX. Virginia's Story
Chapter XXXI. The Device of the Schönau-Nymphenburgs

CONCERNING A HUMBLE PLAYING-CARD

From the cards strewn amid the brimming ashtrays and torn score-sheets of the abandoned bridge table I have picked it out to freshen in my mind the story of Godfrey Cairsdale and Virginia Fitz-Gerald, which here, in the quiet of the evening, I have sat down to write.

Such a common little card.... Not opulent like a diamond, not romantic like a heart, or even mysterious like a spade.

And yet, when at Venice, from a window above the private landing-stage of the Danieli, on the narrow canal that quietly laps the dank and frowning walls of the Piombi, it fluttered down to a gondola, the white hand that picked it up trembled as it divided the black curtains.

When, in the baccarat rooms at Monte Carlo, the Austrian, von Bartzen, sitting absorbed in the play, found it fallen face upwards between his elbows, the blood ebbed from his face and, though he was whining, he left the Casino on the instant.

It was at Borchardt's restaurant in Berlin that Colonel Trommel, late of the Great General Staff, discovered it lying by his plate—Borchardt's, that stronghold of the old Prussian Army, where in bygone days one saw field-marshals' batons hanging up in the cloakroom among the spiked helmets and swords. And Trommel abandoned his oysters on the spot, and, having borrowed a hundred thousand marks from the head waiter, made straight for the train.

At Stuttgart, in the restaurant of the Hôtel Marquardt, the exquisite von Winterbaum, survivor of Richthofen's famous "flying circus," saw it protruding from the lining of his hat, and his face paled beneath its tan.

Godol, the Hungarian, had it from a match-seller in the Arcades at Milan. He did not stop to ponder the oddness of the intermediary or regret the brief holiday he had planned by Como's blue waters; but, turning his back on the pigeons wheeling in the Piazza del Duomo, headed instantly for the chilly north again.

Stuck in a menu-holder, it marked a corner table at the old Hofbräuhaus at Munich where, in the greyness of a December afternoon, sundry quiet men quaffed their beer and conversed in undertones. For weeks its three black clover-leaves haunted the mind, waking and sleeping, of a certain broad-shouldered Englishman, Him Whose Name Must Never Be Spoken, who, all unconsciously, helped most strangely to shape the lives of the two young people whose story I shall here set down.

Less famous than the nine of diamonds, which men call "The Curse of Scotland" in everlasting execration of the name of Campbell, this humble pawn of the pack has played its part in history.

CHAPTER I
In Which Virginia FitzGerald Keeps An Appointment

FROM the distant ballroom resounded the slow and plaintive rhythm of the tango. For his great reception in honour of the Arms Conference the Ambassador had sent specially to his estancia for this band of native players, black-haired, sad-eyed, who seemed to pluck their very hearts from the strings of their guitars. The brooding melancholy of the vast spaces of the Argentine, the romance of love beneath the stars, the throbbing passion of old Castile, were interwoven in the strange sad melody that, with its monotonously recurrent beat, went forth for official Washington to dance to.

They were playing bridge in the long gallery adjacent to the library. Through the open door the young man and the girl who sat on the Récamier couch, surrounded by His Excellency's Elzevirs, caught fragments of the players' talk—the lingua franca of an international conference. "Hearts": "Je passe!" "Double hearts": "Caro mio, a voi"; "Prince, my fan..." and among and above it all, mingled in the muted strains of the music, the confused sound of many voices, the scarcely perceptible aroma of tobacco.

"And you're really sailing in the morning?" said the girl, regarding her companion through her long lashes. "It won't seem like the Conference without you..."

"My dear," he replied, "if you only knew how I hated to go. But they're thinning out the Delegation, and I'm wanted at home...."

His voice shook a little. Suddenly his two arms went out. His hands rested on the girl's shoulders.

"Jenny," he said, "I must speak. I can't go home without telling you. My dear, I love you so.... I love you... ."

He drew her passionately towards him. The girl did not resist. Her face was close to his.

She remained motionless, impassive, but there must have been something in her eyes that emboldened him, for he leant down and kissed her on the lips. This time she responded and, with a little sigh, settled down in his arms.

"What I like about you, Godfrey," she said, "is that you always seem to read my thoughts. My dear, that was just the question I was asking myself. I believe I could marry you. But could I give up my work, my country.... this?"

He kissed the tips of her ringers. "I should never let you regret it," he said. "About money and all that, you know I'm comfortably off, even according to your standards, and if anything happens to dear old Jack, I shall succeed to the title...."

"I know. But these things matter in marriage. And the first thing your uncle will do will be to enquire into my circumstances. It appears there's a slump in English fortune-hunters in America, he was telling me the other evening...."

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Only cross-examination by the indirect method, I suppose. But, Jenny, won't you let me speak to Uncle Andrew?"

"No, Godfrey," she replied. "Not until I know my own mind. We mustn't make a mistake, you know. I care for you too much to risk that. And some woman has made you very unhappy once in your life already...."

"By... by everything about you," she answered. "You probably don't realize how narrowly you've escaped becoming a woman-hater, Godfrey. The first time we met I simply loathed you...."

"No, not rude," the girl corrected him. "Unsympathetic, cold, and, worst of all, full of allowances for our poor feminine understanding...."

"By Gad, Jenny, what an ambassador you'd make! It seems a shame to rob the American Diplomatic!"

"Some of us Americans think they have no brains to spare, believe me!" the girl remarked comically.

"To-morrow," he replied, "I go back to a world where the sun will never shine for me. Jenny, you've made Washington seem like Paradise. Whether you take me or not, I shall always think of dear old Washington as some enchanted garden, a fairyland of happiness. There was a time in my life when I thought I should never know happiness again. But you have proved me wrong, and the thought of that happiness escaping me once more is almost unbearable...."

"Godfrey," she said softly, and took his hand. "After Christmas I am going to Europe with Aunt Marcia. She lives in Paris, you know, so we are going by the French line to Cherbourg. If you will meet me in Paris, I will give you your answer then!"

"Very well," he agreed. "But, Jenny, dear, won't you let me give you a ring? You have nothing of mine to wear except that rotten little watch. And that was a bet!"

"Oh, Godfrey, it's charming!" cried the girl, looking at the tiny platinum watch on her firm white wrist. "I simply love it. And I won't have a ring of yours until I'm entitled to wear one!"

"Still," the young man persisted, "I'd like there to be tangible link between us, something to span invisibly the thousands of miles of tossing water that are going to separate you from me...."

For an instant she let her clear blue eyes rest on his face. Then slowly she drew from her left hand the only ring he had ever seen her wear. It was a flat narrow band of gold, perfectly plain. He knew it for an heirloom in her family, handed down from those Leinster FitzGeralds, that race of splendid men and lovely women from which she sprang. Silently she held the ring out to him, turning it so that he might see the inscription engraved within.

His face lit up as he took the ring. "In Fay the" was the motto it bore in characters half obliterated.

And now she had come three thousand miles to give him his answer. Leaning back in her chair, Virginia FitzGerald contemplated her neatly shod feet below the fur edging of her frock. She still seemed to feel the shivering and swaying of La France which had landed her at Cherbourg that morning out of the grey winter fury of the Atlantic. But she had no sense of discomfort, only a feeling of peat lassitude, a desire to rest quietly, not from the fatigues of the voyage, but from the surge of new impressions which each return to Europe brought her.

It took her always a day or two to get back into the ways of Paris. This time it was two years since she had been over, and the period, which had included the Arms Conference at Washington, had gone far to change the face of Paris as she had known it in the days of the Big Four.

For now, at the hour of le five o'clock, the lounge of the Ritz, Virginia decided, looked quite its old self. Gone were the muddy khaki, the horizon blue, the unreality and the hysteria of the Peace Conference. As from some vast storeroom, she reflected whimsically, had returned the monocled, waisted young men, the elegant women whom the war had whisked away. The creamy sheen of pearls on white necks, the flash of diamonds on soft bosoms, a woman's belongings on a tea-tray—a gold mesh bag, an enamel cigarette-case, two purple orchids, piled picturesquely in a heap; the deft, impassive waiters, the darting blue-and-silver pages, the discreetly modulated music, denoted the return to normalcy.

Outside, on the Place Vendôme, Napoleon, who had seen Zeppelin and Gotha rain fire on the city and had watched winged death come swooping without warning from the distant forest, still gazed from the lofty isolation of his column across the rain-swept gardens to where his majestic tomb lay beneath the golden dome. Far below, at his feet, before the Ministry of Justice, the muddied cars of war were now replaced by the glittering limousines of peace, whose chauffeurs yawned and stamped and gossiped beneath the yellow lights of the hotel portico.

Paris! All her life she had loved it. The spacious spirit of the great Rodin now brooded over the Convent of the Sacred Heart where, as a little girl in a pigtail, she had learnt her first lessons from the gentle nuns. Paris has an elusive charm, a charm that requires to be wooed. Virginia felt that she was not of, but as yet merely among the elegant throng that filled the warmed air of the Ritz on this January afternoon with chatter and low laughter, with the fragrance of its perfume, the exotic scent of its cigarettes.

She recognized, but was too occupied with her thoughts to bestir herself to greet many of those present—an Italian ambassador, a Rumanian princess, a French general, a Greek financier: for her work as confidential secretary to old Andrew FitzGerald, of the State Department, her uncle and guardian, had given her more than a nodding acquaintance with the Almanach de Gotha. But to-day, she told herself, she would banish the outer world from her ken, reserving herself uniquely for her meeting with Godfrey.

She glanced at the little platinum watch. The first train from London was in, the hotel porter had said. The second train must have arrived by this. She had thought that Godfrey might have met her at the Gare Saint-Lazare when the Cherbourg boat special came in. If he had come by aeroplane he could have done so. But perhaps the bad weather had suspended the air service.

She had cabled to him from New York that she would arrive at the Ritz in Paris on January 5th. The inability of Aunt Marcia ever to make up her mind, combined with an attack of influenza which had sent the worthy lady to her bed for a week, had played havoc with Virginia's plans. Their decision to sail by La France was taken suddenly, at the last moment, and she had not had time to write to Godfrey and arrange things. But they were in constant correspondence, and she knew from his letters that he would be in London over Christmas, having been transferred back to the Foreign Office from Budapest, where he had been posted after the Washington Conference.

It was curious that he was not there to meet her. Yet he had had her cable. The American Beauty roses, with their unsigned message "In Faythe" on the card attached, which she had found in their stateroom on La France, had told her that. He must have cabled to order the flowers. But why had he not cabled to her? Why was he not here?

CHAPTER II
News Of Godfrey Cairsdale

SHE put the problem from her mind. His cable might have missed her; he would telegraph; perhaps he had written: maybe he was detained on business and would arrive in person any minute. Her faith in Godfrey was absolute. Her happy, practical nature had no knowledge of the doubts and fears that haunt so many lovers. She thought pleasurably of their coming meeting. How would Godfrey fit into the European background? Would he survive the confrontation with the mind picture of him which she had carried about with her all these months?

Godfrey I Dreamily she turned her mind back to their first meeting. The recollection brought a smile to her lips. An important communication from the State Department to the British Delegation had gone astray. Both sides denied liability. The Honourable Godfrey Cairsdale, Second Secretary in His Britannic Majesty's Diplomatic Service, attached to the Delegation, had been deputed to investigate the matter. His rather acid comments had been referred to Miss Virginia FitzGerald, confidential secretary to the Honourable Andrew FitzGerald, of the State Department.

When he had called she had not known his name or, indeed, anything about him. She had found herself confronted with a tall, athletic-looking young man, with crisp, dark hair and a straight Grecian nose whose arched nostrils corroborated the evidence of high spirit seen in the keen, luminous eyes. He had been polite—in fact, his manners were delightful—but severe, with a suggestion of scornful compassion addressed to her sex which had exasperated her.

A word from her would have settled the whole thing. Had she not in her hands absolute proof of the receipt of the missing document at the British Delegation headquarters? But it had pleased her to play with him, watching him grow more and more heated as she remained cool and unmoved.

"You do not seem to realize, Miss FitzGerald," he had said at last, "that my Chief is excessively annoyed at this. He requires me to clear the matter up. I don't wish to tell him that I have received no assistance...."

Then, sweetly, she had exploded her mine. She had produced the British Delegation's official receipt. With inward amusement she had watched him flush up with embarrassment and anger—anger with the idiotic clerk who had muddled things up, anger with her for leading him on.

But they had met again and often enough to have laughed together over their first official encounter. Godfrey Cairsdale was something in the nature of a discovery to Virginia. Of course, she had met Englishmen before, but never one quite like him. In every outward characteristic he was essentially British, impeccable good form in demeanour and clothes, extremely insular in his outlook (as she frequently told him), laboriously careful to suppress the manifestation of many of the emotions that large-hearted, impulsive America carries on its sleeve.

Yet there was plenty of character at the back of the rather impassive mien which Godfrey Cairsdale turned to the world, intelligence well above the ordinary, keen humour, a sense of romance. Rather to her surprise Virginia learnt—little by little, from others, for he was hard to persuade to speak of himself—that he was a first-rate linguist, an Honours man at Oxford, and that a small book of his on Roman archaeology was spoken of with respect by no less an authority than the Director of the Metropolitan Museum. On the other hand, his golf approached the first-class standard and his play in a friendly game of tennis at the New York Racquets Club against the brilliant and graceful Kinsella had enthused the dedans.

And passion smouldered behind those steady grey eyes of his. That night in the quiet library at the Argentine Minister's at the reception to the Conference, when Godfrey had put his arms about her, he had told her of his love in a voice that he could scarcely master. She had been strongly, strangely drawn to him.

But she was in love with her liberty. She did not approve of marrying out of one's own nation, she told herself. Always she had before her the example of Aunt Marcia, who, at the age of eighteen, had left her Southern home to marry a French nobleman, the Marquis de Kerouzan. Only his death occurring just before the war had put an end to that gentleman's innumerable extra-connubial escapades which, during his lifetime, had followed one another like beads upon a rosary. In falling out of love with her husband, the Marquise de Kerouzan had fallen in love with Paris. She paid frequent visits to America, but in Paris she made her home.

Aunt Marcia was not in Virginia's secret. Nor was Uncle Andrew. In fact, the girl had confided in no one. To tell the truth, she was by no means certain of what her answer to Godfrey Cairsdale should be. Plenty of young men had been and were in love with her, rich young men and poor young men, socially eligible young men and frank adventurers. But none had been able to offer her sufficient inducement to make her even contemplate abandoning the strangely fascinating work of diplomacy to which her uncle had introduced her. None, that is, except Godfrey Cairsdale....

For three months she had been searching her heart for her decision. Ultimately she had disposed of the problem by telling herself that when she saw Godfrey again the answer would just have to come of itself. Undoubtedly, she had missed him. She had been strangely lonely in Washington after his departure. And the thought that she was about to see him again thrilled her unexpectedly....

A small procession approaching her table interrupted her train of thought. It was headed by Clement, the maître d'hôtel, walking sideways like a crab, his two arms gracefully balanced in the manner of a male dancer of the Russian Ballet, one hand pointing, the other beckoning. These gesticulations were rendered necessary by the extremely slow progress among the crowded tables of the Marquise de Kerouzan who, her plump, good-natured face wreathed in smiles, struggled gallantly along in Clement's wake, a small page, almost vanishing beneath a huge sable wrap, at her heels.

Like most fat people, Aunt Marcia was kindliness personified. Though her figure was plump and stumpy, her French often amusingly erratic and permeated by a little Southern drawl, her devotion to the Republic of her birth uncompromising, mainly through sheer good-nature she held an established position in that curious oligarchy known as "Le Tout Paris," or as we might say, "The Upper Ten." And Society, as assembled at the Ritz for tea, warmly acclaimed her on her return. Every five seconds she stopped to let a man kiss her hand, to exchange a greeting with some mondaine or to throw a smile or wave recognition to some acquaintance in the background. Each time she stopped, the diminutive chasseur, blinded by his furry burden, bumped into her.

"There!" said the Marquise, cautiously lowering her bulk into a chair. "Why, Jenny, if that isn't sweet of you to have waited tea for me! Clement, du thé avec du citron pour Mademoiselle et moi. Et des petits fours, n'est-ce pas?"

In a lightning motion the maître d'hôtel bowed and in a flood of swift French dispatched half a dozen waiters flying to execute the order of this honoured guest.

"Well, well, my dear," remarked the Marquise, settling herself down comfortably in her gilt bergère chair, "I love America and I'm surely proud to have been born an American. But there's no doubt about it—I'm nobody there and I'm somebody here. And that's a very gratifying feeling for an old woman as ugly as I am!"

"I never saw anybody like you for inventing excuses for liking Paris," she said.

"And rightly, my dear. I've had a long experience of the world, and I'm quite clear in my own mind that France is the only country where people know how to live. Dearie me, how glad I shall be to get back to my own apartment! Isn't that Lord Dalburnham over there? Wiry, how wizened he's getting to look! And that hussy with him! He's old enough to be her grandfather! Bonjour, Duc!"

A grey-haired man with a red rosette in his button-hole bowed over her hand. The Marquise presented him to Jenny. The girl gave him her hand distractedly. She was wondering about Godfrey. The last train from London got in at nine something. Would he come by that?

"Why!"—Aunt Marcia's voice broke in upon her meditations—"if it isn't Clive Lome!"

The Marquise had put up her lorgnette to look at a blond young man who had stopped at their table, an attractive smile on his youthful face. He had a lissom, well-knit figure, and his morning coat was beautifully cut. The grey silk handkerchief which protruded from the outside pocket matched his carefully knotted tie with its pearl pin.

Aunt Marcia introduced him to Virginia. "His dear mother is one of my oldest friends," she explained.

The boy—he was obviously very young—looked his frank admiration of the girl's exquisite colouring as they shook hands. Her complexion was rose-leaf in texture and her shining hair, the colour of ripe com, admirably set off the perfect serenity of her expression.

"Sit down right there and tell me all about yourself, Clive Lome," commanded Aunt Marcia. "The last time ever I saw you was one fourth of June at Eton. My, if you haven't grown up since then! What are you doing in Paris?"

"I'm on my way back to Vienna," said the boy. "I've just had a fortnight's leave."

At that the girl's interest quickened at once. He might know Godfrey. She resolved to watch for a favourable opportunity to ask him.

"Top-hole, thanks awfully! She's in town for the winter. You ought to pop across and see her, Marquise. She'd be no end bucked if you would..

"Young man," said Aunt Marcia bluntly, "it will take me at least a month of chilly apartments and sulky servants to find out that, after Paris, I like London best. But I've been away for nearly eight months and, for the moment, wild horses wouldn't tear me away from Paris. How are all my London friends? What are Jock Corrington and his wife doing?"

"Anybody who takes as much trouble with his clothes as you do has no business to be a cynic," she said. "Come and dine with me at half-past seven and amuse Virginia," she added abruptly.

"I'd love to," said Clive eagerly, "if I can come in my travelling things. My train goes at ten-forty. I'm only stopping a day in Vienna to collect my traps as they're pushing me down to Budapest for a spell. They're short-handed at the Legation there..."

They had a very well-chosen meal in the Louis Quinze sitting-room of Aunt Marcia's suite. Clive Lome was extraordinarily good company, and, like most English public school products, extremely self-possessed with quite definite opinions on everything. He seemed to know nearly everybody who was anybody in London. Between Aunt Marcia and him scarcely a character escaped unscathed. Aunt Marcia's idea of amusing Virginia was not altogether as altruistic as it had sounded.

But the girl was content to remain with her thoughts. She had left word at the desk that, if any one should ask for her, she was dining upstairs. Her eyes scarcely left the ornate clock on the mantelpiece. How slowly, it seemed to her, the hands crept round! Every time the door opened she looked to see the blue-and-silver uniform of a page. But each time it was the waiter serving them at dinner.

Nine o'clock came.... nine-fifteen.... nine-thirty. The London train must long since be in. But there was no sign of Godfrey. Now she suddenly remembered with a shock that Clive Lome would be leaving soon to catch his train. She must question him about Godfrey. She began to watch for her opportunity....

At last the moment came. It was Aunt Marcia who asked the question ultimately. They had been talking about people in the Foreign Office.

Hoping that neither would notice the flush that crept over her face, Virginia leaned forward to catch the young man's reply. But the Marquise had not finished.

"Such a charming Englishman," she said. "And so talented! They thought very highly of him at Washington, didn't they, Jenny?"

"Yes, I know old Godfrey," Clive replied. "We were at Eton together though, of course, he left long before I did."

Under the white damask of the cloth Virginia FitzGerald twisted her fingers nervously together. What was she going to hear? Her voice seemed to be far away as she said:

"Of course, of course," replied the boy. "Anyhow, they've kept it very dark.... for what reason none of us can make out!"

With maddening deliberation, as it seemed to the girl, he paused to light a fresh cigarette from the stump of the one he had been smoking. She was afraid to speak for the moment. She could not trust her voice. But Aunt Marcia plunged into the breach.

CHAPTER III
The Orient Express

THE Orient Express went rushing through the night. Across the plains, in and out of the valleys, through slumbering towns and villages, it crashed and rattled and thundered, now awakening the echoes as it roared stupendously over iron bridge or culvert, now scaring up the wild game as it sped, a long arrow of yellow light, through the snow-clad forest.

Above the glare of the furnace a shower of sparks trailed out in a fiery wake as the great train, swaying rhythmically on its bogies, tore through the darkness. Comfortably warmed, brilliantly lighted, with its snug beds and soft linen, its well-kept table and choice wines, and its select company of prosperous travellers, it came speeding out of the wealthy West into the pinching poverty of Central Europe.

They had been late—two hours late—in leaving Vienna. The Austrian engine-driver, who had taken over from his German "colleague" at Salzburg, was doing his best to make up for lost time. It was a bitter night. On the heels of three days' snow a thaw had followed, and the air that struck into the engine-driver's cab from the snow-covered slopes fleeing away on either hand was raw and keen as a knife.

But within the train all was warm and cosy. People were settling down for the night. In most of the long sleeping Pullmans the peacock-blue blinds were now drawn. Here and there a porter in his list slippers passed noiselessly down the soft-carpeted corridor, his arms full of blankets and pillows, on his way to make up a bed. The train was very full.

Diplomats returning to their posts; politicians hurrying about the new Europe busy with the internecine squabbles of the little States; officers rejoining the Army of the Black Sea from leave; business men lured in mid-winter from the ease of London, Paris, or New York by the bait of Hungarian ore or Rumanian oil, or by the more shadowy promise of Turkish or Persian concessions; women who left a trace of perfume on the warmed air or showed the gleam of a white arm, the toss of an aigrette, through a compartment door; sallow-faced Greeks, an enigmatic Turk or two—the nationality and profession of this cosmopolitan band of travellers were as varied as the itinerary of the train on its four-day run from Paris to Bucharest.

Little by little, as the numbered kilometre stones beside the track slipped by, the lights were dimmed, sounds of life died away. Now and then, above the rhythmic thumping of the wheels, came a burst of voices, a sudden laugh, the popping of a cork.

Squatting on a battered leather suitcase on the floor of Compartment Nos. 5 and 6, Clive Lome contemplated with obvious satisfaction the glass of bubbling liquid in his hand.

"Here's how!" said he with reverence, raising his glass to his companion who sat on the lower berth facing him.

"Happy days!" came the time-honoured response and they drank in reverent silence.

When Clive placed his glass on the floor at his feet, it was empty. He wiped his lips with his handkerchief.

"By George!" he remarked with feeling, "I wanted that, Euan, old boy! That infernal mix-up at Vienna about my sleeping-berth almost finished me! I thought I was going to be left behind. If I hadn't happened to strike you, I believe I should have been!"

"I can always give a pal a doss down on this train," his friend returned. "Whenever I travel by it this double berth compartment is reserved for me. At Christmas and those sorts of times one wants the space. The bags are pretty heavy about then. I haven't got much of a load to-night. I'll clear some of these off and make room for you. Mind your head!"

With a sweep of the arm he raked from the berth on to the floor a great pile of white and green canvas bags, labelled and sealed up in scarlet wax. He was a small, dapper man with a brown, weather-beaten face, a very fearless, bright blue eye and a humorous mouth. He looked as hard as nails, and one might have well mistaken him for a cavalry officer. His clothes, like his personal luggage, were of good quality, but well-worn. The initials "E. McT," inscribed on his battered suitcases stood for Euan MacTavish, known in most of the capitals of Europe as King's Messenger and a great character. He spent three fourths of the year in trains and, as he used to say, his home was where he put his kit-bag down.

"Funny meeting you like this," remarked Clive, stretching out his long legs. "We were talking about you only the other night!"

"The Marquise de Kerouzan and I. You remember her. She's a dam' good sort. I was dining with her at the Ritz on Monday evening before I got on the train for Vienna. She had a devilish pretty niece with her, a Miss Virginia FitzGerald. Have you met her?"

"My dear old chap," observed MacTavish dryly, "in this infernal life of mine my female acquaintanceship seems to be restricted to ambassadresses, chambermaids, and occasional houris—mostly elderly and obese Germans—at night restaurants!" Clive Lome laughed.

"You're a caution, Euan," he retorted, "you and your houris! I bet you've got a wife in every capital on your round, you old devil! But this FitzGerald girl is an absolute topper, a lovely creature. By the way, Euan," he reflectively added, "you know everything—this girl was asking me about Godfrey Cairsdale. She seemed rather interested in him. What is at the back of his remarkable disappearance, do you know?"

From under his shaggy eyebrows the King's Messenger shot a sharp glance at the boy's disingenuous face.

"He's merely on leave, I understand!" he answered. But there was a tentative note in his voice.

"Because," Clive replied, "if he had gone on leave Godfrey would have had the common decency to write to Aunt Susan—Lady Preston, you know—and tell her he couldn't dine at her house on New Year's Eve. He left her with thirteen at table and a girl too many and the Lord knows what else. Aunt Susan was frightfully shirty. Besides, if he's on leave, the Office don't know anything about it!"

"Don't they, by Jove!" blandly remarked MacTavish. He picked up a heavy gun-metal hunting-flask which lay on the folding table.

"We get to Buda at some unearthly hour," he said. "I shall never be able to get up in the morning if I start soaking whisky...."

With careful deliberation the King's Messenger measured himself out three fingers.

"Cheery spot," commented MacTavish, reaching for a bottle of Teinacher water, of which, as an experienced traveller, he had laid in a stock at Stuttgart, "good horses and dam' fine women. Funny, how the two always go together! There's great shootin' in Hungary, too! Let's see! You're handy with a gun ain't you?"

"You toddle along to the National Casino; that's their swagger club—sort of Turf and White's rolled into one—and ask for Count Hector Aranyi. He's a thunderin' good chap, a great sportsman and rather a pal o' mine—or used to be, before the late unpleasantness. He's got some deuced good shootin'—his place is somewhere about where we shall be passing presently, between Buda and the new Czecho-Slovak frontier. He lives like a king—huge park, family retainers, regular palace! Mind you look him up. He'll do you A1!"

After a pause he added: "To get back to Godfrey Cairsdale, Euan: can you imagine why he should want to go off like this? Do you think he's got into a mess?"

"That doesn't sound a bit like old Godfrey," he replied. "Look here, young Clive, you're just starting in diplomacy, ain't you? Well, here's a tip from an old 'un. It ain't mine; but it's a bit of sound advice that a wise old bird once gave my defunct Guv'nor. 'In diplomacy,' he said—he was an ambassador with over thirty years' service—'in diplomacy never ask a question unless you're sure there's goin' to be an answer!' And now I'm for peeps!"

And, as if to elucidate his nursery allegory, the King's Messenger proceeded to remove his coat.

Clive Lome seemed rather bowled over by this oracular enunciation. He remained silent for a spell. Then he said slowly:

"But, look here, Euan, I promised this Miss FitzGerald I'd make some enquiries about old Godfrey for her. What am I to tell her?"

"Oh, tell her he's gone fishin'!" retorted MacTavish, with his dry chuckle. He seemed rather pleased with his answer, for he repeated to himself, "gone fishin'," several times with evident appreciation.

"Now isn't that jolly!" said Euan very sarcastically. "And who the devil's Vali?"

"She's just a girl I know. I met her in Venice last month. I ran into her again on the platform at Vienna to-night and asked her to look in on me for a drink before she went to bed. She's on her way to Hungary.... a jolly good sort; you'll like her!"

Before Euan MacTavish could frame the rather voluble comment which rose to his lips, the compartment door was noiselessly pulled back. Under the dimmed lamp in the swaying corridor a tall, slim girl stood. Her hair, like her eyes, was raven black and her small red mouth pouted deliciously. Her heavy fur coat, loosely slung about her, revealed a trim, well-shaped figure in a neat white blouse and travelling skirt of serge.

"Vali!" cried Clive joyously. Taking her two hands, he drew her into the compartment. He was about to close the door again when the girl, with an imperious gesture, stopped him.

"It is not—how do you say?—convenable to be shut in at one o'clock in the morning with two men. But I could not find you before, Mr. Clive. Now I stay only for two minutes—because I promised to come!"

With very charming dignity the girl stretched out her hand. The poised grace of all her actions was very marked.

"I'm delighted to see you, Madame la Baronne," said Euan. "Will you have a drink? I'm afraid there's only whiskey!"

The girl rejected the offer, but asked for a cigarette, which MacTavish produced.

"You'll have to sit on my knee, Frau Baronin," cried Clive from his perch on the suitcase, "there's nowhere else!"

MacTavish slung a stack of red-sealed valises on the floor. To assist, the girl laid her hand on a worn brown leather pouch that lay on the bed resting against MacTavish's thigh.

"No," said the King's Messenger, gently but firmly, removing the small hand, "I'll keep that!"

The girl sat down on the bed. MacTavish quietly removed the pouch to his other side.

"That will give you more room!" he said. Vali, who had been peering about like a little bird among the various bags, clapped her hands and exclaimed:

"You are a Government Messenger, hem? like the Feldjäger who used to travel with dispatches for our King?"

"You call me always 'Baronin," she said. "But he... he has eyes. He calls me 'Madame la Baronne.' MacTavish gave his dry laugh.

"I knew you were Hungarian by your colouring," he explained. "And when you spoke of 'our King'..."

"Are you, by Jove!" observed Clive from the floor. "And I always took you for a Viennese!"

"Ah, ça non!" she cried. "I am Magyar"—she struck her breast in a gesture of infinite majesty without, as it seemed to MacTavish, anything of the theatrical in it—"to the heart!"

As she lifted her white and rounded arm the wide sleeve of her blouse fell open displaying a long and puckered scar above the wrist. Shivering a little, as though the night air were beginning to strike chill, she gathered her fur coat about her shoulders and rose to her feet.

"I leave you now, my friends," she said. "Mr. Clive, when I come to Budapest..."

"No. I stay with friends, near Hacz. I leave the train soon—at Szob, at the frontier. B-r-r! What a night, hein? for a drive! When I come to Buda I send you a little word to the Legation!"

"Splendid!" vociferated Clive. "We'll go to dinner at the Hungaria and hear that gipsy fellow what's-his-name play!"

"Good-night!" she said, and let her burning black eyes rest for an instant on his rugged face. "Good-night.... and bon voyage!"

With a little laugh, an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, she moved to the door. Her red lips, just parted, showed her white, even teeth. There was something of the sinuous vitality of a panther in her movements.

"Do not disturb yourself, Mr. Clive," she bade him. "I am only a little way from you—see, it is here, the last compartment, at the end of the wagon!"

Nevertheless, he followed her along the rocking corridor as far as her door. There she turned and offered her hand. It was warm and soft, and, thrilling to her touch, passionately he sought to draw her to him. But she was too quick. With her free hand behind her she had pressed down the handle of the door and now, with a little laugh, she slipped inside, there was the snap of the lock and Clive was left with his face to the glass panel.

"Well, Til be damned!" ruefully remarked the young man. But he turned and slowly retraced his steps to his compartment.

"It's as cold as a money-lender's heart in here!" came a muffled voice from the top berth. "Shut that blinkin' door, Clive, for the love o' Mike!"

"I'm just thinkin' about her, old boy. There's something about her that sort of lifts her above the common run of Hungarian women. All Hungarian women are chic and fesch and that kind o' thing. But, damme, this girl's got poise and-and dignity. Where did you say you met her?"

"Funny," said MacTavish, yawning prodigiously, "I can't help thinkin' I've seen her before somewhere.... yes, put out the light when you like. I should turn it to 'dim'."

There was a click and the light went ut. In place of it a tiny blue bulb from the lamp in the roof threw an eerie glow over the two men in their bunks and the luggage and dispatch bags oscillating on the floor.

CHAPTER IV
Kilometre 224

CLIVE awoke suddenly. He was dimly conscious of a feeling of considerable discomfort. Slowly he opened his eyes. They encountered only a black mass that seemed to press down upon him—the upper berth. All about him resounded the jarring, rattling, bumping of the train, to which accompaniment he had fallen asleep; but, as he listened, it seemed to him that its steady rhythm had, somehow, altered its beat. The thumping of the wheels was now more spaced out and a long, quivering, grinding sensation made itself felt and heard simultaneously. The train was slowing down.

How cold it was in the carriage! Shivering, Clive drew the bedclothes about him. He shrank before the icy breeze that played upon his face. By the eerie light of the blue glass bulb glimmering in the lamp in the carriage roof he could see his breath hang like smoke in the chilled atmosphere. With a shrugging movement of the shoulders he turned over in the narrow limits of his bunk. Damnation! How freezing the air was!

Presently an irregular banging sound forced itself upon his sleepy senses. For a little while he struggled, as one does when only half awake, against the inevitable. Then at last he sat up with a jerk, receiving that smart crack on the head which is the prerogative of the occupant of the lower berth. He swore blindly to himself as, one hand pressed against his aching brow, he forced himself to realize that the door was open and swinging free and that, till it was closed, there would be no further sleep for him that night.

He had lain down in vest, trousers, and socks. He put up an unwilling hand, found the button and switched on the lamp from dim to bright. Lazily he dropped his feet to the floor and had taken a pace towards the door when he stopped in surprise.

The compartment looked just as Clive had left it when he had gone to bed. There were his clothes swaying gently to and fro on their hooks on the lavatory door, there in the racks was their luggage, and there—he duly noted—in the corner, Euan's red-sealed dispatch bags lay. Euan, the boy decided, must have waked, as he had done, chilled to the bone, and had gone off to row the contrôleur about the heating.

But now, with long-drawn-out tormented groans, as steam and compressed air hissed out of the brakes, with a grinding of wheels and rocking of bogies, the train had come to a halt. Clive stood still and listened. All manner of little subsidiary noises made themselves heard as though, like a runner that falls prone and panting at the goal, the Orient Express were relaxing itself in every limb after its long dash through the night. From the corridor a glacial draught struck into the compartment as though a window or door were open. Clive went outside and looked up and down. There was no sign of Euan and no human sound was audible. The young man returned to the compartment and shut the door.

He looked at his wrist watch. It was a quarter-past four. He sat down at the end of his bunk, raised the blind, and tried to peer out of the window. He wondered where they had arrived. But the pane was opaque with an intricate pattern of frost crystals. He tugged at the strap and let the window down.

He found himself looking out at close range upon the majestic winter landscape. There was nothing like a station visible anywhere. The train seemed to have stopped in the midst of a pine forest. Immediately in front of the window, illuminated by the light at his back, a low flat-faced stone was set up, bearing in white paint against a black background the numerals "224." Clive knew it to be one of the kilometre stones that mark the railway line from Vienna to Budapest.

All around them was the solemn silence of a winter's night. The trees, glittering from crest to base in their shining mantles of hoar frost, grew to within a few paces of the railway metals. Between the forest marge and the train there was a thick carpet of snow. Clive could see where the steam escaping from the pressure brakes had driven long black fingers into the white surface.

To his nostrils rose clearly the air of the forest, icy cold, impregnated faintly with odours of resin, of damp leaves, of moss, an eager and a nipping air that made him catch his breath. There was no moon. The shimmering white trees in the foreground and all the dark mass of woods behind seemed to stir restlessly beneath the softer breath of the thaw, their branches dripping with a tinkling sound or trembling gently beneath the weight of the frost.

Shivering in his thin silken undervest, Clive was about to shut the window when a noise farther down the train caught his ear. Some one was tugging at a glass. The young man thrust out his head. A dozen paces down the train, about where the end door of the Pullman would be, he dimly descried a figure standing in the snow between the forest and the train, a vague silhouette terminating in some kind of peaked headdress, probably a fur cap. At that moment, protestingly, the heavy train began to move forward once more. In the same instant Clive saw the figure beside the train shoot forth a hand, holding a letter or a paper towards the window opposite him. Almost simultaneously a dark object fell from the train at the stranger's feet.

Clive saw it bulk black against the snow as it rolled upon the ground, saw the figure stoop, then straighten up to face the train. As the train, gliding, with gathering speed, into its stride, brought Clive, peering from his compartment, level with the stranger, the beam of light from Clive's carriage fell, for an instant, on the face of the unknown.

He had only had the briefest glimpse; but it was sufficient. He would know Godfrey Cairsdale anywhere. For that one fleeting instant he had seen him clearly, beyond possibility of mistake. He wore a high-peaked Russian cap of black fur, one of those short heavy pea-jackets, fur-lined and with a fur collar which men wear on winter shooting excursions in Austria and Russia, and top-boots. His face was rather drawn and set; but in his eyes there was that fearless, laughing light which gave his face one of its most distinctive features.

Clive Lome was no fool. He had gathered two things clearly enough from his brief conversation with Euan MacTavish about Godfrey Cairsdale: first, that MacTavish knew a great deal more than he was willing to admit about Cairsdale's disappearance; and, second, that MacTavish intended to keep his own counsel on the subject.

Who had received the letter which Cairsdale had handed up to the train? Obviously MacTavish, who was, probably, even now at the door at the end of the corridor. Who had dropped the package out to Cairsdale? Obviously again, MacTavish, who had brought it from London for him. But what, in the name of everything, was Godfrey Cairsdale doing in a Hungarian forest at dead of night in the depth of winter? How had he got there and where did he live?

Clive Lome shook his head dubiously. The whole thing was beyond him. What would that pretty Virginia FitzGerald say when she heard his story? From her conversation he had rather gathered that she was expecting to meet old Godfrey in Paris. Pretty poor taste on his part to prefer rampaging round Hungarian forests at midnight to entertaining a girl like Virginia FitzGerald at the Ritz!

"Well," he said to himself, "old Euan can have his blooming secrets! They won't keep me out of bed for another minute!"

There came the quick patter of feet, the rustling of whispers from the corridor. Clive looked up. Just outside the door a voice said in low tones, but quite distinctly:

Clive stood up abruptly. A sudden premonition of evil overwhelmed him. Swiftly he plucked the door open. A conductor stood there with a lantern. The man's face was pale and distressed.

Clive snatched his overcoat from its hook, and, scrambling into it, pushed past the man and strode rapidly along the corridor. Instinctively he went towards the end of the Pullman whence the package had been flung to Godfrey Cairsdale. A blast of cold air blew down the passage. The train was roaring through the night and Clive was flung from side to side as he groped his way forward. . And then he came to a dead stop. Two uniform attendants were bending down over something on the floor. Just beyond, the end door of the Pullman banged and crashed wildly. As Clive came up, the two men rose. Then he saw what their forms had concealed. At their feet, motionless on his face, lay Euan MacTavish.

CHAPTER V
Virginia Comes Into The War

VIRGINIA FITZGERALD had been a week in Paris when Clive Lome's letter to her from Budapest arrived. Aunt Marcia had moved into her apartment; but Virginia, rather to that lady's chagrin, had declined to leave the Ritz. She was not sorry to be rid for a while of the rather boisterous atmosphere of masseuses and milliners, coiffeurs and chiropodists, in which Madame de Kerouzan delighted to live. She excused herself, therefore, on the plea that she might very shortly be going over to London.

Such had been, in effect, her intention immediately after their dinner with Clive Lome. His disclosure about Godfrey had disquieted her, and the brief conversation she had managed to have with him in the hall of the hotel before he left to catch his train had only added to her bewilderment.

Godfrey Cairsdale, Lome said, had come over from Budapest about the beginning of December. After his arrival in London it had become known among the young men at the Foreign Office that he was not returning to his post in Hungary. Godfrey had called several times at the office; as far as Lome knew, he had last been seen there on December 31st.

On New Year's Day, the morning after Godfrey's unexplained absence had played such havoc with Lady Preston's dinner-party, Clive rang him up at his rooms. Mr. Cairsdale, the valet reported, had gone away on the previous afternoon without leaving any address. The man disclaimed all knowledge of Mr. Cairsdale's whereabouts. He had packed a suitcase for Mr. Cairsdale and put it on a taxi, and that was all he knew about it.

Rather mystified, Clive dropped in on Godfrey's elder brother, the Earl of Stratfield, at Buck's Club. But Jack Stratfield was equally vague as to his brother's movements. He and Godfrey had dined together at Ciro's a few nights before, and Godfrey, who was in perfectly good spirits, had said nothing about going away. On the contrary, he had appeared to believe he would be in London for some time.

Thoroughly puzzled now, Clive tried the Foreign Office. He drew blank again. Godfrey's immediate colleagues, like the people in the Central Europe department, which handles Hungarian affairs, knew nothing of his having left London. In any case he had notified no change of address, which he would certainly have done if he had left town.

"I was pretty well stumped by this," Lome had told her, "but, as an off chance, I thought I would put the question to Felix Denzill—he's a cousin of the Mater's, you know, and one of the Under-Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, rather a big pot. I had intended to go and see him, anyway, to say good-bye before returning to Vienna, so I asked the office-keeper to take in my name.

"I was shown in at once. Old Felix had a visitor with him, a big, broad-shouldered fellow who looked rather like a naval officer in plain clothes. He didn't introduce me, and the stranger wandered over to the window and looked out into the Park while we talked. Felix asked about the family and so forth. When Aunt Susan's name cropped up, I told him how old Godfrey had let her down.

"I seemed to notice that he sat back a bit when I mentioned Godfrey's name. So I put my question to him point-blank:

"Then I noticed that the big man in the window had pricked up his ears. Instead of answering my question, Felix Denzill sings out across the room to his pal:

"'But look here,' I said, 'he's not on leave!' That riled the pair of 'em a bit, and they started sort of scrapping about it.

"'I told you it wouldn't wash,' says Felix. 'This place is a regular sounding-board. You've got to give some explanation. And stick to it!'

"'Cairsdale has had to leave London,' Felix said, when his visitor had gone, 'for—er, ahem—private reasons. And I suggest to you, Clive, that the less you discuss him with your friends the better it will be.'

"And not another blessed word," Clive wound up his story, "could I get out of him. On leaving his room, however, I asked the messenger who the fellow was who had been with Sir Felix. The man looked a bit uncomfortable and then said something about he' didn't rightly know.' He was lying, of course; but I wondered why he had been ordered to keep the identity of a visitor a secret..."

Virginia would have best liked to start for London on the spot to endeavour to tear aside herself tins web of mystery woven about Godfrey's disappearance. She could see, too, that Clive had a vague suspicion in his mind, though he was too well-bred to voice it to her, that some scrape lay at the root of Godfrey's surreptitious departure.

But, as the French say, night brings counsel, and on the following morning Virginia's practical good sense flatly rejected this plan of going to London to make investigations on her own account.

A stranger and a woman at that, she would, she knew, have no earthly chance against the conspiracy of official silence surrounding Godfrey's movements. At any rate for the present, she must contain her soul in patience and wait. In Clive Lome she had at least secured an ally, and at Budapest, which had been Godfrey's last post, information might be forthcoming to account for his inexplicable failure to keep his appointment with her.

Now, as she sat in the lounge at the Ritz and read Clive's letter, she felt glad that she had waited. For the letter with its extraordinary account of Clive's recognition of Godfrey Cairsdale on the railway at Kilometre 224 gave her her cue for action, that action for which her soul pined.

"There's only one thing more," Clive wrote in conclusion in his boyish, unformed hand, "and that is to ask you to keep this to yourself. Strictly speaking, I have no business to write to you anything about it. But I promised to let you know if I had any news of old Godfrey. The whole thing has been hushed up in the most extraordinary fashion. They have managed to keep it out of the newspapers, too. MacTavish, whom I went to see in hospital here, declares I dreamt the whole thing about seeing Godfrey. He says he only went to the door of the train to get a mouthful of air and was suddenly struck down from behind.

"He thinks it was one of these train robbers one reads about. The fellow, he says, must have been interrupted by the arrival of the guard, for, MacT. says, nothing of his was taken. He lost a lot of blood, but really had a miraculous escape, for the point of the knife was turned by the metal work of his braces and the wound is not serious. I was sent for by the chargé d'affaires—the Minister is not here—and threatened with the most frightful penalties if I breathed a word to a soul. So I hope you won't give me away. Let me know if there's anything more I can do...."

It was curious, but her sensation on reading Clive's letter was one of relief. Only now did she realize how Godfrey's inexplicable silence had preyed upon her mind. But here, at least, she was faced with a concrete situation. For, though Clive scrupulously refrained from drawing any conclusions from the curious story he had set forth, the hand of the British Secret Service was plainly evident to her in the mission which had carried Godfrey away from the haunts of civilization. But then Lome was hardly more than a boy. He had grown to manhood in post-Armistice days. She could understand that to him and all his generation Secret Service was no longer a tangible reality, but merely a romantic legend of those four historic years.

She herself, she realized, though in the four years that had elapsed since her twenty-first birthday sue had been immersed in foreign politics, felt strangely out of her depth in the murky waters which Clive's story disclosed. Two years of the staid respectability of Washington, of America's smoothly running civilization and unemotional politics, had dimmed her vision of Europe. She had forgotten, she told herself, the perpetual surge of warring nationalities within the narrow confines of the European continent. It came almost as a shock to her to be reminded that if war had been banished from the face of the earth, it was only to smoulder the more fiercely in the hearts of the peoples.

A little furrow of perplexity appeared in her smooth white forehead. Godfrey was on a dangerous mission. That much was clear to her. She made no doubt that the object of the attack on MacTavish had been to obtain possession of the letter which Clive had seen Godfrey hand up to the train. In all the circumstances of the case, she decided, there could be no other plausible motive for this swift, murderous assault. And the importance of this document, whatever it might be, was shown in the circumstance that it had all but cost the King's Messenger his life.

But why had MacTavish and not Godfrey been attacked? Obviously because they suspected, but could not definitely locate, Godfrey's presence. She put it to herself in this way. The enemy organization had discovered that a secret agent was sending out reports from some point on the itinerary of the Orient Express. In such a case it would clearly be simpler to concentrate the investigation on the train rather than on the extensive area it traversed. In other words, the recipient must first be discovered before the sender could be identified. And in due course the investigation had been narrowed down to MacTavish who had been shadowed throughout the journey.

Had MacTavish been robbed of the report? With a little pang she realized that the point was immaterial. If her reasoning were correct, the enemy organization was more concerned to identify the agent than to intercept one specific report. And the incident at Kilometre 224 had told them what they wanted to know. It had definitely located the activity of a British secret agent in this particular neighbourhood. Godfrey was then in imminent peril...

She looked again at the date of Clive's letter. He had written on the morning of his arrival in Budapest—January 8th—and forwarded the letter by the diplomatic valise to Paris. And this was the 13th. For five days, then, the secret of Godfrey's identity had almost certainly been known to the enemy, a secret which his own Government had been at such extraordinary pains to maintain inviolate.

Virginia rose quickly to her feet, slim, straight-limbed, and lissom in her plain, fawn tailor-made. She must act and act at once. But how? She realized very clearly that she stood on the threshold of a secret shared by only a very few; that if she sought to penetrate farther, she would probably do so at her own peril. On the other hand, she might let things rest where they were and wait for Godfrey to come to her.

But a phrase in Clive's letter haunted her: "Poor old Godfrey looked a bit under the weather, sort of haggard and hunted, don't you know?" he had written in his loose, graphic way. She had a vivid mental picture of Godfrey turning away from the lighted train to the snowy stillness of the forest. To face what?

No! She could not remain inactive while he was in danger. He might resent her action, but she would risk that. And at the unromantic hour of ten on a sunny winter's morning, in the prosaic surroundings of a modern hotel lounge, revelation came to Virginia FitzGerald. She knew that she loved her Englishman, and that the unseen force which was driving her to follow him into danger sprang from her instinct to share his life.

"This," she said to herself, and crossed briskly to the reception desk, "is where Virginia comes into the war!"

Within three minutes Virginia had the hotel staff moving. There were endless difficulties in the way of obtaining the requisite passport visas for a journey to Budapest; she required that her passport should be in order by 4 p.m. that day. The Orient Express, which runs only tri-weekly, had been booked up for weeks in advance; she announced her intention of boarding the train at the Gare de l'Est at seven-forty-five that evening. And because her mind was made up and because she was a woman, and a very attractive one at that, the French genius for improvisation asserted itself, the impossible was accomplished, and shortly before eight o'clock that evening she sat and watched the spluttering arc-lamps of the Gare de l'Est slide by as the great train thumped over the viaducts above the busy Paris streets.

She had wired to Clive to meet her at Budapest. She had feared to face Aunt Marcia, so had posted her a letter before starting, telling the Marquise that she was going to Hungary "for a change" and asking her to forward letters to her at the American Legation. She had long since established complete independence of movement vis-a-vis Aunt Marcia; but she did not wish to stand cross-examination as to the motives for her sudden decision.

For half an hour that afternoon, at the Wagons-Lits offices on the Boulevard des Italiens, her golden head might have been seen in close proximity with the dark poll of an attentive clerk as they pored over the railway maps of Europe. She had learnt little or nothing about Kilometre 224 save that it lay in the forest between Szob, the frontier station, and Hacz, and that the train made a momentary halt there to allow a local express to pass at a crossing ahead. It was easy to identify the spot, she was told; it was the first stop after the train left the frontier station.

With eager anticipation she awaited the coming of the second night after their departure from Paris. She told herself she would hope for nothing lest she might be disappointed. In the restaurant car she carefully scrutinized the faces of her fellow-travellers to see if she might identify anybody who might possibly be a King's Messenger. Only one man, she decided, might answer to the description; but her hopes were dashed when she heard him describing to a companion a business trip he had paid to some glass-works in Belgium.

Szob, with its naked platforms and hissing arcs, found her nervously impatient at the long halt for customs formalities. When at length the train pulled out into the darkness, she posted herself at the end door of the Pullman, on the right hand of the train from which side Clive Lome had seen Godfrey. Even before the train had begun to slow down, she had lowered the window, peering forth over the whitened countryside.

The moon shone coldly out of a clear sky. As the train drew up, the belt of forest in which it halted lay spread out before her almost as bright as day. No human figure was discernible in the narrow corridor that lay between the train and the trees. She looked to right and left. If any messenger were waiting for Godfrey, he gave no sign. She seemed to be alone in her watch.

She strained her ears, her eyes, for a sound, for a movement. But nothing broke the peace of the night; and the vista of snow gleaming white between the dark tree-trunks remained undisturbed. Then, from the wheels beneath where she stood, a brake sighed with a rush of steam; the noise was repeated the length of the train; there was a little quivering movement along the corridor and she knew her journey was being resumed. Slowly she regained her compartment.

CHAPTER VI
The Strange Mission Of Godfrey Cairsdale

GODFREY CAIRSDALE stepped briskly out of the shadow of the living-room into the dazzling sunshine of the veranda. In the early morning hours a sharp frost had succeeded to the thaw of the previous days, and all around him the forest, gleaming white beneath a deep blue sky, sparkled in the noonday sun.

The air was exhilarating. He inhaled deeply, standing with arms outstretched at the veranda rail, looking out along the glittering vista of forest track that ran from his front door away to the serried ranks of pines marking the horizon. After the strain and fatigue of the night, the eager breath of morning had a tonic effect on his nerves.

It had been close on five o'clock, in the icy, impenetrable blackness of the winter morning, that, over the crackling ruts of the forest ride, he had painfully made his way back from Kilometre 224 to the villa. Thank the Lord, for nine days he would have respite from these cross-country journeys to the railway. It was Thursday morning. Not for more than a week would he have to fare forth again to the forest clearing to await the passing of the Orient Express.

He was in holiday mood on this invigorating morning. He felt and looked in the very pink of condition. For a week he had lived in the heart of the forest, out of doors all day, either working at the Roman remains with Dr. Nagy, the archaeologist from Hacz, the neighbouring town, or taking long tramps through the forest between the villa and Schloss Kés, or, with axe and billhook, helping Milos, his Hungarian servant, to fell and split the wood for the fire.

His eyes and skin were clear, and under his khaki shirt, collarless and open at the neck, his muscles were hard and firm. Not even the gnawing anxiety winch had been his inseparable companion since that memorable interview in London on New Year's Eve could interfere with his growing sense of intense physical fitness. He seemed to have sloughed away, as a snake discards its skin, the grossness of city life, the stuffy atmosphere of the Foreign Office, the club; his nerves had grown steadier as he found when at dusk he prowled silently about the park of Schloss Kés, studying the ground, planning for the ordeal that stood before or stole away after nightfall to his secret rendezvous with Max Rubis.

Cairsdale turned to reenter the house. Old Milos, with his wizened face and grizzled head, wearing the frogged jacket and top-boots of the Hungarian peasant, smiled a toothless "Good-morning" as the young man stepped from the veranda into the living-room. It was a long, rather dark apartment, the walls roughly wattled over the heavy logs of which the two-room villa was built. Its furnishings were of the most exiguous.

There were no pictures. A few antlers, roughly mounted, each inscribed with a date, a huge boar's head affixed to an oak board, and a stuffed fox, in a glass case hung above the fireplace, were the only decorations. The furniture, cheap white wood stuff from Vienna, and a few basket chairs, was scanty. Skins of a bear, of wolves and foxes were laid here and there about the rough deal floor. The bedroom, to which a curtained door gave access, contained nothing but a bed, a chair and a table. Though in the neighbourhood the shack was known as "the villa," it was more like a small shooting-box, a mere shelter which at most could provide a rough shake-down for a few guns wishing to make an early start after game.

In the open hearth of the living-room a great fire of logs hissed and spluttered. There was an agreeable odour of burning resin. Before the fire on a small round table spread with a red-and-white cloth, breakfast was laid—eggs, white bread and butter, coffee, marmalade. On a corner of the table stood the battered brown leather pouch which, but a few hours since, had dropped at Godfrey Cairsdale's feet from the Orient Express.

Godfrey picked up the wallet and unceremoniously emptied its contents on the floor.

"So, Milós," he said to the old man, "your stores for the week!"—he stopped and began handing up a number of packages—"coffee, tea, sugar, biscuits, bacon, marmalade. Cigars!—those are for me, And here! Some tobacco for you!"

Mumbling his thanks, his arms laden, the old man retired with the supplies while Godfrey sat down to breakfast. There was a bundle of newspapers in the pouch and he glanced through them in leisurely fashion as he made his meal. When he had finished, he took from the table a tin of tobacco and, having filled his pipe, proceeded to light it with a pine splinter from the fire. Then, with his long legs stretched out to the blaze, he sat and smoked awhile in reflective silence.

Presently he rose, and from the inner pocket of his short fur coat, which hung over the back of a chair, he drew a thin slip of paper. With clouded face, for the twentieth time since at dawn he had first unearthed it from its hiding-place in the tin of John Cotton at his elbow, he read the message, the message which the Orient Express had brought.

This much was typewritten. Cryptic enough to the uninitiated, it did not apparently mystify Cairsdale. It was to an addition written in by hand at the foot of the message that he devoted his attention.

But it was enough for the lover. It was the first tidings Godfrey had had of Virginia FitzGerald since her cable of December 30th, announcing her departure next day for Europe, had sent him into a paroxysm of joy. He puffed at his pipe and scrutinized the paper. The writing was unfamiliar. To what kindly hand did he owe those few scrawled words? That there was some one who would do as much for Jenny! To think that not even yet did she know why he had failed to keep their solemn tryst in Paris on January 5th!

He turned his thoughts back to that extraordinary interview at the Foreign Office to which a telephone message had unexpectedly summoned him on New Year's Eve. He would never forget it. By shutting his eyes he could visualize so clearly every detail of the Under-Secretary's room, the great mahogany desk with its pile of crimson dispatch-boxes, the tall windows overlooking the foggy Park, the array of reference books on the mantelpiece above the blazing fire.

Sir Felix Denzill had a visitor, a burly, cleanshaven man with an odd suggestion of the sea about him, whose keen eyes, firm mouth, and incisive way of talking proclaimed the habit of command.

"This is Cairsdale," was the rather informal introduction of Sir Felix who, usually the pattern of convention, omitted to name his big man, nodding, gave Godfrey his speak.

"There's somethin' brewin' in Hungary," he began, settling himself back in his chair. "Just what it is we don't know—yet. It's a movement working up to some kind of a military outbreak so much seems to be clear; and when it comes, it'll be a big 'un. The fact that the notorious Colonel Trommel is mixed up in it is sufficient guarantee of that.

"A castle in Hungary—Kés, it's called; it belongs to a Count Gellert, near Hacz, on the main line from Vienna to Budapest, not far from the Czecho-Slovak frontier, seems to be the head-quarters of the movement. At least all the threads back there. There are three heads, symbolized by the three of clubs...."

"The three of clubs no less," rejoined the big man. "It is by means of this card, apparently, that the warning orders are sent out to the different groups of the organization. Five days ago our agents in Berlin, Brussels, Berne, Monte Carlo, Milan "—he ticked the names off on his fingers—"and one or two less important places which, for the moment, I don't remember, began reporting that men known to be prominently involved in this plot had suddenly departed for such storm-centres of militarism as Munich, Stuttgart, and Budapest. And in four cases they are known to have had warning by means of a three of clubs surreptitiously passed to them..."

"But surely," Godfrey observed, "if these men are known to you, you could easily have them laid by the heels...."

"The same idea roughly," rejoined the big man blandly, "occurred simultaneously to every one of my agents. But it won't do, young fellow. It's too soon to move. We aren't in deep enough yet. If we ran the net out now, we should fish up only the small fry—the big chaps farther out would get away. I'm after the heads! And you've got to fix 'em for me!"

Godfrey raised his eyebrows. This very positive person was, he thought, assuming a great deal.

"What I like about your young man, Denzill," he remarked, "is that he goes straight to the point. Two of the leaders," he went on, addressing Godfrey, "are known to us. One is Colonel Trommel, a dyed-in-the-wool, copper-bottom, Al at Lloyd's, honest-to-goodness Hun, a tip-top staff officer, who, if the war had lasted another year or two, would have put it across Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the whole bunch. He's so packed full of brains and pep that the Almighty when He made him couldn't find room for a drop of the milk of human kindness. You see the man I'm try in' to describe? Good. Another is von Bartzen, an Austrian, clever devil, a bit knock-kneed when he's up against it like all the dear Austrians, but not to be sneezed at all the same. Altogether an excellent chap. The women were crazy about him when he was military attache in London and afterwards in Washington. Trommel and he are now hobnobbin' at Munich. Oh, yes, we've taped them all right. But now"—the big man's manner grew impressive—" above these two there is a third, the top dog, the number one joss, the big noise. Everything is referred to him; no step is taken without reference to him.

"Now listen to me! This business is working up to a head. I understand they're callin' a final meetin' of the Three Clubs, as they are known to my young men, at Castle Kés about the middle of this month. Trommel will be there; von Bartzen will be there; and I am assumin' that Number Three will be there, too. At this meetin' the cards will be on the table. Operation orders will be submitted, the date and detail of the coup fixed, and—very important this—the identity of the great panjandrum disclosed. D'you see the little idea?"

"I think so," said Godfrey. "You want me to get you this information, I take it?"

"It won't be so hard as you think. We have an agent at Kés, the bailiff, a Jew, Max Rubis, his name is. His usefulness will be limited. He can only let you know who comes and goes. But you'll find the 'cover' we're arranging for you quite adequate. A certain learned society in this country has arranged with the curator of the archaeological museum at Hacz to send out an English savant who, in consideration of certain much-needed funds he will provide for continuing the excavations, will be permitted to collaborate with this curator fellow—Dr. Nagy his name is—in the work. A villa has been taken for you and a servant engaged. All you will have to do will be to receive and forward Rubis's reports from Kés and instruct him from time to time as to certain points we shall want him to clear up...."

"We try to!" he said. Then he had gone on to explain the method of communication he contrived. The telegraph from Hungary, even in conventional code, was out of the question as being hopelessly unreliable. But three times a week the Orient Express, on its way down to Budapest, halted for a minute or two at Kilometre 224, which was only a mile or so from the villa where Godfrey would lodge. The King's Messenger, who travelled roughly once a week by the train, would be instructed to keep a sharp lookout at the halting-place for any sign of a message to be handed up. Communications for Godfrey would come by the same channel, but, to lessen the risk, the big man explained, he would always let Godfrey know when he had to meet the train. An emergency route for sending and receiving news would also be arranged.

Godfrey was to leave that night and was to say nothing of his mission to any one. He must simply disappear. Godfrey, with some hesitation, mentioned "urgent private affairs" which would call him to Paris on January 5th. If he might send a note explaining that he was away on official business?

"No!" said the big man in a tone that admitted no contradiction. "You're taking on a mighty dangerous job, young fellow, and absolute secrecy is your only safeguard. I'd take no responsibility for your coming out of Hungary alive if I thought this secret were to pass beyond the four walls of this room. If you can't accept the job on my terms, Mr. Cairsdale, say so at once and I'll try to find somebody else. But," he added, and his face softened. "I've got a notion that you're the man for me!"

There was a forceful persuasiveness about the stranger which would not be gainsaid. Godfrey had accepted the condition, he would have been puzzled to say why. No one, not even his immediate chiefs at the Foreign Office, were to be told of his whereabouts. It would not be a long business, the big man told him, when, later in the day, Godfrey and he were lunching at the Senior and discussing the final details of the mission: he must be prepared to be away for a fortnight—for three weeks at the outside.

This was January 8th. He had left London on the last day of the year; therefore, at the latest, by January 21st, or in thirteen days' time, he would be free, free to hasten to his Jenny.

But what must she think of him? What must she be thinking? More even than the unceasing watchfulness which his mission exacted, the perpetual vigilance against a false step, the thought of Virginia looking in vain for his coming weighed him down. He glanced at the little gold ring on his finger—her ring. "In Fay the" was its motto. Did Virginia care enough to live up to it? Or would she think he had proved false to the message of the ring?

From his letter-case he drew the only picture of her he possessed. It was a snapshot, taken in a sunlit garden, showing her in a white frock, holding her wide-brimmed Leghorn hat in her hand. A little smile—that sunny smile of hers he loved, that smile which had always seemed to go so well with her dewy freshness, her radiant hair—was on her lips; but her eyes were gravely contemplative.

Ah! How well he remembered the day, a glorious June afternoon in the gardens of the British Embassy at Washington! They had arranged to photograph each other, as a sort of keepsake of the Conference, on the understanding that each was to think of something pleasant. Godfrey naturally had thought of Jenny; she was always in his mind. But what had been her thoughts? "I will tell you when we meet in Paris" she had promised in one of her letters.

Thirteen days to go! Impatiently Godfrey Cairsdale kicked the logs of the fire. The whole day was before him. No work on the excavations was possible, for the snow lay deep everywhere. At eight o'clock that evening he was to meet Max Rubis, the "house jew" or bailiff of Schloss Kés, at the Gloria, the little temple in the castle park, to receive the latest report of the doings in this house of mystery. Till then, he was free. Well! It was no use moping over the fire. He jumped up and put on his fur coat. He would walk across to Wolfsbad and have a bath.

The primitive sanitary arrangements of the villa did not include a bathroom—or even a bath. But six miles away, across the forest, in a tiny cup-shaped valley shut in on all sides by frowning, pine-clad heights was Wolfsbad, a natty little spa much frequented in pre-war days by the local Hungarian landowners.

Here there was a passable hotel, a café, and a Kurhaus where the warm mineral waters of the Wolf's Spring were piped and conducted through gaping wolf's heads into clean, majolika-tiled baths. After one attempt at bathing in the dubious looking vat which Milós had disinterred from an outhouse of the villa, Godfrey had decided that the Wolfsbad Kurhaus offered ample compensation for a twelve-mile tramp.

He had a pleasant walk through the forest. Except for a party of woodcutters munching their dinner round a fire that sent a straight column of blue smoke into the sunlit sky, he met no one. It was half-past two when he swung down the little main street of the spa past the shuttered windows of the trinket shops sunk in their winter sleep. For an incredible number of crowns representing an infinitesimal sum in English money he had his bath, a pine-needle douche and a massage, and then lunched quietly in the little cafe where the steam-blurred windows looked out on the deserted bandstand and the snowy gardens.

By the time he had paid the bill and lit one of the Larrafiagas that the pouch had brought, it was four o'clock. There was half an hour's light yet, he judged by a look at the woolly white sky. He decided he would walk up the mountain-side and back before setting off home.

This was a favourite stroll of his, one of those carefully laid-out walks to a prepared viewpoint found in most Continental spas. The path, gently ascending, wound about the precipitate hillside among the pines, the view of the valley widening as one mounted until, from the summit, where stood the moss-green statue of some local hero, one could survey the ring of solemn, snow-capped hills contemplating in grim majesty the village at their foot.

During these winter months the walk was deserted. Even in the halcyon days before the war, Wolfsbad could claim only a summer and autumn season and winter visitors were few and far between. But the hard times since the Armistice, the bath attendant used to lament to Godfrey, had kept all winter visitors, except a few local convalescents, away from the spa. The young man was, therefore, surprised to find, on reaching the summit of the hill, that the bench before the statue was occupied.

It was a woman who sat there, very quietly dressed in black, her heavy sable wrap powdered with dry snow from the overhanging branches of the tall Douglas firs. Her small black hat all but hid her eyes and her feet were small and neatly shod. Godfrey Cairsdale's casual glance told him that the quietness of her attire was the simplicity of extreme elegance. He had the best of reasons for not wishing to cultivate acquaintances in this alien land, so he turned his back on the stranger, and, leaning his hand on the guard-rail, gazed out over the winter desolation of the valley.

But all the same he found himself wondering who the woman was. One of his first enquiries from Milós on arriving at the villa had been about the country-seats in the neighbourhood. They were few and far between; indeed, apart from Schloss Kés, where, he knew, there was no woman staying, the only place of any importance was Wolfstal, the castle of Count Hector Aranyi. Aranyi, he knew, sometimes entertained parties from Budapest for the shooting; but a woman guest would scarcely wander off to Wolfsbad by herself in the dusk of a winter afternoon. Perhaps it was the Countess Aranyi. But that wouldn't do: Aranyi wasn't married. Besides, Aranyi, he knew, was in Budapest.

He looked at his watch. It was half-past four. He didn't like the fleecy look of the sky. More snow was coming, he thought, and he did not want to be overtaken by a snowstorm in the forest. He buttoned up his coat and turned to descend the path.

As he faced the bench, he found that the woman had risen too. He could see now that she was tall and slim and the thick curls that clustered out beneath her close-fitting hat were raven-black against the pallor of her face. And then the rich sable wrap fell way, disclosing a row of milky pearls that set off the creamy whiteness of her rounded neck, as she flung her arms wide and, raising her head, showed him dark and liquid eyes that spoke love, understanding.... recognition.

CHAPTER VII
The Woman On The Hill-Top

A FEW hurrying snowflakes floated softly down. To Godfrey Cairsdale, as he gazed transfixed at that vision out of the past, it seemed as though his youth had stolen up to join him on the lonely hilltop. It had been in the greyness of the winter landscape, against a background of grave, still trees, bending like these beneath their burden of snow, that his early love idyll had been enacted. Strange that in the same setting Valérie waited for him again....

Out of the fleecy shadows of the winter dusk old memories, like dim shapes, came stealing. Once more he seemed to stand upon the frozen lake and look up to where on the bank, in the flickering torchlight, the sleigh, with its horses, stamping beneath their bright trappings, bulked blackly in the gathering darkness. He could almost smell the acrid odour of the torches, borne aloft by grooms in the Imperial livery, as the smoke bannered out across the darkly gleaming surface of the ice.

And Valérie facing him, as she faced him now, her cheeks glowing, her black eyes dancing with mischief, the snow powdering her furs as it powdered them now, her little gloved hand in his, while, carelessly, petulantly, she flung over her shoulder words of endearment, of excuse to her gouvernante, old Baroness von Matsera, who trembled as much with fright as with cold in rear.

He saw his parting with Valérie. Like a third party, an outsider, he seemed to be present again at that formal leave-taking which, though neither knew it, was to be final... his ceremonial bow to "Kaiserliche Hoheit." Valérie's pretty condescension as she sat buried beneath the rich furs of the sleigh, but in her eyes the tender loving memory of the kisses they had exchanged out there in the distant greyness of the frozen lake....

The title now rose to his lips instinctively. Immediately his intelligence protested. The Habsburgs were swept away; archdukes and archduchesses were no more....

Her voice was low and disturbing. What memories it stirred! There was something caressing in the way she lingered to give a little roll to the "r" in his name. How little she was changed! More restrained, perhaps, her beauty ampler if something sterner, the hand of time, as it seemed to him, had almost passed her by since that night ten long years ago when he had first seen her, the wonder night when that maddest of all mad adventures had begun...

Did he remember? Does any man forget his first love, its ecstasy, its bitter-sweetness, its stark tragedy? For renunciation is tragedy to the ardour of twenty-one. With an ache like the smarting of an old wound the memory of their first meeting came back to him, the carnival ball at the Vienna Opera, the raging, swaying, dancing, laughing mob of masks on the floor, and Society, in shirt-fronts barred by ribbons, in tiaras and decolletés, surveying the scene with languid interest from the boxes.

They had met on the floor where, he was yet too ignorant of the rigid Viennese etiquette to know, no respectable woman, even masked, might venture. He had intervened to save her from the fuddled attempts of a vinous Uhlan officer to pull away her mask. He could see her now, her black silk domino slipping away from one shining shoulder, as she strained back from the coarse clutching hands.

Thereafter all night they had danced together. He never left her side, and she had eyes for none but him, eyes that were shining points of black behind the tantalizing mask. Her persistent refusal to disclose her features, to let him see the face that went with the peerless skin, the matchless figure, combined with her elusive charm to fire his senses. In the dark recesses of a parterre box he sought her lips. But she would not surrender. And there was an angry pride in her refusal that made the rebuff seem almost like a blow.

When the Opera orchestra was crashing into the Radetzky March for the Polonaise, she made him leave her at the closed door of a box. Then only, for an instant, did she lower the black silk loup and show him that her other charms did not belie her beauty. Fresh from England as he was, the glimpse he had of her face taught him nothing of her identity. But he was not to remain in ignorance for long.

He was crossing the inner courtyard of the Hofburg some days later when it happened. Amid stentorian shouts of "Garde 'raus!" he saw the Deutschmeister guard tumble to their rifles as a carriage swung in through the archway. It was she, his unknown of the Opera Redoute. With sinking heart he watched her drive, to tap of drum, past the rigid line of the guard, with a little bow and a smile in reply to the salutes of the spectators. The carriage disappeared beneath the Palace portico and he found himself, hat in hand, eagerly seeking enlightenment from his neighbour.

"Where do you come from, friend?" the jovial Viennese had asked him, "that you don't know the Archduchess Valérie? 'Vali die Einzige,' we call her in Vienna!"

"Die Einzige"—the unique! This slim, dark-eyed girl, daughter of the Archduke Michael, was the arch-rebel, they had told him, of the vast tribe of archdukes and archduchesses who jostled one another in abject submission to the patriarchal and absolute rule of the frozen-hearted old Emperor.

Brought up in a gloomy Hungarian chateau whither, years before, for some forgotten prank, her father had been banished by Francis Joseph, she had, at the age of fifteen, exchanged a life of comparative freedom for the glacial ceremonial of the Viennese Court. Always she defied convention; always her escapades were in the mouth of the Viennese. She was proud to proclaim herself Hungarian. The Magyars worshipped her because she was a patriot; the Viennese because she was "fesch."

Then, at a ball at the Italian Embassy, he had been formally presented, and thereafter a chance meeting on the ice of a country lake outside Vienna had reopened the romance which the Opera Ball had begun. For six intoxicating weeks the idyll had lasted, and then... .

He found himself telling her about it now. Ruthlessly they had been torn apart, even their last good-bye denied them. While the snowflakes eddied about them, she asked him how he had fared in the years between.

"But for the fact that the Ambassador had served under my father," he said, "they would have broken me for it. I was transferred in disgrace to Tokio. To this day," he added irrelevantly, "I hate the sight of a Japanese. And you?"

"They put me in a convent until the Reverend Mother threatened to complain to the Vatican unless I were removed. So they married me off..."

Faster the snow was falling now, great white flakes that incongruously dappled the grey-green statue behind her.

"There is a snowstorm on the way," she said. "Come, you shall lead me down the path, and as we go, you shall tell me what brings you to Hungary...."

In the comradely fashion that he so well recalled, she took his arm. It seemed to him that the warm softness of her furs was pressed against him. She exuded a faint familiar perfume of violets. For a moment it made his senses dizzy. How many times, in the blinding glare of the compound at Tokio, had the memory of that subtle scent enveloped him as he sat bowed in hopeless longing over the deciphering?

"No," he answered, "I am here privately, working at the Hacz excavations with Professor Nagy.. ."

"So?" she remarked. "I remember, you were interested in such things even long ago in the old days in Vienna. You stay at Hacz?"

"No," he corrected her. "I find it more convenient to live in a villa on the other side of the forest!"

Every minute the snow fell thicker. The valley at their feet was obscured by the whirling swaths of whiteness. They had to go carefully in the falling dusk. His eyes on the path, he did not notice her face contract sharply at his words.

"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed, "you must perish of ennui, my poor Godfrey. And in this weather you cannot have even the recreation of your researches with this good Professor Nagy! How long have you been here?"

"Do you know what I am going to do?" she said. "I am going to carry you off to stay with my host..."

"You are kind and thoughtful," he said, "but, believe me, it is impossible! I... I have no clothes, for one thing, for a visit of that kind!"

"Nonsense!" she cried. "My sleigh is at Wolfsbad. You shall come as you are. And we will send over to the villa for your things...."

"No, no, no!" she cried. "I wish it!" She spoke imperiously. Her tone made his formal.

"Madame," he explained, "the war has changed many things. It may not be congenial to your host to receive an Englishman...."

"Godfrey!" she pleaded, "do not be formal with me. You will come because I want you, because I have so much to say. It will make me so happy to talk with you about those wild, mad days in Vienna. Do you remember the day I fell on the ice on the Petzler-See and your skate cut my arm? See, I still bear the mark...."

She pushed up the sleeve of her jacket, and there, between the hem of her glove and her white arm, he saw the beginning of a long puckered scar.

"Yes, mon ami, at Castle Kés! I arrived there this morning. Do you know the Count?"

She pressed her arm against his. So eagerly did she hang on his answer that she seemed to be unconscious of the swiftness of his surrender.

Her gloved hand sought his and wrung it in a little understanding clasp. It was almost dark now beneath the trees overhanging the lower part of the descent, and he failed to see the sudden light of triumph that danced in her eyes.

"Of course. The sleigh shall go at once after Janos has driven us home. And, by the way, I no longer use my title in public. I call myself the Baroness van Griesbach now!"

Freshly fallen snow blanketed their footsteps as they made their way along the quiet street of Wolfsbad towards the hotel where the sleigh, Valérie said, would be waiting. Lighted windows made a yellow blur through the mad tourbillons of the snow. From the cafe the crashing lilt of gipsy music and the clatter of crockery broke into the hushing stillness of the falling flakes.

As they passed the brilliant windows of the cafe, the sound of galloping horses broke upon their ears. So furiously were they being driven that, muffled as all sounds were by the snow, the thunder of hoofs was plainly distinct. They drew back against the house as the yellow lamps of a carriage came in sight. With snow flung up high on either side of the wheels, it came tearing down the street, a light four-wheeled brake, the driver with arms outstretched as taut as the reins at which the two steaming horses tugged. Behind him, his face livid with fear, half risen from his seat as though to urge the coachman on, was Max Rubis, the bailiff of Castle Kés.

Then Godfrey remembered that the road from Castle Kés to the railway at Hacz lay through Wolfsbad.

CHAPTER VIII
Advice From Dr. Nagy

AS Godfrey Cairsdale followed Valérie through the glass doors of the hotel entrance, he cannoned into a little man who was coming out. At the sight of him the latter threw up his arms and fairly beamed through his gold-rimmed glasses.

"Grüss' Gott. Herr Kollege!" he cried. "In this snow-weather the archaeologist can rest from his labours. You come with me to the café, hein? for a partie of tarock before supper, yes?"

"I should like nothing better, Herr Doktor," replied the young man, "but, you see, I am not alone!"

Dr. Nagy, for it was the archaeologist from Hacz, turned and looked after Valérie.

"Ei, ei!" he said, "a lady, was? What a figure, mein Lieber! What chic! She is not from these parts, I think?"

"A relative of Count Aranyi, perhaps? I hear he is expected shortly at Wolfstal."

"Cunning fox!" said the doctor roguishly; "come on, Herr Cairsdale, who is she?"

"As a matter of fact," observed the young man who was used to Dr. Nagy's insatiable curiosity, "she is a Hungarian, the widow of a German...."

A very remarkable change came over the doctor's face. His eyes and his mouth opened simultaneously in blank astonishment.

"Donnerwetter!" exclaimed Dr. Nagy. He took off his glasses and polished them vigorously with his handkerchief.

"Donnerwetter!" observed the archaeologist again, replacing his pince-nez and staring after Valérie, whose graceful figure was just discernible in the feeble light of the hotel veranda.

"It may interest you to know, Herr Doktor," said Godfrey, "that I also am going to stay at Schloss Kés!"

"Our countries have been enemies," he said gravely, "and even now England shows herself no friend of Hungary. But I like you, Herr Cairsdale, and I will take the liberty of an older man to give you a piece of advice. Don't go to Kés!"

Very deliberately Dr. Nagy buttoned up his overcoat and laid his hand in the grip of the swing-door.

"Do you know Count Gellert?" he asked, looking the young man straight in the face.

"I thought not! If you'll be guided by me you'll have nothing whatever to do with him. And, what is more, if this lady is a friend of yours, you will do your utmost to persuade her to leave his house at once. Ich hab' die Ehre!"

Godfrey laid his arm on the other's sleeve. "But, Herr Doktor," he urged, "please explain yourself!"

And with these enigmatic words he disappeared into the snowy courtyard, leaving Godfrey in a state of utter bewilderment.

"I have ordered some coffee, Godfrey," she said. "The sleigh must be at the stables. Perhaps you would tell them to bring it round!"

Godfrey went through the hotel to the office. The cashier, a buxom Austrian girl with very black hair and long black lashes, was rather a friend of his.

"Fräulein Anna," he said, "there is a sleigh here from Schloss Kés. We would like it to come round at once, please. Would you send some one for it?"

The girl's eyes opened wide as she looked up from her ledger. Thinking she had not understood him, Godfrey repeated his request.

"Yes," said Godfrey, puzzled by her tone. Slowly her mittened hand went up to her face and a look of fear deepened in her eyes. Without further comment she pressed a black bell-push in the wall at her side. A manservant in a green baize apron appeared.

"Josef," she said in Hungarian, "the Herr wants the sleigh from Schloss Kés at once!"

The man, too, acted strangely. He was a big, surly-looking fellow with small, mistrustful eyes. He treated Godfrey to a long, slow stare of astonishment.

"The sleigh from Schloss Kés?" he repeated. Then he shrugged his shoulders and lurched off. Greatly intrigued, Godfrey returned to the veranda.

He found the presence of Valérie immensely soothing. For more than a week he had not spoken to a woman of his own class. Her distinguished manner, her low and pleasant voice, her flawless chic, reposed his nerves which, since that memorable Hew Year's Eve, had known no respite. Now that he could muster her beneath the light he saw that the passage of the years since their last meeting showed itself in an air more sober than he had known in her of old, and an accrescence of dignity that almost amounted to imperiousness. With a feeling of surprise he discovered great resolution, perhaps, even, ambition, in her fearless eye, the proud carriage of her head, the open nostrils, the firm line of her mouth.

The jangle of bells, the stamp of horses, from the courtyard without, announced the arrival of the sleigh. It was a strange-looking vehicle that stood in the snow at the foot of the steps in the yellow light of the gas-lamps. Shaped like a great swan, with high curving wings, painted in faded green-and-gold, it had a long narrow padded seat in rear on which the driver straddled, his feet resting on their on-shod wooden runners. Godfrey remembered to have seen similar sleighs in pictures of court divertissements on the ice in the galleries of Versailles.

The news of their departure appeared to have spread, for, when they came out, quite a group was assembled on the steps—the cashier, the head-waiter, the boots, and a couple of men from the stables. Godfrey knew them all, but they watched him take his seat at Valérie's side beneath the heavy bear rug in stony silence. He fancied, too, that glances were exchanged as the driver, a bearded, muffled figure, hopped up behind and, in a flurry of snow, they glided noiselessly away behind the trotting horses.

Count Gellert was evidently not a popular figure in the neighbourhood, Godfrey decided, and determined to seek enlightenment from Valérie.

"He is the last descendant of a very ancient Hungarian house," she told him. "He lives in great retirement, for he is not rich. And for another reason—Count Gellert is.... is deformed. He is, in fact, a dwarf, and abnormally sensitive of his disability. For these reasons he has lived for years absolutely apart, taking no share in the life of the neighbourhood. You can readily understand, therefore, my dear Godfrey, since all superstition springs from ignorance, that the common people go in fear and trembling of Castle Kés and its lord. To hear them talk you'd think the man was an ogre. He is, in point of fact, extremely cultured, a great connoisseur of art and very well read...."

"No," Valérie replied shortly. Then, as though to soften the rather marked bluntness of her answer, she added:

"One happy result of the war is that a Habsburg no longer needs a chaperon, unless Frau von Matsera, my lady-in-waiting, is reckoned as one. The old Spanish ceremonial of Francis Joseph's day is as dead as a doornail!"

"Dear Godfrey!" she said. Beneath the rug her hand sought his. "To hear you laugh is like old times. How stiff you were when we met on the hill with your 'Kaiserliche Hoheit' like our old Master of the Ceremonies at the Hofburg. Godfrey!—am I much changed?"

"You... you are different, somehow!" she went on. "In those Vienna days my Englishman, as I used to call you, would have taken me in his strong arms and crushed me and kissed me until the breath went out of my body. But now...."

"My dear," he said, "for months, for years, I fought to forget you. Even now that perfume of violets which you use gives me a pang like the tearing open of an old wound...."

He felt the soft caress of her fur on his neck as her head dropped on his shoulder. He was glad, yet sorry, to find himself unmoved; glad for Virginia's sake, sorry because when a man can look impassive on the face of an early love he realizes that he has definitely passed a milestone of life.

Strange that this love, which had saddened his nascent manhood and all but wrecked his life, should have thus died and left in his heart only the cold ashes of an extinct passion! The barriers that had parted them were down; her beauty was unfaded, yet the sex appeal that looked out of her dark and burning eyes, the temperament that his intuition sensed was surging in her breast, struck no answering echo in his heart.

He thought of Virginia and unconsciously made comparison. His mind dwelt with delight on Virginia's golden blondness, the freshness of her tint, the virgin innocence of her face, her happy, healthy disposition that exulted in the liberty of the open air, the sky, the rolling downs, the fragrant forest. And then he thought of the stifling hothouse atmosphere in which Valérie's girlhood had been passed, the fetid air of a mediaeval court with its loveless marriages, its tale of surreptitious vice, its intrigue, its loneliness.

After their abrupt parting she had never written to him again, and he had long since decided that he had been no more than an episode, a passing diversion in her life. And there came into his mind stories of scandals at the little German Residenz where Valérie, at the side of her dukeling, had held sway, ugly stories carelessly dropped in the office or chancery by MacTavish or another of the modern Mercuries who hasten from court to court, of an A.D.C.'s suicide, of a doctor banished....

But in accepting Valérie's invitation to go to Kés, he had a definite object in view. How providential his acquiescence in her proposal had been he only realized when he caught sight of the pallid, panic-stricken face of Max Rubis as his carriage had dashed past them. He had not had much faith in Rubis's usefulness as a secret agent; but, if he had really fled, as seemed most likely, Godfrey would have been hard put to it to get information for his reports of the doings at the castle. His meeting with Valérie had been the most astonishing piece of good fortune. Every time he thought of it he felt elated; he held it to be a favourable omen for the success of his mission. But, he told himself, he must not offend her. He must go very warily. It would not be easy, he thought...

Now they were mounting a stiff ascent in the darkness. By the light of the sleigh lamps he could see the vapour rising from the horses' smoking sides. At a walk they crossed a high stone bridge and heard, but could not see, the stream that rushed beneath.

"Yohoi!" shouted the driver from his seat behind them. High up in the blackness ahead, an orange flame appeared. With masonry towering up into the dark night on either hand, they penetrated beneath an archway up a steep slope into a large courtyard, where, by the massive gate, a man stood with a flaring torch. Within the yard the sleigh drew up at a low door which stood ajar, casting a narrow band of feeble light upon the snow.

Behind them, with the clang of iron bolts, the great gate crashed to. Godfrey took a tight grip of his nerves. The sound was so finite. It seemed to signify his severance from the outer world.

CHAPTER IX
Castle Kés

A SMALL round lobby received them. With its whitewashed walls streaked with damp, its marble statuary and its yellow wax candles guttering in the freezing draught, it put him in mind of a tomb. A solemn young German, who folded himself like a pocket rule over Valérie's hand, greeted them and presently spoke a word to an old butler who forthwith lighted Godfrey to his bedroom.

It lay off a dark and musty corridor on the second floor, a long and narrow room that struck deathly chill. Though the damp was peeling the colours from the painted ceiling and the crimson satin upholstery showed in places the matched-boarding beneath, there yet lingered about the apartment a certain stately grandeur that accorded ill with the commonplace mahogany furniture.

A silent, bearded man, a shabby forester's jacket of green cloth buttoned tightly up to the neck, brought hot water, towels, and soap, and kindled a fire in the great hearth. He resisted all Godfrey's attempts to draw him into conversation beyond vouchsafing the information that his name was Stefan. Before he took his leave he announced that the Herr Graf would be glad to see His Honour as soon as he was ready.

Ten minutes later Godfrey, stepping out of his room, came upon the man waiting with lighted candle in the corridor without. Forthwith, the latter led the way past a series of closed doors, down a flight of stairs and along a dark passage that ultimately brought them to a corridor which, unlike the others, was reasonably well lighted and smelt less musty than the rest. Stefan stopped at a door and, without waiting to knock, pushed it resolutely open. Then he stepped back and ushered Godfrey into the presence of the lord of Kés.

He was an extraordinary apparition. Godfrey's first impression of the man was that he consisted wholly of head and shoulders. An immense head, so disproportionately large that it reminded him of those grotesque masks which had terrified him, as a child, at his first pantomime, was pressed down on broad, massive shoulders, and on a chest which arched out into an extravagant pigeon-breast in front. He was seated facing the door in a little high-backed chair at a mahogany desk which, like the chair, was so curiously low that, Godfrey surmised, the legs must have been sawn down to suit the stunted stature of the mannikin. Indeed, on looking round the room, the Englishman observed that the entire furniture was on a reduced scale, like the furniture of a nursery.

Count Gellert slipped to the ground from his chair, and, with a curious tripping walk, crossed the room to greet his guest. The lord of Kés stood barely four feet high; but his torso was broad and well-developed. His arms and legs were short and stunted, his hands fat and dimpled with pudgy fingers, his feet as small as a child's.

It was the face, rather than the figure, however, Of this odd-looking creature that arrested Godfrey's fascinated gaze as his host stepped into the circle of light thrown by a tall lamp that stood upon the desk. The head was all brow, a great, bulging brow with a forward rake that was scarcely human, that recalled rather the facial construction of a new-born gorilla or one of those horrors that anatomists preserve in spirits of wine.

But the direct suggestion of evil came when the dwarf raised his eyes and fixed them upon his visitor. Heavily lidded they looked out of a blood-less, beardless face—dull, glazed eyes, the eyes of a voluptuary. The air of cruelty, of malignancy, of salaciousness they imparted to the characteristic puckered frown of the dwarf robbed the livid features of almost any human trait.

"I am Count Gellert," said the homunculus, advancing to Godfrey with hand outstretched—his voice was curiously toneless and reedy like a child's. "Any friend of the Archduchess Valérie is welcome to Castle Kés!"

As he spoke he fastened his eyes with embarrassing intensity upon the young man's face, as though searching for something there. His hand was damp and clammy, the back of it slippery with a soft reddish down.

"You are too kind," Godfrey returned, and took the chair—such a stumpy little child's chair—that his host indicated. They spoke in German, for, as the Count explained, his English was rusty.

"You are working on the excavations at Hacz, I hear," he observed. "You should profit by your stay in the neighbourhood, Herr Cairsdale, to examine the Roman votive tablets in the Bishop's Palace. They are worth seeing. They have been exhaustively catalogued by our indefatigable curator, Dr. Nagy, whom, I think, you know!"

From a beautiful lapis-lazuli box he offered Godfrey a cigarette, and, as the young man lit it, questioned him casually about his work at Hacz. It did not take Godfrey long to recognize that he was in the presence of a master mind. The Count's erudition was extraordinary; his knowledge prodigious.

Yet he was no pedant of the German stamp with brain gorged with undigested masses of fact borrowed from books. He spoke easily, gracefully, never at a loss for a word, with flashes of original thought and observation that illuminated, as it were, the whole arid field of archaeology. And, as a side reference to the recent discoveries of Commendatore Boni in the Roman Forum revealed, his reading was wholly up-to-date. So completely did the sheer brilliance of this vigorous and well-stored intellect overshadow the revolting ugliness of its casing that Godfrey gradually lost sight of the bulging forehead, the lewd and listless eyes. Even the high-pitched voice ceased to jar. Only, from time to time, he felt disconcerted by the dwarf's habit of continually scrutinizing his hearer's face. And then Godfrey suddenly became aware that Count Gellert was lip-reading. The master of Kés was stone deaf.

They dined that night in the hall of the castle, a dim, dusky place, from which not even the great fire of logs blazing between the iron dogs in the brick hearth sufficed to banish the biting chill. Besides Valérie and her lady-in-waiting, the Baroness von Matsera, old and pitiably shabby now, the only other guest was the young German who had received them in the hall that evening. His name, Godfrey learnt, was Traugott, and he had been a captain in the Bavarian field artillery. He appeared to be acting as secretary and general factotum to Gellert.

It was painfully obvious that the lord of Kés was poor. The pomp of the heavy silver candelabra, the tall-backed chairs of old tooled Spanish leather, and the posse of liveried servants did not cover up the pitiful exiguousness of the dinner. The fare was severely plain, the wine thin and sour.

An air of gloom pervaded the whole place. The servants, from Ferencz, the old butler, down, were clearly terrified of their master and started every time his piping treble addressed them. Time had stood still at Kés, as Godfrey realized when he saw the castle by daylight, and, like so many old houses, its atmosphere was heavy with the weight of the memories with which its lichen-grey walls were saturated.

Kés was isolated from the passage of the years. Like its master's its ears seemed closed to the strident march of progress. Its narrow windows with embrasures cubit-thick, its furniture black with age, its heavy iron-studded doors, were of another epoch, another civilization; as much as the rusty carronades that thrust their muzzles from the weather-worn battlements or the abject, serf-like submissiveness of the servants. Kés remained what it had been in the Middle Ages—a fortress adapted to the purpose of living, a place of fantastically thick walls, small rooms, and narrow passages, draughty, bleak, and dreary.

As a modern young man permeated with the robust democracy of twentieth-century England, Godfrey Cairsdale was amused, though sometimes rather wistfully, to find how easily Valérie took her place in this mediaeval setting. Within the massive walls of Kés the years of the war counted not at all. Here she was not the Baroness von Griesbach, but always the Imperial Highness, as though the double-headed eagle still proudly raised its head and the succession states yet struggled in the womb of Time for release. The status of her rank was fully maintained. Until invited, none might sit in her presence, and to visit her in the drawing-room of her apartments in the tower even Count Gellert had to apply, through the Baroness von Matsera, for an audience.

Godfrey was worried about Valérie. She so obviously expected him to resume their love idyll where ten years before it had been abruptly severed. He simulated reluctance to bridge at once the gap which the respect paid to her rank at Kés, he told her, only served to widen between them. But he recognized that their relations could not remain indefinitely on the plane of mild flirtation on which, during that sleigh drive through the snow, they had, by mutual agreement, been placed.

And he could not avoid Valérie. Always she demanded that he should be with her, either to walk in the park, or, when the weather was bad (and it snowed almost every day), to sit and talk with her in her drawing-room or partner her at bridge against the Baroness and Traugott. If Valérie were engaged, then the Baroness, or, more rarely, Gellert, attached himself to him. It was done with such pleasing courtesy that he could find no excuse for ridding himself of these embarrassing attentions; but the fact remained that he was never alone for a minute.

The serious thing, however, was that, even at night, a watch was kept at Kés. Godfrey's mind was always fixed on the fateful night of January 16th, when he should have to leave the castle unobserved, make his way to the railway to meet the Orient Express, in the early morning of the 17th, and return. Information of critical importance would, he knew, arrive for him by that train, and, provided he could make sure of being at the rendezvous, he did not particularly care how he spent the time in the interval.

On arriving at Kés he congratulated himself on his foresight in making Max Rubis disclose the means he had found for leaving the castle at night to keep their secret rendezvous in the park. He had confidently anticipated finding the opportunity to reconnoitre this route with a view to using it himself on the night of the 16th. Never alone in the day, he had determined to do this reconnaissance by night.

But on leaving his room, on the second night of his stay at Kés, long after everybody had retired to bed, to his unspeakable dismay he encountered the man Stefan patrolling the corridor. And each night it was the same. "An old custom at Kés," Gellert explained in reply to Godfrey's chafing comment, and his guest was compelled to leave it at that.

Worse still, he was deprived of the services of Milós, his servant, on whose devotion he had counted to convey at a pinch a message by a secret emergency route across the Czecho-Slovakian frontier, communicated to him before he left London.

The day after his arrival at Kés, Godfrey had found his luggage in his room at the castle, but Janos, the coachman, who had fetched it in the sleigh, explained that old Milós resolutely refused to join his master. Remembering the awed looks which the mention of Schloss Kés had produced at the hotel at Wolfsbad, Godfrey understood the man's reluctance, but he determined to make an effort to overcome it. However, on driving over with Valérie to the villa, he found the place locked and shuttered. Though the fire was laid and the tea-things set out as usual, Milós had vanished and, crestfallen, the young man was compelled to return to Kés.

He felt vaguely disquieted. True, by no word or action had any one in the house revealed that he was in any way suspect. Valérie seemed wholeheartedly glad of his company; Count Gellert was the soul of polished courtesy; and in his stolid way, Captain Traugott, the German, endeavoured to be civil. But the intuitive sense, which was highly developed in Godfrey, told him that they were all waiting for something.

An air of expectancy brooded strangely over the castle. Rooms were being turned out and bedding aired. Twice he met the buxom Hungarian servant-maids in coarse blue print and list slippers dragging mattresses along the corridors. He noticed, too, that Gellert and Valérie would occasionally disappear for an hour or more at a time, always, incidentally, when he was solidly anchored to the Baroness.

The denouement was at hand, of that he felt increasingly sure. Every day he looked for fresh faces at breakfast in the castle hall, but in vain. Neither Trommel nor von Bartzen appeared nor was there any word of their coming....

He kept a tight hold on his nerves. With Gellert and his guests he was, or tried to be, his amusing, slightly cynical self. But in his room at night, with the heavy tread of Stefan reverberating in the gallery without, he lay awake in bed for hours, fighting down a desperate feeling that he was trapped, trapped....

CHAPTER X
In Which Virginia Meets An Old
Friend And Receives An Odd Missive

CLIVE LORNE was not at the West Station to meet her when Virginia arrived in Budapest. She concluded he could not have had her wire. She devoutly hoped that he had not been transferred from Budapest, for she counted on him to help her with a plan that was slowly maturing in her shrewd young head. She felt a little woe-begone, a little bewildered, when, on descending from the train, she found herself jostled by people mouthing a wholly incomprehensible language and surrounded on all sides by utterly unintelligible inscriptions.

Hungarian, the scholars will tell you, is akin to the Finnish and Tartar languages. This must be a very consoling reflection to those who speak these tongues fluently; but it is of little use to one who does not possess these accomplishments. Virginia's French was nearly perfect; her German adequate; her English honest-to-God United-Statesish. But this was the sum of her linguistic attainments, and she gazed in dismay at the rugged companies of consonants that looked impudently down on her from notice-boards and placards. To crown her discomfiture the porter, to whom she had confided the receipt for her wardrobe trunk, now addressed to her a foaming torrent of rhetoric of which not a word, not even a sound, struck any familiar echo in her mind.

The porter took a great deal of trouble with her. In case she had not heard him the first time, he leaned over and, spraying her abundantly through his broken yellow teeth, repeated his oration da capo in a very loud voice. Then, lest she might be of feeble intellect, with infinite patience he addressed her again—this time very slowly, but with less perfect articulation as, to allow himself greater freedom of gesture, he had placed her luggage ticket in his mouth.

A crowd had begun to form, a curious, kindly crowd prepared, like the porter, to credit the young foreign lady with deafness or with cretinism sooner than to hold her so uncultured as to be unfamiliar with the ancient tongue of the free Magyar people. Removing the baggage receipt from his mouth, the porter was preparing to begin all over again. Virginia felt inclined to laugh. Her efforts to engage a conversation in German or French were coldly ignored.

At that moment a tall man appeared above the heads of the spectators. With a couple of vigorous pushes to right and left he cleaved a way to the girl's side. He was a lanky, angular man, with a great hawk-like nose and a high red forehead running up into his green felt hat. He wore a wiry, iron-grey moustache, cut toothbrush fashion, and carried himself stiff as a ramrod. When he reached Virginia, he took off his hat and put out his hand.

"Why, Miss FitzGerald!" he exclaimed in English, in a tone of great surprise, "what do you do in Budapest? May I be of service to you?"

Without waiting for her reply, he turned to the porter and addressed him brusquely in Hungarian.

"Please," he presently explained to Virginia, "it is your keys he wants for the customs examination of the hand-luggage!"

"Ignorant apes!" exclaimed the tall man—he spoke with a marked German accent—"they think the whole world should speak their devil's language! Sapperment! What a beautiful young lady you've grown into, Fräulein Virginie!"

The girl smiled frankly at him. She had not seen von Bartzen since before the war. She remembered him rather indistinctly as a dashing Austrian cavalry captain, very well-dressed, very debonair, very amusing, with a care-free charm of manner that had first marked out for her the dividing line between Austrian and German. Baron von Bartzen used to come to Uncle Andrew's tennis parties when Virginia was home from Bryn-Mawr for the holidays. In those days, it seemed to her as she studied him covertly, he had had more hair and less waist. But the years had not effaced his winning way.

Efficiently and without fuss he took charge of things. He insisted on driving her to the quiet hotel where she had reserved a room, and at her request, got the hall porter to telephone through to the British Legation to find out what had become of Clive Lome. Mr. Lome, the reply came back, was out of town until that evening. He was not expected back until late. Virginia left a message for him to call her up at her hotel as soon as he returned.

On this von Bartzen extracted a promise from Virginia that she would dine with him. He would take her, he said, to a Hungarian restaurant patronized only by the nobility—"no gulasch barons," he guaranteed, using the characteristic Magyarism for war profiteers—to hear the great Rákos and his gipsy musicians play. Virginia accepted his invitation without hesitation. She thought he would probably make love to her—von Bartzen had enjoyed the reputation of making love to every woman he met—but she was calmly confident of her ability to put any man in his place. She could not bear the thought of remaining cooped up in the hotel.

Explaining that he had a business appointment in the lunch-hour, von Bartzen summoned the maître d'hôtel and ordered Virginia's luncheon for her and at the same time gave orders to the hall-porter to have a taxi at the door at half-past two to drive her round the city. He laid down the exact itinerary which she was to follow and enjoined upon the hall-porter the necessity of hiring the taxi of one Franz who, it appeared, could speak German and would be able to explain the sights. This done, he kissed Virginia's hand and took his leave. "An Austrian, it is true," remarked the porter, as the tall figure swung through the swing-doors, "but a real cavalier!"

For her dinner with von Bartzen, Virginia wore a simple black dinner frock, not seven days out of Paris, sleeveless, with a high neck, its plainness relieved only by a string of pearls. As she sat before the glass in her bedroom and touched her lips with her lip-stick, her active mind was busy with the potentialities of this dinner engagement. Von Bartzen, she knew, was of excellent family, and before the war had been high in favour at Court. He was likely to be well-informed as to what was going on behind the scenes. She wondered whether, by adroit questioning, she might be able to elicit from him anything to throw light on Godfrey Cairsdale's mysterious mission.

When she came down, a quarter of an hour late, von Bartzen in a dinner coat was waiting in the hall.

"On voit bien que vous sortez de Paris!" he said as he bent over her hand, and the girl reddened with pleasure at the deftness of the compliment.

They drove in a taxi to the restaurant, an unpretentious-looking place, outwardly, in a turning off the Andrassy Avenue; within, a long old-fashioned room with benches, upholstered in faded crimson velvet, set against the gilded mirrors that lined the walls.

Von Bartzen had ordered the dinner and, while the waiter was serving the caviare from the Black Sea, amused Virginia by pointing out various celebrities who were present; a famous parliamentary orator, of whom it was said he could "bring tears to men's eyes in four languages," a successful playwright, an operetta star.

The restaurant was filling up. Some of the women were strikingly beautiful with the limpid eye and delicate features which are characteristic of this proud and ardent race. There were some fine heads, too, among the older men with their thick white hair, their swarthy skins, and luminous dark eyes.

At the end of the room on a little dais the gipsy musicians were installed, a swart, dank-haired troupe in embroidered white Rumanian shirts and top-boots. With infinite verve and swing they were playing a Viennese waltz.

"I wo!" said von Bartzen. "The Primas—that is, you know, the leader—he is too grand to come so early. This is—how you say?—rubbish that they play at present. In a little der Rákos will be here. Then you shall see! He will play Liszt, Smetana, Chopin—what you will!"

Then he drew her attention to an elderly man who sat by himself at a table in the corner.

"That is Count Hector Aranyi," he told her. "Always he is miserable since the war. This man is mad for the English. Before the war half his life he spent in England. He buy in England his clothes, his boots, his hats. He hunt in England and shoot grouse and run race-horses. He is very rich. He has a splendid castle near Hacz...."

The girl looked up quickly. Hacz... that was the town which they had shown her on the map at the Wagons-Lits office in Paris, the town nearest to Kilometre 224.

"He lives like a king on his estates," von Bartzen continued. "He owns thousands of hectares. The shooting is famous. And yet always he grieves for England. No wonder his friends tell him if he is so much in love with the English he'd better go and live in England altogether! Pfui Deibel!"

(He had informed her that out of the crucible of war the Captain of the Washington days had emerged a full Colonel.)

"They and the rest of the Allies, they are all alike," he said sombrely. "They have torn my country limb from limb; they have taken the garments of Hungary and cast lots for them amongst the Rumanians, the Czechs, and the Croats; they are driving Germany into poverty and bankruptcy. But let them beware! Too far they must not drive us!"

He brooded gloomily in silence for a moment. But then he stirred himself and smiled at his guest.

"I forgot myself," he said. "It is characteristic of the state of the world to-day that it is no longer good manners to mention politics in cosmopolitan society. In half a dozen capitals to-day it is sufficient to shout out a single name in a public place like this to provoke a riot, whether it may be Fiume or Danzig or Klausenburg or the Banat!"

They pledged each other humorously. Von Bartzen, his equanimity quite restored, chatted amusingly on half a dozen topics from which Virginia sought in vain to steer him back to politics.

There was a little stir at the end of the room. A stalwart man in a fine white linen smock, with a shock of raven-black hair drooping into his eyes, and a great bristling black moustache, had mounted the orchestra platform. He stood an instant, his fiddle under his arm, surveying the room, his face wreathed in smiles as he bowed his acknowledgments of the greetings addressed to him from many of the tables. His bold black eye rested in unconcealed admiration on Virginia's face as he deferentially inclined his head to her companion.

The Primas turned his back on the room and, while he resined his bow, gently chaffed his black-envisaged acolytes. With laughing eyes and flashing teeth they responded. Then suddenly they grew rigid. Rákos had raised his hand. The orchestra crashed into the slow, melancholy chords which habitually introduce the pulsating music of the Hungarian and Polish national dances.

At their plates stood glasses of old Tokay which the staid sommelier, with his old-fashioned mutton-chop whiskers, had reverently dispensed from the cobweb-encrusted bottle lying in its wicker carrier. Von Bartzen had insisted that Virginia should taste Hungary's famous wine. She was trying to make out whether she liked its heady sweetness with the odd flavour of cedar-wood.

"Perhaps a week... I don't know. It rather depends on my friends," Virginia replied. "I was restless. I wanted a change. I've never been in Hungary before!"

There was frank admiration in his eyes as he looked at her. The Slav blood in him, which so strongly dilutes the veins of the Viennese, was responding to the wine, the lights, the sensuous, stirring music of the gipsies. When he gave her a cigarette, he made it a pretext to touch her hand.

"I am here on holiday. My time is wholly at your disposal. There is much that is interesting to see. And the surroundings of the city are so beautiful!"

He paused and shot her another enterprising glance from his audacious steely eyes.

"It does my heart much good," he said, "to see you, Fräulein Virginie. You are like a ray of sunshine that comes out of the golden west to pierce the black clouds that rest over these unhappy lands!"

"I am... rather I was a soldier," said he. "But, like Othello, my occupation's gone and I must fall back upon belles-lettres to pass my days. You do not know me yet, Fräulein Virginie. If you will let us spend together the time you are in Budapest you shall know me better...."

The great Rákos, his violin snuggled beneath his chin, his black eyes wide with the emotion of his own playing, was slowly making the round of the room. On muted strings and with infinite expression he played the hesitating haunting refrain of a Viennese waltz-song. He was lost in the melody as he moved forward, seemingly unconscious of the groups at the tables who fell silent at his coming to listen to him.

Now he had reached the table against the wall where Virginia's golden hair was mirrored in the tall glass at her back. The gipsy halted in front of them, swaying to and fro as his violin sobbed and pleaded. Characteristically, his eyes first sought in self-approval his reflection in the mirror before he bent his gaze upon the girl. He leaned down between them, his face turned upward and slightly to the right, as though he were bent on missing nothing of the beauty of his own playing. Lower he leaned and lower until his violin seemed to be not more than a foot above the table. And then, from the hand that grasped the instrument, something dropped and, striking Virginia's wine-glass with a little tinkle, slid off into her lap.

She found herself staring blankly down at a playing-card that lay face upwards on her knees.

CHAPTER XI
The Three Of Clubs

IT was done so swiftly, so unobtrusively, that, on looking up, she was not surprised to find that no one appeared to have noticed the incident. The long room rang with applause, for Rákos had just finished, and, with a proud toss of his black mane, was radiantly acknowledging from the centre of the restaurant the hand-clapping and cries which came to him from all the tables.

"Please drop your serviette over that card and give it to me. Be careful, please, to let nobody see! I shall explain to you presently!"

She was astonished at the change in his appearance. His eyes were hard, his mouth was set in a grim line, and there was a deep furrow just above his prominent jutting nose. She glanced down at the card again. The numeral "21" was rudely scrawled across its face in red ink or paint. Then she dropped her napkin into her lap, and picking up the card in its folds, replaced napkin and card on the table where von Bartzen presently appropriated them. She saw his hand steal to his jacket pocket.

"Oh, such big eyes!" he said. "In Central Europe to-day, Fräulein Virginie, you will see many things to make you wonder. This rascal Rákos is an old friend of mine. We.... we have sometimes a little business together..."

"The laws against currency speculation are strict. And Hungary swarms with spies. The maître d'hôtel here, even the man who checked my overcoat.... they are in the pay of the police. And I, as a loyalist, am always suspect..."

"If to loathe and detest the rotten bourgeois governments that are ruining Germany and Austria and Hungary is to be a monarchist, then I suppose I am one!"

Noticing Virginia's face break into a pleased smile of greeting, he looked up quickly fumbling for his monocle. Through the restaurant Clive Lome approached, very immaculate in a dinner-coat and white waistcoat. He came straight to their table.

"By Jove!" he said, seizing Virginia's hand, "I can't tell you how sorry I was not to get your wire. But I had to go to Vienna last night on business for the Legation and I've only just got back. They told me at your hotel you were dining here!"

He glanced deferentially at her companion. Then his face grew troubled. Von Bartzen, who had stood up on the boy's approach, turned to Virginia.

"You will no doubt desire to speak with your friend, Fräulein Virginie," he said stiffly, "so, if you will excuse me, I shall go now!..."

"But, Baron," the girl exclaimed in dismay, "you're not going to leave us. I want you to know Mr. Lome...."

She looked from the Baron to Clive, who stood aside, looking extremely uncomfortable.

"I fear I must go now!" returned von Bartzen implacably. "In case I should not see you again... ."

"I find I have changed my mind," the Colonel returned. "It was so nice to see you again, Fräulein Virginie! And thank you for coming tonight! Au revoir! A une autre fois!"

He bowed ceremoniously from the waist and kissed her hand. Then, deliberately ignoring Clive, he turned on his heel and left them.

"Did you ever see anything like that?" demanded Virginia, as Clive sat down on the bench by her side. "Have you two men had a duel or what?"

"If I knew you well enough, Miss FitzGerald, I should tell you to be more careful of your acquaintances!"

Virginia stiffened up. She was not going to be dictated to by a child, she told herself, whose Eton memories were certainly not more than a year old.

"Well," he said slowly, "if you want to know, that fellow von Bartzen is one of the most dangerous conspirators in Central Europe. You've heard of the Kapp Putsch, I suppose? He was up to the hocks in that! You remember poor old Karl's two attempts to put himself back on the throne of Hungary? Von Bartzen was the prime organizer of both those crazy stunts. The Berliners would stick him up against a wall and shoot him, and he daren't show his nose in public in Vienna!"

"Well," the boy remarked, "I don't know how you feel about it. But my opinion is that a conspirator who survives three or four armed what-do-you-call 'em's—coups d'état, that's the word I want—is a pretty dam' mean sort of a chap. The fellows who get killed at this game nowadays seem to be the wretched rank and file who rush into these f adventures for what they can get out of them...." Virginia was silent.

"Of course, he's rabidly Anglophobe and anti-Ally like all these precious monarchists. I've got nothing personal against him. In private life, I believe, he's a very good chap. But you're asking for trouble if you go about with him, Virginia.... I mean, Miss FitzGerald..."

"Everybody calls me Virginia!" she said, "and I'm going to call you Clive because you're going to help me to find out what's happened to Godfrey Cairsdale, and we're going to be great friends. Tell me, Clive, have you discovered anything further?"

"Not yet," the boy replied. "But I shall! Do you know what I'm going to do to-morrow? I'm going to Kilometre 224!"

"That won't be any use," she said. "I came by there in the Orient last night. There was no sign of Godfrey at the halt or of any King's Messenger looking out for him on the train either!"

"That's all right," Clive assured her. "The Foreign Office doesn't send by every Orient Express that leaves Paris—it runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, you know—they send only when there is occasion. The next King's Messenger will be on the train that leaves Paris to-day and passes Kilometre 224 in the early hours of Saturday morning. I've got a week's leave and I'm going to be there to see what happens!" Virginia felt as though a weight had been lifted off her heart.

"I say, you know," he said, "I don't quite see how you can. It will mean walking miles in the snow in the middle of the night. Besides...."

"Godfrey's on very private business. I could find out from him that he was all right and maybe give him a message from you. But that's a very different thing from taking you along. Quite frankly, if I had realized what the situation was I should not have written you that letter...."

She looked around. The restaurant was emptying. The tables on either side of them were untenanted.

"My dear boy," she said, "I know that Godfreys on a Secret Service mission, if that's what you mean!"

"I don't know why I didn't guess it before. I think it never occurred to me that a diplomat could be switched off on a job of that kind. The reason is, of course, that old Godfrey knows Hungarian. He's a marvel at languages, you know. He learnt this infernal lingo while he was at the Legation here. There are not many fellows who can speak it. You see now why it's impossible for me to take you with me!"

"Listen, Clive," she said. "Godfrey Cairsdale has asked me to marry him. I don't give a rap about his old mission, and, anyway, I'd just hate you to think I'm one of those Secret Service queens you read about in the magazines. All I know is that Godfrey is in danger, in terrible danger, and if it's not too late, I'm going to try to help him. I'd rather work with you, but if you won't let me..."

She broke off with a little shrug of her shoulders. She turned aside her head so that he should not see her brimming eyes.

"You're asking a lot," he said. "And you're not even English. If anything goes wrong, they'll kick me out of the Service as sure as God made little apples. And my people have always been in the Diplomatic. Virginia, I don't know what to say!"

"No! I'm damned if we will!" the boy suddenly burst out. "Old Godfrey's my friend and he's in a mess, the very hell of a mess. We talk the same language, Virginia, and I'm going to trust you. There's my hand on it, partner!"

"All the same," Clive remarked, "it's going to be rather difficult about you, my dear. You see, I've been asked to a shoot at Hector Aranyi's at his place, Schloss Wolfstal, near the Czecho-Slovak frontier. Kilometre 224 is actually on his property. In this way I thought I should be able to make my observations without attracting undue attention!"

"To-morrow morning. I'm driving the Countess Hegedin—that's Aranyi's sister—down in my car."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Virginia, her eyes bright with excitement. "I was wondering how we should get over the chaperon difficulty...."

"What's that?" demanded Clive aghast. "Obviously," the girl remarked, "even I, unconventional as I am, could scarcely stay alone at a Hungarian Chateau with a lot of men...."

"Not yet," said Virginia calmly. "But I'm going to. He's over there, just paying his bill. Will you introduce him to me, Clive? He's coming this way..."

There was far more of the Englishman than the Hungarian about Count Hector Aranyi. His clothes, like his manner, were inconspicuous, and he had about him an air of reserve which, to the inquisitive stranger, was as effective as a barred door. With his grey hair and small pointed beard, his finely chiselled features and his ivory tint, he gave an impression of great dignity if one stopped to study him, which few people did.

He nodded to Clive, allowing his incurious gaze to rest for a moment on his companion. Clive stood up.

"Count," he said, "I'd like to introduce you to Miss Virginia FitzGerald, the niece of the Marquise de Kerouzan, whom I think you have met in London..."

Virginia flashed a look of admiring gratitude at Clive. She recognized the supreme finesse of his opening.

"Of course," said Aranyi, as he shook hands—his English was literally flawless—"poor Jacques de Kerouzan was an old friend of mine. We used to go racing together...."

A look of melancholy stole into the grey eyes. He was thinking of the days when every stable lad on Epsom Downs or Newmarket Heath had tipped his hat to King Edward's friend, "the Count."

"I think I shall go back right away," the girl replied, dropping her eyes. "I was counting on Clive to show me round and now he tells me you are carrying him off to shoot!"

"Well, if I hadn't promised the Countess Hegedin to drive her down to Wolfstal to-morrow...." Clive began.

"If you disappoint Sophie she'll never forgive you," he said. "And the trouble is that my own car is full." He turned to Virginia.

"Why, no!" the girl replied. "I'd never been to Hungary before, and I just came down for the change. I simply hate the idea of going back to Paris..."

"If it wouldn't bore you frightfully," he said diffidently, "I should be very pleased if you would come down with Lome to-morrow and stay at Wolfstal with us. Though my place is rather in the wilds the house is fairly comfortable. I'm afraid we shall be quite a small party, though; just myself and my sister and nephew and Lome, and maybe one or two people from roundabout will come over for the shooting if the weather's not too bad. My sister Sophie will have her maid; she could look after—"

"Why!" said Virginia, "I think you're too kind. I should simply love to come. But shan't I be upsetting your arrangements, Count?"

"Not in the least!" said Aranyi. "And there's lots of room in Lome's car. He has the largest and most vulgar-looking Benz in the whole of Hungary. He bought it off a war profiteer in Vienna for eighty pounds!"

"No, don't exaggerate!" said Clive. "I paid a hundred and twenty. And for another thirty I could have bought the chauffeur, his wife, and his four children!"

They all laughed heartily at this sally. They would meet again, Aranyi said as he took his leave, at lunch at Schloss Wolfstal on the following day.

It was a dry, starry night, and freezing hard when Clive and Virginia merged from the restaurant. She declined Clive's offer of a taxi, saying the walk would do her good. Arm-in-arm they picked their way along the slippery pavements into the broad Andrassy Avenue lying white and silent under the moon.

"I am so anxious about Godfrey," she said. "I feel I should be happier if at least I knew something about his mission. Haven't you any theory, Clive?"

"I've thought till my head ached. I can't see what our Secret Service hopes to find out here. There are always these monarchist plots, of course; but, even when Karl was alive, they were never serious, and, now that he's dead, the whole thing is really nothing more than a comic opera."

"Obviously," said Virginia, "he's been sent to find out something, some secret! The only person who can tell us what that secret is is your friend, Major MacTavish. You must take me to see him to-morrow, Clive!"

"I can't do that," the boy replied. "He's gone back to London. Besides, he's silent as the tomb. I couldn't get a word out of him. As I wrote to you, he denies everything."

"Euan wouldn't have anything to do with the police. So naturally they did nothing!"

"Well," said the boy slowly, "there was a Hungarian girl, a certain Baroness Vali von Griesbach, whom I met in Venice last month, on the train with us. She was actually the last person we saw before we turned in as she came along to our carriage and smoked a cigarette with us. And she had the compartment opposite the door where Euan was attacked...."

"Why!" cried Virginia, "it's as clear as daylight. This woman was a spy. It must have been she who stabbed your friend."

"She told us when she left us that she was getting out at Szob. That's the station before Kilometre 224...."

"Then, of course, she told you that to mislead you. Didn't you or your friend go to her compartment afterwards to see if she were still there?"

"Do you know," he said, "it never occurred to me. I was upset about Euan and all that. I wonder if you're right. She certainly asked Euan if he were a King's Messenger..."

"I don't know anything about her except that she's a Hungarian, the widow of a German, and awfully pretty and attractive. She always seemed to have money, too, that time in Venice...."

"She's tall and dark, with very black hair and eyes, and.... and quite an air about her. Poise, Euan called it!"

"My dear Clive," she said. "Is that really the best you can do? Is she young or faded? Fat or thin? Has she anything distinctive about her?"

"Dash it all," the boy retorted, "I saw her only a couple of times. We were just getting matey when she had to hare off to Munich. The Baroness Vali is young with a beautiful figure, and, yes, I do remember something, she's got a long white scar on her left arm."

"It's obvious the woman's a spy!" Virginia announced. "She probably followed Major MacTavish from London!"

"Now I come to think of it," Clive remarked suddenly, "rather an odd thing happened at Venice the other day. We were coming in from a moonlight trip on the lagoon in the Baroness Vali's private gondola, and were just going alongside the landing-stage of the Hôtel Danieli, when something fluttered down from a window above. It fell into the bottom of the gondola at our feet. The Baroness picked it up quickly, but not before I had seen it. It was a playing-card... the three of clubs...."

"The three of clubs?" repeated Virginia, stopping in the snowy street and laying her hand on his arm. "Did you say the three of clubs?"

"Yes," Clive replied, looking at her in surprise, "certainly. The three of clubs! Why?"

Then she told him of the playing-card which the gipsy leader had dropped in her lap.

"Yes," Virginia replied, "with a red '21' scrawled across it. What do you make of it?"

"You say that von Bartzen, immediately he got this card, changed his mind about staying in Budapest. Is that right?"

"Because," said Clive, "when Baroness Vali had the three of clubs dropped to her in Venice, she, too, suddenly announced that she must leave the same night!"

They walked on for a spell in silence, each engaged in thought. They were passing the huge pile of the Opera when Clive suddenly touched the girl's arm.

At a turning off the main avenue the high wall of a house ran away to the right placarded with advertisements in bright colours. Close to the corner a rain-pipe ran down, a clear space of about a foot between the posters on either side. Here on the rough limewash of the wall three large clover leaves were stencilled in black, one above the other, the numeral "21" also in black, scrawled athwart the device.

"Don't you see?" Clive said in answer to the girl's questioning look; "it's the three of clubs again!"

CHAPTER XII
Valérie

AS the days passed at Kés, Godfrey began to feel that his first impression of Count Gellert had done his host less than justice. They had many talks together in the curious dwarf setting of the Count's study, and each time Godfrey was increasingly aware of the unusual attractiveness of the man's mind. His knowledge of literature was amazingly wide. Modern poetry was essentially one of his subjects, and he could quote Rupert Brooke as readily as Detlev von Liliencron or Paul Fort. His dexterity in overcoming his total deafness filled the young man with admiration. The Count could lip-read in four languages besides his own, and on one occasion gave his guests a demonstration of his prowess. Neither in his speech nor, as far as he could discern, in his mind was there any fulfilment of the evil promise of his face.

And then one day, when Godfrey had been a week at the castle, an incident occurred which caused the Englishman to revert to his former judgment. It was towards dusk, and Godfrey was going to his room to fill his cigarette-case. Coming along the corridor towards him one of the housemaids approached.

He had remarked her before, rather a pretty girl, with a pair of bold black eyes and a creamy white skin. She came along the corridor on the window side where the last beams of daylight strayed greyly in from the park.

Suddenly, out of the shadows on the other side of the gallery where the bedroom doors lay, a stunted shape hopped forth. It was Gellert. He came noiselessly upon the girl from behind. Thinking that Gellert was about to pass the girl, Godfrey drew back to make way. But then, in the gathering dusk, he caught a glimpse of the dwarf's face. It shone with evil, the dull eyes bulging, the thin lips working and flecked with foam. But before he could move or cry a warning the two stumpy arms shot out and from the back, the fat baby hands appeared clutching on either side of the plump white throat...

With a piercing scream the girl swung round, freeing herself, and saw the mask of horror at her shoulder. Without a sound she collapsed her full length on the floor. Too late Godfrey sprang forward to catch her. As she did so the dwarf's coat brushed him as Gellert slipped by. "Ein hübsches Kind! Ein hübsches Kind!" Godfrey heard him mutter as he went.

The girl was the young man's first care. For a moment he thought she was dead. She lay like one in catalepsy, scarcely breathing, her hands cold as ice. As he rose up to summon assistance, footsteps resounded along the corridor. Two women servants hastened up.

The girl never moved. They loosened her dress and slapped her hands; but she lay like a log. Other servants appeared, with them Ferencz, the old butler, who, himself as white as the still form at his feet, almost tearfully implored Godfrey to withdraw. With a feeling akin to physical nausea the Englishman went to his room.

The Count did not appear at dinner. He had retired to bed with a headache, Traugott said. No mention was made of the incident in the corridor, and Godfrey accordingly decided not to raise it. But every time he thought of that livid, twitching face, those throttling white hands, he felt a cold trickle of horror down his spine, and he prayed that his delivery out of this house of evil might be soon.

That night—it was the evening on which in Budapest Virginia dined with von Bartzen—Godfrey sat in the tower room and played écarté with Valérie. It was a large circular room of noble proportions, its unclad stone walls sloping inward toward the groined roof. It occupied the top story of the old round tower of the castle and was used by the Archduchess as her sitting-room.

No room in the Schloss spoke more clearly of the original military purposes of Kés. Trophies of damascene steel hung round the walls and the furniture was of black oak, plain and vastly substantial. A long table, hewn from a solid oak block, occupied the centre of the room. Except for the fact that the loopholes had been widened into windows and an ugly stove with an iron pipe running into a trapdoor in the groined roof occupied the stone fireplace, there was little to indicate that the appearance of the room had suffered any change through the centuries.

On this evening Godfrey felt unsettled, distraught. The incident of the afternoon had revolted him. It was two hours before the maid had regained consciousness, one of the other servants had told him while he was dressing for dinner, and she was still in a state of collapse. It looked to him like a case of sheer fright; the Count had done her no physical injury—there had been no time for that. More than ever Godfrey was conscious of a sense of oppression, as though an atmosphere of evil were weighing him down. At last the nervous strain was beginning to tell. And more than ever on this night would he require a cool head and a clear brain.

Mechanically he put down his king, gathered up the trick. He started to find that Valérie had flung her cards on the table and was surveying him angrily.

"Again you did not declare the king!" she cried. "I do not care to play if you cannot give me your attention!"

"I'm frightfully sorry," the young man apologized. "It's most awfully careless of me, but I never had any head for cards!"

"Bah!" exclaimed the girl petulantly, "one has no head for anything when one's thoughts are wandering..."

"We'll begin all over again," said Godfrey contritely, "and this time I promise to be more careful!"

"I have no further wish to play," announced Valérie in her most royal manner. "Perhaps you would have the goodness to send Matsera to me!"

"How cold you are!" she exclaimed in a low, passionate voice. "When we were together ten years ago would you have forgotten my very existence... no, no, you can't deny it; your thoughts were far away.... or when I dismissed you, left me without protest?"

Godfrey grew tense. The scene he had so greatly feared was at hand. His mind feebly clutched at the hope that he yet might evade confrontation with the choice between the truth and a lie. But subconsciously he knew that the crucial moment had arrived.

What was he to do? What could he say? Even the ingenuity of Israel had not been able to devise a nobler escape than flight out of the age-old situation. To tell her the truth would, he felt instinctively, inevitably compromise his situation, and it irked him to act a part. As one in a dream he heard her.

"For ten years I have thought of you tenderly. When I was fettered to that drunken German beast my husband, I used to lie awake in my room at night and picture you coming like Jason in gleaming armour to hack away my chains and carry me away to liberty, to love. And yet when I meet you, I find you—different. You could love me, Godfrey; I think you do love me. But there seems to be some invisible barrier between us!" She broke off on something near a sob.

"My dear," he said, "you do me wrong. I never expected to see you again. Meeting you like this, after what I went through to forget you has overwhelmed me. I..."

"You make excuses!" she cried; "yes, I say, excuses. A woman knows these things. I gave you time. It is a week since we met. I have waited for you to come back to me. But you give me only what I exact from you.... et plus rien! Rien, rien, rien!..."

Her voice rose. She stamped her foot, averted her head. Godfrey was silent. He could find no words, though he knew that every second he delayed would brand him more surely as that unspeakable thing in a woman's estimation, a reluctant lover.

He must be strong, he told himself. He looked at her desperately. She was very beautiful as she stood before him, her pouting lips quivering, her small breast rising and falling quickly. He noted with delight the long black lashes that veiled her dark eyes, the exquisite curve of her cheek. She appealed to all his man's senses and yet... As he gazed at her it came upon him that if he were still in love, it was not with Valérie, but with that old passion which, years ago, had exalted him to the stars.

"Have you nothing to say?" Her voice broke raspingly across his thoughts. "Are all your excuses done?"

"Perhaps. Yet not so much that a Habsburg must trail her love in vain in front of...." she stumbled over the word she would use and at length added, "le premier venu!"

"There never was any thought of that in my mind," he said. "Our stations were different, Valérie, but our love was equal. I loved you very dearly. But I had to put you out of my life. Would you have me act a part with you? You see, I try to be frank!"

Like a cloud her anger lifted and she sighed. He saw that tears stood in her eves.

But she said it affectionately, caressingly, with the laughter shining through the sheen of her tears. Then she grasped the lapels of his coat.

"But you're not playing with me, Godfrey?" she said, all passion again. "I can wait a little for you to come back to me if you are sincere in what you say. No! No protestations, my friend! I can see you looking so cold, so English, when Gellert and the rest pay me the due of my rank. But don't deceive yourself, Godfrey! My power over these people is absolute.... absolute, do you understand?.... and a time may come when you will be glad of my help..."

He felt a sudden sense of danger. What did she mean by that? Did she suspect him?

"Don't despise my friendship, Godfrey! And be frank with me. Remember that if I can love, I also can hate!..."

"This gloomy room gets on my nerves," she said. "Come, we will go to the drawing-room and I will play you Chopin. Chopin is so soothing...."

But in the quietude of his bedroom that night, as swiftly he made his preparations for the desperate mission he was planning, her words came back to him. There had been menace in her tone. What if they had recognized him as a spy from the first and had used Valérie to lure him to Kés? Well, he would beat them at that...

This was January 15th. In twenty-four hours' time, on the night of the 16th, he must quit Kés to meet the Orient Express. This night he had decided to test his chances of getting away. He knew that Stefan prowled about the upper floors of the castle throughout the night; but he had to find out whether any watch were kept below.

At the end of the corridor where his bedroom lay, and conveniently situated at the head of the stairs, he had noticed a small housemaid's pantry where mops, buckets, and the like were stored. With the exception of his bedroom it was the only room in use on the second floor and the door was not locked as all the others were. It was situated on the same side of the corridor as his bedroom and, like it, looked out upon a broad deep leaden gutter which extended below the windows the full length of the house. Godfrey's plan was to climb out of his window and, making his way along the gutter, enter the pantry by the window. Once in the room he would wait for the passing of the night watchman on his monotonous patrol to dart downstairs.

He blew out his candle and softly raised the window. From the corridor outside resounded the gentle creaking which the experience of many waking nights had taught him preceded the heavy footfall of Stefan. With one leg over the sill he waited for the man to pass his door, then dropped quietly out into the gutter.

The night was cold and still and dark. Save for the dim sheen of the window-panes all was blackness about him. On this side the castle fell sheer to the deep rushing river that bathed the foot of the rock on which Kés stood. The freshness of the wind upon his face reminded him of that dizzy drop which by daylight he had often contemplated in hopeless despair. He turned his back on the black void, and face to the wall, began to creep along....

This night his luck was in. On his way down to dinner that evening he had made sure that the pantry window was unlatched, and now it swung back easily to his thrust. Through the half-open door of the darkened room he watched Stefan's lantern approach up the stairs and caught a glimpse of the watchman's shaggy silhouette as it melted into the shadows of the corridor. Then, noiseless in his stockinged feet, Godfrey crept forth...

He had an electric torch in his pocket, but it was reserved only for an emergency. He meant to find his way in the dark. The map of his route was sharply clear in his mind; first, through the swing-door at the foot of the staircase into the great hall, then across the hall to the service door at the far end and through this to the flagged corridor that led, past a third door, into the large square room where, along one wall, the long and capacious wood-bin stood.

Once he was moving, the depression that all day had borne him down lifted. He felt vigorous, buoyant, ready for anything, for any one. He advanced, to quote the field-service regulations, "in short rushes "—a few swift noiseless steps and then a pause to listen. The castle was filled with the eerie noises that old houses make at night. More than once a cracking or a creaking brought him up, short, tensely watchful in the darkness. But he met no one, and at length, restlessly fingering his torch, he stood beside the wood-bin.

Max Rubis had not failed him. When he had cleared away the logs—a long and nervous business, this—there, in the ray of his lamp, the iron ring of a trapdoor was revealed. Very softly he raised it. There were the wooden steps leading down to a dark and narrow passage, just as Rubis had described. The passage brought one out in a screen of bushes that hung down from the steep hillside behind the little temple in the park.

Godfrey was sorely tempted to descend the steps into the passage. But this formed no part of his plan. To-night he must run no risk; to-morrow would be time enough for that. He closed the trap, replaced the billets and, with infinite care, retraced his steps by the way he had come. He regained the housemaid's pantry without seeing any sign of Stefan, and it was not until he stood once more behind the locked door of his room that he heard the watchman's dragging step in the corridor.

That night he slept better than he had done for a week and was late for breakfast in consequence. When he entered the great hall, he found it deserted save for a tall and bony man who rose from the breakfast-table and, bowing stiffly, introduced himself in the German way.

CHAPTER XIII
Wolfstal

SOON after noon on the day following Virginia's dinner with Von Bartzen, Clive Lome's crimson Benz drew up in the great flagged courtyard of Schloss Wolfstal and deposited Virginia and the Countess Hegedin with her maid at the red-tiled porch. The girl was keyed up to a high pitch of expectation. Action was her antidote against the sense of panic that, every time she thought of Godfrey, was like a dead man's finger laid upon her heart. As she stepped out of the car she realized with a thrill that before noon sounded again from the slated clock-tower above the stable she would know whether Godfrey were alive or dead....

This was Friday, January 16th. Between three and four o'clock the next morning the Orient Express was due to pass Kilometre 224 with the King's Messenger on board. She did not clearly see what she might expect from being present at the rendezvous. She did not even know for sure that the Messenger (who, Clive explained to her, would not, of course, be MacTavish this time) was expecting to see Godfrey; still less, she had to admit with a gin king heart, had she any certainty that Godfrey would again be there.

Clive had done his best to dissuade her from accompanying him. On his return from Vienna by car on the previous day he had reconnoitred the country between Wolfstal and the railway. At Kilometre 224 the line was accessible only over country roads and, ultimately, by a forest track which, with ruts over a foot deep and filled with snow, was quite impracticable for the car. They would have to traverse the forest in the dark on foot. Why not let him go alone to the rendezvous and try to arrange with Godfrey to meet her at a time and place more suitable?

But she would not yield. She was determined to go. Clive's plan, she told him, was all right provided Godfrey were at Kilometre 224 on Saturday morning. But if he did not appear? What then? She had no definite plan in her mind, she admitted readily; but she was confident that she would be better able to decide upon a course of action if she were on the spot than if she had to wait to hear at second-hand from the boy what had happened.

"And, anyway," was her argument that clinched matters, "we're partners. And if there's any danger we'll run into it together."

They had many discussions regarding the mysterious incidents of the three of clubs. By comparing notes they found that both the Baroness Vali and von Bartzen had been profoundly moved, not to say disturbed, by the receipt of the message, for such they took it to be. Hungary, Clive said, was honeycombed with secret organizations. Adherents of the old regime were still carrying on reprisals against the Jews for the terrors of Béla Kun's brief Bolshevist sway; bands of Republicans intrigued against the Regency and Bolsheviks plotted against all. What the exact significance of the three of clubs was he could not imagine. They noted, however, that, while the card that came to the Baroness Vali at Venice was plain, that received by von Bartzen, as well as the symbol on the wall of the Andrassy Avenue, was inscribed with the cipher "31."

To find a plausible pretext for absenting themselves from Wolfstal for the greater part of the » coming night gave them both anxious thought. It was Virginia's resourcefulness that ultimately pointed a way out. Her plan was simplicity itself. After lunch Clive should propose to drive her over to Wolfsbad. There the car should conveniently break down and they would telephone their host to say they would dine at the hotel while the necessary repairs were being done. Later in the evening they would depart, ostensibly to return to the Schloss. In reality they would make for the railway, await the passing of the train, and then go back to Wolfstal, explaining the unearthly hour of their arrival by a story of another breakdown and of being lost in the forest.

"It means telling a string of lies," Virginia said, "and as you're a diplomat, Clive, I think we'll leave the story to you!"

"It'll have to be a good 'un," remarked the boy dubiously. "I think I'll have the mag. go wrong. That's always a safe gambit!"

They foresaw no difficulty in getting away after lunch. The snow lay thick on the ground and the fleecy sky, yellow and lowering at the edges, gave promise of another heavy fall. There would be no shooting for a day or two at least, Count Hector had told them as they walked together before lunch on the terrace overlooking the Italian garden, and he hoped they would amuse themselves in whatever way they liked. His house, he begged them remember, was conducted on English lines and dinner at eight o'clock was the only formal occasion of the day.

Virginia was rather disappointed with Wolfstal. It was a great freestone house of the baroque period with a heavy colonnaded front and a high-pitched mansard roof. It clearly dated from the day when the ambition of every European noble, in emulation of the great Louis, was to build himself a miniature Versailles. She had half expected to see a picturesque chateau lodged, like an aerie, on some inaccessible crag. In its place she found a vast mansion which, with its lodge-gates, its rambling park, its herd of dappled deer huddled beneath the ancient oaks and beeches, reminded her of an English country-seat except for the ruggedness of the surrounding scenery.

Within, the house was furnished in the style of sombre magnificence of the period with gilt furniture, florid pictures, silken hangings and porphyry, mosaic and marble tables and clocks. There were clouds of liveried servants, marshalled by an imposing major-domo, who, with his sweeping favoris, looked as though he had stepped out of an illustration of Gavarni's. The castle was entirely modernized, fitted with electric light and warmed by steam.

Lunch was served in great state with silver plate and liveried footmen. Virginia looked forward to it with some dismay, for, coming down from Budapest in the car, her small talk (in French) with the Countess Hegedin had made little progress. Count Aranyi's sister had spent the greater part of her life on her deceased husband's estates in southern Hungary and, for all she seemed to know of the world beyond, might have passed the time in a Himalayan nunnery.

But, as it turned out, ample food for conversation during the meal was afforded by news of a mysterious death which Count Bruno, the nephew, a scorbutic youth in gold spectacles, a student of medicine at Budapest University, brought back from the village post-office. That morning the dead body of a man had been drawn out of the river near Hacz.

"The man is a Jew," the young Count remarked, sipping his Amontillado; "a bailiff somewhere, I believe. He had been robbing some poor devil of a Christian, I suppose, and had been found out. The Jews are the curse of our unfortunate country."

"You talk like a fool, Bruno!" Count Aranyi remarked. "Max Rubis was a Jew, it is true, but he did his work at Castle Kés very efficiently, I have always heard. We've had enough of this senseless White Terror in Hungary, and I hope that this time at least the police will get after Count Gellert!"

"I'm suggesting nothing," his uncle retorted sharply. "You doubtless heard in the village to-day that there were livid finger-marks, deep impressed, about the throat of this wretched man when he was found in the river. Well, it may interest you to know that on two former occasions within my own experience similar marks were found on the bodies of persons recovered from the river here...."

"Do you know what the peasants round here call Gellert? I thought you didn't. They call him 'The Strangler.' The river from which the bodies of these poor creatures were recovered flows under the walls of Castle Kés...."

"The two previous victims were women. One—do you remember, Sophie?—was our mother's maid, a pretty girl whose beauty, doubtless, was her undoing. One day she disappeared and then—"

"My dear," Count Aranyi replied, "nothing was ever proved against Gellert. He lives like a hermit in his rambling barracks of a castle perched high up on a rock on the edge of the Crows' Forest... the woods you drove through this afternoon, Lome. 'Kés' in Hungarian means 'knife,' and they say the château takes its name from its long narrow shape with its steep roof. No one has ever seen Gellert and apparently he never goes out. He is a cripple, I've been told, and is abnormally sensitive of his deformity. I've not got much influence in our country to-day, but what I have I'm going to use to see that this murder-maniac is brought to justice, whether his victim is a Jew or a Gentile. This time I don't see how the authorities can avoid making an investigation at the castle.... Poor Helene! What a pretty thing she was, do you remember, Sophie?"

"By God!" he added, "I'd like to see that murdering rascal strung up on his own battlements!"

With that he resumed his food and the conversation drifted to the more pleasant topic of the shooting prospects over the week-end.

After lunch Clive drew Virginia aside and made a final attempt to get her to abandon her project of accompanying him to the railway.

"We shall have to foot it the whole blooming way through the forest," he said, looking at her gravely. "It took me an hour yesterday afternoon by daylight; it'll take us at least two in the dark. And the going is devilish stiff. D'you really think you're good for it, Virginia?"

"Clive Lome," she retorted, "I most certainly do. I weigh a hundred and forty pounds; I'm strong as a horse and sound as a bell. But let me tell you this: if I were as crippled as this man Count Aranyi was telling us about at lunch, I'd go with you!"

Grit is always a safe card to play with an Anglo-Saxon and there was admiration in the boy's eyes as he heard her. But, like a true Englishman, he did not voice it at once. Instead he said humorously:

"The trouble about you, Miss America, is that you're so dam' obstinate. D'you know what I think, though?"

They were alone in the morning-room among Count Hector's sporting-prints. With a happy little laugh Virginia leant forward and kissed Clive lightly on the cheek. Then, before he could recover from his surprise, she ran off to her room to change her clothes for the Great Adventure.

But when, in her woolly tarn and thick shooting-suit, she stood at the open door and gazed backward into her cosy bedroom, Common Sense, which is never really on speaking terms with Romance, made a final appeal to her. This dull counsellor now nudged her elbow and showed her the snug room, the dainty dressing-table with its silver fittings, the cheery fire that leaped in the open hearth, the soft bed with its fine linen. Already the short day was drawing in, blurring the outline of the screen of trees outside in the park that, seen through the window, seemed to her like a drop curtain shutting off a stage on which strange scenes might soon be enacted. Surely this excursion into the snowy depths of the forest was the height of folly! And what would it achieve?

But then she thought of Godfrey, her Godfrey, turning his back on the lighted train to meet unflinching what Fate, lurking in the black night, was reserving for him.

Romance was at her side as she closed the door and went down the corridor. Common Sense she left hocking over the fire.

CHAPTER XIV
The Man By The Track

Out of the noiseless fury of the snowstorm Clive's whisper came to Virginia. She could not see him; for the darkness of the winter night was impenetrable, a velvety, blanketing blackness that paralyzed the sense of sight.

At three-ten the Orient Express was due at the granite stone that stood beside the railway track across a hundred yards of freshly drifted snow from the great heap of faggots where they kept watch. Clive had marked down this pile of wood on his afternoon reconnaissance and had cleared out a cavity where the girl might spend the time of waiting sheltered in some measure against the raw night air. They must not appear, he had insisted, until the last moment. Only when they heard the approach of the train would they venture out to the edge of the clearing. He had selected a dense clump of bushes some twenty paces to the right of Kilometre 224 from which they would observe what went forward on the passage of the express.

It was dry inside her cache among the fragrance of the seasoned faggots and comparatively warm. When she thought of the swirling snow masses outside against which they had struggled for hours that night over the ice-filled ruts of the forest road, she felt grateful to the boy for his forethought. From the rucksack on his back he had produced a thermos bottle of steaming coffee and a packet of sandwiches. She had shaken the clinging snow off her thick shooting-coat and heavy woollen muffler and now the hot coffee was bringing the feeling back into her numbed hands and feet. Clive had looked in for a moment to take a drink and eat a sandwich, a tall, slim figure powdered from head to foot with snow. But he would not stay. His place was outside, he said, listening... .

Everything had passed off "according to plan." Clive, after bending an instant over the bonnet of his Benz, spanner in hand, had contrived a most realistic breakdown on the outskirts of Wolfsbad—almost at the doors of the local garage, as it conveniently happened. When Virginia had rallied him on his careful stage management he had soberly told her that her reputation was in his hands and he must be able to rely upon the testimony of the mechanics at Wolfsbad, should any questions be asked about their night away from the Schloss. Count Hector had been informed by telephone as arranged; after dinner at the hotel, Clive had appeared at the garage, like a deus ex machina, and set the car instantly to rights; and the Benz now awaited the outcome of the night, snugly tucked away under an overhanging tree on the confines of the forest.

The woods were absolutely still. The snow deadened all sound. Less than twelve hours before she and Clive had danced to the strains of Count Hector's Victrola on the highly polished parquet of the great hall of the Schloss. Now she might have been on another planet—amid the soft white hills of the moon, for instance—so remote from the clamour and drive of modern life did she seem to be in the isolation of the darkness and the snow.

She sat sipping her coffee and listening: listening.... they had done little else since they had started out on their tramp across the forest. But, the night through, no sound had fallen upon their straining ears other than the snap of frozen snow beneath their feet, the panting of their breath as they plodded painfully forward. They had met not a soul, had seen, indeed, no sign of the dwelling of man save once, when at a cross-roads Clive had switched on his electric torch to mark the way, they had described, down a deserted ride, a long, low roof showing through the trees.

She had no fear for herself; but her spirit was oppressed by anxiety as to what the immediate future would bring forth. What would she do if Godfrey were not there, if once more the clearing was deserted, as she had seen it, at the passing of the train?

And then in the stillness of the night a gentle drumming became audible. She heard it first as a little tapping, that only gradually, and then mainly by its insistent rhythm, impressed itself upon her senses. But in a moment she was on her feet. The drumming had grown to a long-drawn-out panting like the sound of a blow-flame uniformly soft as yet, as now it swelled, now died away.

A shape at the door, sensed rather than seen in that clammy, raw darkness, and Clive's hurried whisper:

Outside the night seized her in its boisterous, icy embrace. The snowflakes whirled madly, unseen, but smarting coldly, unbearably on the cheeks. Breathless, dazed, she bowed her head to the storm, her skirt flattened out against the frenzied onrush of the snow. She felt Clive's hand on her arm as he guided her forward. She could not see him even had she dared to open her eyes to that blinding white onslaught. She struggled gamely along, hearing always and only that single sound, the distant tremor of the approaching express.

Where the forest skirted the railway the trees had been thinned out. They walked on fresh snow laid over a deep carpet of leaves, softly, with not so much as the snapping of a twig to betray them. A vague lightening in the surrounding gloom showed where, ahead, the metals lay.

Where the narrow clearing opened to the sky, the snow, lying deep on either side of the track, re-fleeted the light thrown dimly by the clouds. The outline of the trees was vaguely discernible to the two watchers as, peering from the cover of the bushes, they sought to make out the outline of the kilometre stone.

And then it seemed to Virginia for a moment as though her heart stood still. The thunder of the express was loud in their ears and a reddish light advancing in the heavens heralded its near approach. But she heeded it not. She was staring transfixed at a tall, black shape that, so still she had at first mistaken it for a post, stood between the forest marge and the track.

Not at once had her eyes grown accustomed to the change in the light. But now that she was used to the gloom she could make out the silhouette of a man standing motionless before the granite block. He was heavily muffled up, but she could see that he had a short coat and some kind of peaked headdress which might have been the fur cap that Clive had described. It was too dark to discern his features, but from the angle at which she was watching she was confident that when the train drew up its lighted windows would cast their glow upon his face.

Her instinct was to spring forward and reveal herself to Godfrey. But Clive's quick grip on her arm checked her. They had agreed that neither should address Godfrey until he had accomplished that which had brought him to the train. She clasped her gloved hands tightly before her, staring in rapt intensity through the whirling snowflakes at that immobile form.

Now long echoes rang out from the metals at their feet as, with a sound like the rushing of a mighty wind, the great train thundered nearer. Now the headlights of the engine made yellow blurs through the shifting screen of snow; now as it swung and rocked, a vast black mass flanked by yellow lanes of light, they could see the snow flung high by its passage; now they heard the long grinding of the brakes. Thumping and crashing and hissing, the huge locomotive, front and sides plastered with snow, the very coal in the tender masked in white, swung past, behind it the dark luggage fourgon, and then the endless succession of brilliant windows.

Against the red glow of the furnace a black head, clear-cut like a paper silhouette laid on scarlet lacquer, showed at the side of the engine-driver's cab. Spasmodically, the passage of a conductor along the corridor of the train obscured the brilliance shed from the windows, dappling the yellow lane of light like sunshine playing through foliage.

Majestically and amid clouds of white steam, the great express drew up. The brown-and-gold panelling of the Pullmans was thickly encrusted with rime. Snow half obliterated the white and black notice-boards affixed beneath the windows: "Paris—Bucharest."

At the approach of the train the figure by the kilometre stone had stepped back. He now remained, a dim shape dimly seen through the flurry of snow, his features withdrawn from the radiance of the long line of lighted carriages stretching away into the night. Virginia raised her eyes expectantly to the windows of the express. How high above her head they seemed!

Once more the hush of night had descended upon the forest. Incessantly the snowflakes fell. The train was like a sleeping city. Now and then there issued from the wheels little tired cracking sounds as of metal contracting in the glacial air.

Suddenly, a rattling noise close at hand arrested the girl's attention. A window was lowered. Softly a door swung back. It was at the end of the Pullman immediately to her right, between the clump of bushes where they watched and the kilometre stone. A man's shape, vaguely outlined, was visible in the doorway. At the same moment, amid sundry bursts of steam, the brakes of the train were released. Very slowly the express began to move, gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, swaying a little on its long bogies.

And then the man by the track stepped resolutely forward. Virginia caught her breath with disappointment. He did not move along the train towards her. He waited for its movement to bring the open door level with him. He did not turn his head and his face was still hidden from her. The black fur cap he wore glistened wet in the light.

With a soft "plop" a heavy bag, deftly flung from the train, fell into the deep snow beside the line, as the Pullman, with its idly swinging door, thudded ponderously past Kilometre 224. A hand flashed up to the carriage door. The long line of wagons thumped by in a dancing blaze of light. Then only did the man by the track turn his head. The passing illumination fell full upon his face.

With a little gasp of disappointment Virginia turned to Clive. But the place at her side was vacant.

CHAPTER XV
The House In The Forest

WITH the passing of the express darkness fell upon the forest once more. The roar of the train, as it gathered speed on its resumed journey, died away, the ruby tail-lamp, an ever-dwindling pinpoint, gleaming blood-red for an instant before it, too, was swallowed up in the blackness. Somewhere close at hand Virginia heard the sharp crunching of snow under a heavy boot. Then silence descended again and she was left alone.

She stood in deep perplexity. What had become of Clive? But a moment before he had been beside her; she had felt the pressure of his gloved hand on her arm. Now he was gone, engulfed in this bewildering and horrible darkness that hid even the ever-falling snowflakes from her eyes. What had happened to Godfrey? Why had von Bartzen taken his place?

Alas, for her vaunted determination! She was aimless, planless, and sorely afraid. She, who had boasted to herself that when the moment came she would know how to act, had remained inactive and had let von Bartzen pass unchallenged into the night!

The thought humiliated her. She felt as though she had failed Godfrey. Without Clive, she had to admit it to herself, she was completely at a loss. She had followed blindly in his wake. Woman-like, she had no idea of where she was and the mere idea of finding her way in the endless white waste of forest through which they had tramped for hours filled her with dismay.

In a vain hope that Clive would return she waited at the clump of bushes until her face, her hands and feet ached with the biting cold. At last she had to tell herself that to wait longer was f oily; she might freeze to death. So she turned her back on the railway clearing, and set forth, by the way they had come, through the forest.

At first, where the trees were sparse, she made headway; but, after a hundred yards, the forest grew denser and beneath the treacherous quilt of snow, brambles and the roots of trees brought her again and again to fall. Still she struggled bravely forward, consoling herself with the thought that ultimately she must come to a road, the road they had quitted to cut clear across the forest to the turn.

Then at length she found it. She fell incontinently into a deep ditch half filled with snow below a high bank that bordered the ride. She scrambled out and, dropping to the track, stepped out as briskly as she might in the dark, rejoicing to feel firm ground beneath her feet once more.

As she went she racked her brains to think what could have happened to Clive. He must have left her, perhaps to get a closer view of von Bartzen, and missed his way back to the clump of bushes in the dark. She could not believe he had followed von Bartzen, leaving her alone in the night in the forest.

To her immense relief the snow stopped. The air was drier and there was a faint greyness in the sky. Grey phantom mist shapes, like a regiment of erl-kings, hung among the trees in the marshy bottom skirting the road. The forest was wrapped in that eerie, expectant silence that precedes the birth of a new day.

The lightening of the sky brought fresh courage to Virginia. Hers was a brave, blithe heart that quickly reacted against external forces. She was wet and cold and hungry and, to all appearances, lost in the forest. Her coat and skirt were sodden with wet and from her sopping tarn the icy drops dripped persistently down her neck. She snatched off her cap and shook gleaming beads of moisture from her yellow head.

A road, she told herself, must lead somewhere. This broad drive, on which the drifted snow lay thick, might conceivably bring her to a dead end, in which case she would have to retrace her steps and follow the track in the contrary direction. She pushed resolutely on, walking on the high bank skirting the ride to avoid the deep snow of the roadway.

And then unexpectedly she saw through the trees the long, low roof of a house before her. There was no mistaking it; for its deep thatch of snow stood out white and clear against the black tree-trunks. The next minute she found herself at a cross-roads, one arm of which led straight up to a small timbered veranda.

She remembered then the roof they had seen in the night, in the beam of Clive's torch, adjacent to a cross-roads like this. Did it mean that she was on the right road? But, she told herself, she had had only a glimpse in the dark of this house among the trees and, of course, it was conceivable that there were a dozen houses standing close to the crossings of the forest tracks.

As she approached the house she saw that the three windows looking out on the veranda were close-shuttered. No light was visible anywhere and no smoke rose from the solid chimney-stack that jutted above the roof. The place seemed to be a summer-house of flimsy structure, raised on timber piles a few feet from the ground in a little clearing. There was no attempt at an enclosure of any kind, no gate and no garden.

She mounted a couple of steps to the veranda. A door faced her. Her heart failed her for an instant. She glanced at her watch. The hands pointed to ten minutes to five. She listened. Nothing stirred within. Could she knock people up at this unearthly hour of a winter's morning? What story should she tell them? If they were wood cutters, as they presumably were, she would never be able to make them understand her.

But Virginia was a practical young woman. Alone she would never get out of the forest—she was certain of that. Yet it was urgent she should be back at Wolfstal as soon as possible to obtain assistance to go and find Clive. And there was Godfrey to think about—Godfrey, the very thought of whom made her heart ache....

She rapped firmly on the door. She waited a decent interval and rapped again. Her knocking echoed through the shack; for it was little better. But her summons met with no response. She turned the door-handle; it twisted futilely in her hand. The door was locked.

She went down into the snow again and ploughed her way round to the back of the house. Here, too, beneath a little lean-to was a door, but it was also barred. At this door she hammered, but again without avail.

She returned to the veranda. The house was empty, she was now sure. If she could effect an entrance she could at least await in shelter the coming of the light. She tried the shutters before one of the windows. Of unseasoned wood, they were quite brittle and a vigorous pull broke the fastening. And, oh, joy! the window behind them was not bolted. A little shove and the two wings of the window opened inwards. The next moment she was inside the house.

She felt a trifle nervous as she stood in the long, low room and surveyed her surroundings in the grey light that entered through the open window. The place smelt damp. Suppose, after all, somebody were there asleep behind the door in the opposite wall, or, worse, lying in wait for her with a revolver or a knife! All the stories she had ever read of horrible dramas enacted in lonely forest huts came crowding into her mind... ¦,

Then, ashamed of the tremor in her voice, she repeated the question more firmly, this time in German, Everything remained still. She crossed the room to the farther door and pushed it open. She saw a small bedroom plainly furnished with a camp-bed, a table, a chair. The bed was not made up; but on the mattress was a neat pile of blankets.

She returned to the outer room and flung all the shutters wide. Skins of wild animals were spread here and there on the plain timber floor and hunting trophies hung on the walls. In the open hearth a fire was laid ready for lighting, and on a small table before it tea-things were set out on a tray with a spirit-lamp, a canister of tea, a lemon, and a box of matches.

Virginia's spirits rose. What good fairy had conducted her to those panaceas of weary womanhood, a tea-kettle and a fire? Without hesitation she struck a match and put it to the fire, then, noticing that the wood was damp, assisted matters by recklessly tipping on the flames some of the alcohol in the container under the kettle. After that there was no further trouble from the fire.

She took off her coat and skirt and spread them out on a chair to dry. In her Norwegian sweater worked in bright colours and her trim black silk knickers she might have been a slim young boy. Standing before the glass that hung on the wall of the inner room she dried her hair as best she could with her handkerchief and then, taking a blanket off the pile, for the air in the outer room yet struck chill, returned to the fire.

The fire blazed brightly, the tea-kettle was singing. She brewed herself a cup of tea and leant back sipping it, her feet to the flames.

It was still dark outside. It had begun to snow again and the flakes were wafted against the windows. The wind had risen and from time to time the shutters rattled noisily and the casements shook in their frames.

With the rug across her knees, the ruddy firelight playing on her face, the girl lay back in her chair and gratefully relaxed her limbs. Only now did she realize how infinitely weary she was! And to think that presently, when morning came, she must venture forth again into the snow!

Exhausted as she was with the nervous strain and the physical hardships of the night, she would have slept, only the relentless activity of her brain gave her no respite. What house was this where the tea-table dressed and the fire laid awaited the coining of the master? Or was it a mistress?

With a little start she opened her eyes. She was dozing off. Half waking, half sleeping, she let her thoughts drift. Was it not merely a dream, that adventure in the forest? Suddenly she had a vision of the figure by the track and of von Bartzen's face, seen in the effulgence of the train with the hard, glinting eyes, the bold, beak-like nose... a cruel face, a ruthless face... .

Restlessly she stirred in her chair. What was the little persistent care that lay at her heart? She was dimly conscious of something untoward, some pressing danger which she must consider and remedy.....

Godfrey! What of Godfrey? She was wide awake now, staring with stark unseeing eyes at the flames that hissed as they greedily licked the logs in the hearth. They had gone to find him and had met... von Bartzen. The arch-conspirator, Clive had called him. How had he come to take Godfrey's place?

She recalled the gipsy's strange missive to von Bartzen and the Austrian's hasty departure from the restaurant. What bearing had the three of clubs on von Bartzen's appearance in place of Godfrey at Kilometre 224? The card had been a summons. From whom? To what end? What did the "21" mean, scrawled across the face of the card?

It had appeared, too, upon the rough designation of the symbol which Clive and she had seen on the wall near the Opera-House at Budapest. Was it a date? She considered for a minute. To-day, Saturday morning, was the 17th. Was something preparing for the 21st, something from which it was essential to keep all prying eyes....?

A little frown on her serene young face, she was immersed in thought, letting her mind wander clear away from her surroundings. She looked up with a start. At her feet the fire leaped and spluttered and round the bare walls of the shack long shadows danced and shivered. The wind shook the windows of the house. Something had happened to break her train of thought, something unusual, some sound...

CHAPTER XVI
In The Hour Before Dawn

VIRGINIA stood up abruptly, snatched up her skirt and huddled it on. Then she heard the lock shoot back, the door was flung violently open, and in a whirling burst of snow a man staggered in. For an instant he grappled with the door, hurling his weight against it while the snow blew fiercely into the house and icy blasts of wind tore madly at the rugs on the floor. At last, with a thud that shook the walls, the door slammed, and the stranger turned round slowly. As he caught sight of the slender form silhouetted against the reddish glow from the fire, he drew an automatic swiftly from his pocket and shouted something in Hungarian.

In a faltering voice Virginia began to stammer excuses in German. From an electric torch in the stranger's left hand a brilliant shaft of light fell on the girl's pale and anxious face. Then the beam was shut off and a well-remembered voice said softly:

He was coated with snow from head to foot; ice hung even from his eyebrows and moustache. There were lines under his eyes and about his mouth; his face was drawn and set, and his whole demeanour was marked by an air of nervous haste which Virginia had never seen in him before. But, by the light of the fire, as she shyly looked up at him, she saw that he was smiling down at her.

"At least I've kept my appointment," he whispered. "My darling, what you must have thought of me!"

Impulsively he bent down, and their lips met. Presently, with a little sigh, the girl murmured happily:

"I've been so frightened, Godfrey, so worried about you. But you'll look after me now, won't you?"

"Jenny," he said—and his voice was very grave—"what crazy impulse induced you to follow me here? How did you find me, and where do you come from?"

"You look simply all in, Godfrey," she said. "Sit right down and while I give you some tea, I'll tell you about it."

"Sweetheart," he said wearily, "I can't stop. In an hour it will be getting light, and I must be back before then. Is there no one here but you?"

"The house is empty," she told him, and, putting her two slim hands on his shoulders, gently forced him down into the chair she had vacated. She made some fresh tea, and, while he drank it, told him of Clive Lome's adventure in the Orient Express, and how it had led the two of them to follow Godfrey's trail to Hungary.

"By Gad!" he said, "this means they got my last report. And all this time I've been living in a fool's paradise. But London must have warned me. The message must have been intercepted...."

He seemed to be thinking aloud as he leant forward, his chin resting on his hand, staring moodily into the fire. He turned quickly to Virginia.

He listened eagerly while she narrated the events of the night. But when she told how von Bartzen had taken his place, he sprang to his feet and began striding up and down the room.

"I thought as much," he said bitterly. "Tonight they had a man permanently posted in the corridor outside my bedroom. I waited for a solid hour by the clock hoping that he would move, or at least turn his head so that I could get by. At last a rat disturbed him, and when he went after it I took my chance. My only hope was that the train might be very late. But when I saw the snow round the kilometre stone all trampled down... ."

"I've just come from there. I was too late, of course. Now I'm left with my report. I risked coming out here to the villa to see if I could find my servant to take my dispatch across the frontier. But he's not here. And, of course, that devil von Bartzen has handed in a bogus message to mislead my people in London. By George! It's the devil!"

"One thing is sure," he said, stopping suddenly in front of Virginia, "you must go away at once, Jenny, dear. I can look after myself all right, darling, but I should go to pieces if I thought you were in danger. I just love the.... the loyalty and the tenderness which brought you to look for me, but, oh, Jenny, girl, you must go straight back to Paris... ."

"Godfrey," she said suddenly, "you say you have a dispatch to send. Why shouldn't I take it across the frontier for you?"

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, looking at her. "By Jove! You could.... and Clive Lome could go with you...."

"But I've lost Clive," she said. "We got separated in the dark. I told you. And, oh, Godfrey, I'm terribly afraid that he followed von Bartzen to recover that pouch and that something has happened to him."

"That's what I keep on telling myself," she answered. "But what else could have happened?"

"If von Bartzen has got him," he said, "he would take him off to Kés. But, whatever has become of Clive, Jenny, I want you to get out of Hungary as fast as you can. And in this way you can help me as well.

"I've got an emergency route for messages to London, to be used only in quite exceptional circumstances. As long as it is only sparingly utilized it's perfectly reliable and will involve you in no danger. Listen, then! Here's my dispatch. At two o'clock this afternoon the express from Budapest to Vienna leaves Hacz station. I want you to take my report and catch that train. You will have time to go back to Wolfstal, collect your things, and make your excuses to Aranyi. This train stops for twenty minutes at Pressburg on the other side of the frontier. Outside the station, on the right-hand side of the square where the cabs are, you will find the Cafe Gloria. Go in there and hand my dispatch to the woman at the cash-desk. Say 'From Herr Neumann'; don't forget that, as it's the identification signal. That's all that's required; she'll do the rest..."

"I've added a word or two explaining the contretemps," he said, giving her the message. "If this report gets to Pressburg this afternoon—as it will if you manage to catch that train—it will be in London to-night, in time to counteract the effect of that bogus dispatch which the King's Messenger will have had wired home in code from Budapest this morning. This is my only chance, Jenny, and I know you won't fail me."

"You know I won't," she said simply. "But, Godfrey, I'm... I'm scared to leave you here alone. And you've told me nothing about your mission."

His hand stole up and clasped hers as it rested on the rough damp frieze of his jacket.

"I gave my word to speak of it to no one," he replied. "Do you think I ought to break that promise?"

"When I sometimes wondered whether you would misunderstand my failure to meet you in Paris," he said, "your little ring always comforted me. I never doubted you would trust me, Jenny..

"Tell me at least what you're going to do!" she whispered. "Godfrey, I'm so terribly afraid for you!"

"Oh, Godfrey!" she cried in high alarm, "be careful of that man; be careful! He's dangerous. If you'd seen his face in the forest to-night! And there's something mysterious about him, too!"

Then she told him of her meeting with von Bartzen in Budapest and of the incident of the playing-card. At the mention of the three of clubs, with the "21" scrawled across it, Godfrey put her from him and stood up. All the colour had faded from his face.

"The twenty-first!" he muttered. "The twenty-first! And to-day is the seventeenth! Give me back that message!"

He dropped into the chair at the table again and pencilled a few words hastily at the foot of the dispatch. Outside the wind tore savagely at the shutters. Already it was light enough to descry the snowflakes that danced and eddied at the windows; but the day had not yet broken.

"I understand," she answered. He glanced apprehensively at the window and its patch of lightening sky.

"To Kés?" she faltered. Her eyes were wide with horror. "You are staying there?" He nodded.

"Till to-night, when von Bartzen forestalled me," he said, "my luck was in. We had an agent in the castle who kept me supplied with information about.... well, about various curious happenings that interested my chief. But one day our obliging young man got the wind up and bolted. The very day he went, by the most amazing stroke of fortune, I ran, purely by chance, into an old friend who was staying at the castle and invited me to join the party. What do you think of that for a piece of luck?"

He looked up smiling, but found only terror staring at him out of the girl's eyes.

"This agent you had at Kés," she said in a strained voice—"what was his name, Godfrey?"

"Rubis," he replied—"Max Rubis, a Jewish gentleman, and not very stout-hearted. He bolted with thirty quid of our good money, too, the skunk!"

"Godfrey!" she whispered, "this Max Rubis was found strangled in the river yesterday!"

In wild tumult the wind howled round the house while the shutters banged sullenly against the weather-boarding.

"Ah!" was Godfrey's impassive comment, "is that so? They stick at nothing, Count Gellert and his friends." His face had hardened. "I wonder if they've done away with poor Milós, too!"

"Godfrey," she cried, "you don't dream of going back to this place? Listen! Do you know what this man Gellert is called round here? His nickname is 'The Strangler.' He's a... a monster, a murder-maniac. To go back, now that they know who you are, is sheer suicide. You'll not be so foolhardy as that?"

"But," she protested wildly, "it's not your job! You're not a Secret Service man, Godfrey! It's.... it's sheer murder to send you on a mission of this sort! Oh, my dear, my dear, for God's sake don't go back to Kés, I implore you!"

Very gently he drew her to him. He was serene and cool; but the tears stood in her eyes.

"Jenny, dear," he said, "you wouldn't have me be a quitter, would you? I must go through with this to the end. I've got to go back...."

"But, Godfrey," she cried, "you are blind! Don't you understand that you walked into a trap? Coincidence, indeed! This old friend of yours was simply a decoy!"

Now mark how Chance makes sport of us poor mortals. If Virginia, in her story of Clive's adventure in the train, had told Godfrey of their suspicions of the Baroness von Griesbach's connection with the attack on Euan MacTavish, or if Godfrey had mentioned to Virginia the name of the friend who had invited him to Kés, the latter part of this story might never have had to be written. But, as sometimes happens when two people have a great deal to tell one another, the incident of the Baroness Vali's visit to Clive and Euan in the train was of capital importance as it ultimately proved to be, was somehow missing from Virginia's story, whether she forgot it or whether she thought she had mentioned it.

As for Godfrey, the girl's suggestion that Valérie had been a decoy gave an entirely new direction to his thoughts. He had met Valérie, he now remembered, in the afternoon of Thursday, the day on which Euan had been attacked. If the agent who had stabbed Euan and taken Godfrey's report had left the train at Hacz, he would have had plenty of time to reach Kés and inform Valérie of Godfrey's presence in the neighbourhood. His meeting with Valérie had been a chance encounter—there was no doubt about that; but had she used it to lure him to Kés?

Doubts crowded into his mind. Had he, filled with admiration of his own perspicacity, allowed himself to be hoodwinked? He felt himself colour up at the thought. He had meant to tell Virginia about Valérie. He had, after all, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide. But now he felt reluctant to speak. No man likes to stand branded as a fatuous fool in the eyes of the woman he loves; and Godfrey could not rid himself of the feeling that he had been duped.

Taking his silence to be a sign of his weakening, Virginia renewed her pleading.

"You could come to Wolfstal," she urged. "You would be in safety there. Count Aranyi just adores the English and, what's more, he is bitterly hostile to this Count Gellert. He told us at lunch yesterday that he meant to use all his influence to bring this murder home to him. Aranyi will help you. Keep clear of Kés, Godfrey! I don't know what your mission is, but work it from the outside. Don't go back to the castle!"

He laid his cheek against hers, and, his arms about her, quoted, half whimsically, half wistfully:

"True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield:

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you, too, shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more."

"I shall be so anxious, so dreadfully, dreadfully anxious," she whispered, her face buried against his coat.

"In a little while, dearest," he said, "my work will be done and I shall come to you in Paris. Till then, my dearest dear, take care of yourself. I shall know no peace of mind till you are well out of Hungary!"

"To see you in this old shack," he went on, "is to me the realization of a happy dream. So many evenings, while the wind whistled round the house as it whistles now, I have sat there with my pipe over the fire, thinking of you, longing for you, Jenny, wondering what your answer would be. To have you here beside me, in my arms, seems so unreal that I keep on feeling that in a minute I shall wake up and find I dreamed it all!"

"Promise you will send me word to Paris, when you can, to say you are all right!" she begged.

"The east is growing light," he said. "I'll have to run for it if I'm to be back in my bedroom at Kés before the sun is up. I hate to leave you, darling, and there's so much I wanted to say!"

"You see this track that leads from the veranda? When it is daylight, take the first path to the right and follow it as far as you can go. It will bring you out on the main road to Wolfstal. It's under two miles; you can't miss the road. If Clive has not got back to Aranyi's, will you be frightened to go on to Vienna alone?"

"I'm used to travelling by myself," she replied soberly. "It's you I'm frightened about," she added, her hand on the lapels of his coat.

"I shall come through all right," he answered looking fondly at her, "if only for what awaits me at the end of my journey."

"How do you know what that is?" she returned shyly, "since you have never asked me for the answer I was to give you in Paris...."

"I read it in your eyes when I first saw you tonight!" he said, and took her in his arms again.

Desperately, passionately she clung to him as he kissed her. Then came an icy blast of snow and wind, the fire belched smoke and flame, the door slammed, and he was gone.

CHAPTER XVII
An Impulse And What Came Of It

UNDER a cloak of quiet reserve, Godfrey Cairsdale possessed an unusually active and fertile brain. Those who did not know him well were apt to regard his habitual calm either as a deliberate pose or else as the manifestation of a mind indolent or merely placid.

Neither interpretation was correct. In reality, as Virginia FitzGerald knew, Godfrey's unruffled mien was the armour he had chosen to don to shield a temperament of keen sensibility and a mentality whose outstanding characteristic was self-reliance. Reserve was second nature to Godfrey Cairsdale. He had become accustomed to fighting things out for himself. In his quiet way he seemed to welcome difficulties, his restless, resourceful brain grappling with them tenaciously, shrewdly. Virginia had been astonished to see with what reluctance he had opened his thoughts to her, timorously, as though a confidence were an impertinent attention.

Thus only gradually and piecemeal had she learnt from him of the unending fight he had had to make to break away from the Diplomatic Service in the war and take a commission. She knew ultimately from others that he had risked his whole career on his determination to play a man's part; he told her in his rather cynical way only how he had at length manoeuvred his chiefs into such a position that they had to release him to take the commission which carried him to France on active service for eighteen months until a severe wound sent him back to England and the Foreign Office.

He must have made a good soldier, the girl used to think, for there was daring as well as doggedness behind the steady grey eyes. He would never speak seriously of his service in the field; but she noticed that the Military Cross led the little bar of miniature decorations which, at official receptions, was pinned to the lapel of his diplomatic uniform.

Godfrey Cairsdale's mind was busy now, as in the half-light of the coming day he hurried through the white forest on his way back to Kés. In his quiet fashion he was enjoying himself. He loathed the routine of diplomacy, and he revelled in the vicissitudes of this strange mission of his as he had delighted in almost every day of his service at the front.

He was fully alive to the dangers of his situation. He knew that he was up against the finest military brains in Central Europe, and that, in the isolation of Castle Kés, his speedy removal, which would be the price of his detection, was an operation from which neither Gellert nor any of them, except perhaps Valérie, would shrink. It would involve them, moreover, in very little risk.

But he had no intention of putting himself in their power again. His report, which he had given to Virginia, would be in London that night. This was January 17th. The decisive day was the 21st. London, therefore, had four days in which to act. His duty, accordingly, was simple. He must contrive to remain within the castle, unobserved yet observing, and, above all things, able to maintain intact his line of communication with the rear—that is, the secret passage.

He realized that the task he had set himself was not easy. He had made up his mind not to return to his bedroom; for, he told himself, the best way to avoid, or at any rate delay, detection was to create the impression that he had escaped. This the open window of his room and his footmarks in the snow of the gutter were certainly calculated to convey. The castle had rows of disused rooms; of hiding-places, therefore, there was no lack. The trouble would be to find one that would not hamper his freedom of movement.. .

Through an opening in the trees the rounded cupola of the little temple in the park now showed up greyly before him. It was five minutes to six. He had cut things very fine. Though not actually a part of the servants' quarters, the room in which the wood-bin stood lay between them and the great hall, and he knew he would have to proceed very warily in order not to be surprised by a servant as he emerged from the trapdoor.

He skirted the temple, a graceful rococo structure in white marble, with sides open to the air, where, on a pillar placed in the centre of the tesselated pavement, the heart of a former Gellert of Kés reposed in an alabaster urn. Now he had ducked beneath the screen of bushes on the farther side, and, with a hand upon the clammy wall, was guiding his way along the narrow passage.

As he raised the lid of the bin a distant clatter of dishes fell upon his ears. The room was quite dark. Godfrey, standing among the wood blocks, thrust his head out above the edge of the bin and listened. From the door on the left, through which, at the end of a long passage, the kitchens lay, came amidst sundry bangs and crashes, the sound of a man singing. On the right, however, where, through another door, the flagged corridor led to the great hall, all was perfectly still. Noiselessly the young man pushed the lid of the bin right back and, swinging his legs across its side, dropped silently to the floor.

He had formed a plan, such as it was. The staircase leading to the second floor where his bedroom was, continued upwards to a third and fourth floor. In all the time he had been at Kés he had never seen any one descending the stairs to the second floor; he had, accordingly, surmised that these upper floors were disused. He had once ventured to take a fleeting glimpse at the third floor and had seen a line of closed doors. But voices from below had alarmed him, and he had crept away without daring to prospect further. It was on the cards that the empty rooms on the third floor, like those on the second, were locked. But he must risk that. If the third story offered no secure hiding-place, he would try the fourth. If not there.... 'A step that rang on the flagged corridor through the door on the right broke in upon his thoughts. Like a flash his mind grappled with the new situation. He had closed the lid of the bin, and to spring back into his hiding-place among the loose billets would, he knew, make such a clatter as would infallibly betray him. The footsteps were quite close now and a yellow light shone under the door.

He might have risked discovery by scrambling back precipitately into the bin and thence through the trapdoor into the secret passage. But the young man was shrewd; if the secret passage were discovered, his way of retreat would be cut off and he would be delivered bound into the hands of the enemy. The secret passage might avail him in the last resort; but for the moment he had his pistol. H he were compelled to flee by the way he had come he would, he resolved, leave no witness to betray him...

The bin did not extend the whole length of the side wall; there was a gap between it and the right-hand wall in which the door leading to the flagged corridor was set. And looking at the door, Godfrey realized that when it opened it would cover the gap and conceal a man who crouched there from the vision of the person entering, unless, after the door had swung back, the newcomer should turn round. In two noiseless strides he reached the corner, and, his hand about the cold butt of his pistol, dropped on one knee and waited.

It takes long to set down in print. Actually Godfrey had only a second or two in which to reject the obvious solution of seeking to regain the secret passage and adopt the other plan. But, as he sank down in his corner, he bitterly cursed his luck. Too late to change his mind, even as the door began to open, he recognized the curious tripping step that echoes hollow on the flags.

He would have known that dragging gait in a thousand. It was Gellert's. The man was stone-deaf, and, to regain the passage, Godfrey might have made enough noise to wake the dead without attracting the dwarf's attention! Too late now..... He squatted in his corner and, with a fascinated stare, watched the door swinging slowly inward...

Beyond in the kitchen the unseen singer pursued his song. He was chopping wood now: Godfrey could clearly hear the splintering crash of the hatchet, the rattle of the sticks. The door, as it swung back, shut out from the watcher's view the man that crossed the threshold. With a dull sound it closed again.

The lord of Kés, in the black velvet coat which he invariably wore, stood there, an old-fashioned lantern in one hand, a length of cord in the other. Upon that piece of thin rope dangling from the small dimpled hands Godfrey fixed his eyes, while the chill of horror seemed to paralyze his limbs.

Once inside the room Count Gellert stopped. He raised his grotesque head and sniffed. To Godfrey's overstrained nerves it seemed as though the dwarf could scent the presence of a human being. Once he moved the lantern to and fro in front of him. Would he look behind? Now Godfrey's hand hung down beside him, his automatic pressed close to his thigh.

But without looking round the dwarf moved on, and Godfrey breathed again. A crazy impulse was in his mind; his saner self rebelled against it, but, as the door at the far end of the room fell to behind the dwarf, it brought the young man to his feet, propelled him forward in Count Gellert's wake. As he reached the door he heard, on the other side, the rattle of a key in a lock. He waited, a hinge creaked, then silence fell again. He pushed open the door and slipped through.

"The secret of defence is attack," he had read in one of those spirited handbooks for the use of the infantry which, during the war, the red tabs used to compose in the cloistered peace of G.H.Q. Some sentiment of the sort lay at the base of the reckless prompting which he now obeyed. The more he knew of what the other side was doing, the more effectively he might withhold himself from its clutches, was his argument. As a start he resolved to see for himself what the ominous cord in "The Strangler's" hand might portend... .

A low iron door, which he did not remember to have noticed before, stood at his elbow ajar. From the flight of stone steps upon which it opened mounted the indefinable odour of the wine-cellar, that odd blend of tan and cork, sealing-wax and garden mould, which woke in Godfrey's mind genial memories of excursions with the butler at his father's house on Christmas morning to decant the wine for dinner.

As Godfrey looked down the stairs he saw the dwarf's lantern disappear at the bottom. He followed after, counting as he went.... fifteen stairs. At the foot of the flight he saw a dim glower of light, which presently vanished.

The steps led down to a passage running right and left. It was pitch dark, with that heavy impenetrable darkness one finds below ground. Godfrey turned to the right, following the direction in which the light had vanished. He had not taken a dozen steps when his foot struck a wall. He had reached the end of the passage.

He dared not switch on his torch until he knew what had become of Gellert. He had vanished; there must be a door. With his hands be began to feel cautiously over the surface of the wall.

Here it was, with a massive lock, on the opposite side of the passage from the staircase. He strained at the door gently; it was fast and there was no handle. He listened; the silence was absolute. It was as though Gellert had disappeared in the very earth.

Still not venturing to show a light, he felt his way farther along. Presently he came to a recess with shelves let into the brickwork. His hands encountered the smooth cold surface of bottles. There were three such niches, and then the passage ended.

He leant against the wall and wondered what he should do. He had drawn blank here with a vengeance. Was ever a man in such a quandary? Every minute he lingered his chances of whirling his way undetected to the upper floors diminished, and yet he was strangely loath to abandon Gellert's trail. He wondered what devilry the dwarf was up to....

A step on the stairs above him sent him springing backwards into the first recess, which was some six paces, clear of the bottom of the flight. With racing pulse he waited. A lantern appeared. He withdrew to the farthest corner of his niche. A heavy foot grated on the stone stairs. Then there was a click and a long silence.

"His sleigh is back, Herr Graf. Baron von Bartzen is asking for you urgently. Will you go up, he says, as he wishes to be off again immediately..."

Godfrey heard feet grate on the floor of the passage. Then came the sound of voices that, reverberating from the vaulted roof, seemed so close that, for one agonizing instant, Godfrey felt certain that the two men were coming to his recess. But in a little the murmur of their voices diminished and at last died away. Silence, then a crash, the click of a bolt shot in a lock.

CHAPTER XVIII
In Which Count Gellert Receives A Rebuff

AT a window of the tower room the Archduchess Valérie stood and gazed down into the valley that, far below, lay spread out at the foot of Kés. She was watching a sleigh, a black speck against a dazzling white background, that had shot out from under the low archway of the castle and was now gliding rapidly down the road that led to the valley.

There was a tap at the door. Baroness von Matsera, in a knitted shawl and mittens, her face blue with cold, was there.

Valérie stood with her back to the window, crushing a tiny lace handkerchief in her nervous fingers. She was restless and palpably anxious.

"Well?" she cried, the moment the stunted form of the dwarf appeared on the threshold.

Then, his beady eyes fixed searchingly on the girl's face, he tripped across the room to where she stood.

"He could not wait. He took the sleigh back to the forest. The situation is grave, very grave, Imperial Highness. Unless we strike swiftly, it will be too late! She motioned him to a chair; but she herself remained standing, her foot tapping the stone floor impatiently.

"He met the Orient Express in Herr Cairsdale's place and received the pouch destined for the Englishman. London's instructions show that the British Secret Service know much—too much, Madame—about our enterprise. Von Bartzen's presence here is known and notified to Cairsdale. Trommel, as you know, arrives here this afternoon. That is known in London, too. Nothing seems hidden from these people, sapristi..."

"True, they have no information on that point. In fact, they ask Herr Cairsdale urgently for information as to the identity of the Third Club. Mark well, Madame, that they know even the symbol of our undertaking!"

"That is my view, Madame; von Bartzen's also. Colonel Trommel is bringing with him the Chief of the Air Staff and will submit the plan of operations to the Three. His organization is perfect down to the last gaiter-button. Von Bartzen guarantees that, as far as Austria is concerned, it will be the same to him whether we strike, say the day after to-morrow, the 19th, or on the 22nd, as originally planned, and promises that Trommel also will be agreeable. Thus, Imperial Highness, it depends only on the Third Club, whoever he may be!"

Valérie was silent for a moment. She turned away her head, and her eyes sought the dazzling snow-scape without.

"Then we will hold the deciding meeting this evening. Here, in this room, at seven o'clock."

"The others," the dwarf said, "will be glad of the assurance. In his letters Colonel Trommel shows himself to be very dissatisfied at this policy of secrecy!"

"Dissatisfied, is he? Does this man of wire and wood, this machine-made Prussian, realize that every previous attempt to restore the monarchy has been ruined by the hopeless indiscretion of our supporters? When that poor fool, Kapp, made his coup in Berlin, there were hundreds, nay, thousands, in the secret. When my unfortunate kinsman, His Majesty King Karl, sought to regain his throne, on each occasion his plans were talked about for days before from Prangins to the Iron Gate. No, no, Gellert, the Hungarian representative is right. Of the three states Hungary is the only sure and genuine monarchy, and when the Third Club gives the signal, I have the assurance that the country will rise to a man. Since I am to be proclaimed Queen of Hungary, I'll have no indiscretion, do you understand? and you can tell Colonel Trommel so from me!"

"On the Hungarian side there has been no bavardage," said Valérie. "I only hope we can say as much of Trommel and von Bartzen!"

"Undoubtedly!" asserted the dwarf. "And yet," he added with a spiteful look, "if Your Imperial Highness will permit me to speak frankly, it seems scarcely politic to some of us to keep this English spy at the castle..."

A slow flush spread over the girl's pallid cheeks; her nostrils dilated ominously, and her fingers drummed on the back of the chair before her.

"Indeed?" she observed. "Yet it occurs to me it were better he should stay under observation at Kés, where he can do no harm, than be free to roam over the countryside and spy at his leisure...."

An ugly smile broke round the Count's thin lips. "Perhaps!" he remarked. "But what if he has others to do the roaming for him?"

The dwarf shuffled his monstrous hump in a gesture that in any one else would have been a shrug of the shoulders.

"He's safe in his bedroom, locked up with a guard on the door. No, this was a woman."

"No. But he discovered small footprints in the snow behind a clump of bushes on the edge of the clearing."

Nervously, the girl's fingers toyed with the long string of jade she wore about her neck.

"I have found that out. It is a Miss Virginia FitzGerald, an American, from Washington!"

"Word came to me early this morning that a young American lady and an attache in the English Diplomatic Service were missing from Schloss Wolfstal, where they arrived yesterday. Count Hector Aranyi has sent out a party to search for them..."

He stopped, and stared at Valérie as though to gauge the effect of his disclosure.

"There were the footprints of a man beside the woman's in the snow by the clearing!" he announced impressively. "Moreover, by an unfortunate accident this girl happened to see the summons for the meeting on the 21st which the gipsy, Rákos, handed to von Bartzen!"

"Herr Gott!" she exclaimed and stamped her foot, "will there never be an end to these indiscretions? What was Colonel von Bartzen doing that such a thing should happen? Speak, Count Gellert! I am waiting!"

"The Colonel protests he is not to blame, Madame. He knew this American girl in Washington and, meeting her in Budapest, asked her to dinner. He had, of course, no suspicion that she was acting for the British Government..."

"He says that the card which Rákos passed to him dropped in the girl's lap. Von Bartzen quite thought he had allayed the American's suspicions—he told her some plausible story or other—until, on his mentioning to me his discovery of these woman's footprints in the snow, I informed him of the mysterious disappearance of this Miss FitzGerald from Wolfstal..."

"Imperial Highness, this is what I think. As we were unable to dispatch any reply to those two messages to Herr Cairsdale from the British Government which we intercepted, London grew suspicious and sent this girl to see if Herr Cairsdale met the Orient Express last night..."

"The English attache might equally well be the principal," objected the Archduchess questioningly.

"Scarcely, Madame. He is a mere boy, von Bartzen says. Also he is a friend of Aranyi, and probably arranged the invitation to Wolfstal for the girl. I think he went with her to the train merely to keep her company."

"Undoubtedly, Madame. Von Bartzen goes so far as to say that Herr Cairsdale and this girl are certainly acquainted with each other. Her uncle, the Honourable Andrew Fitzgerald, is a high functionary of the American Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His house is a meeting-place of the diplomatic world at Washington. You remember that Mr. Cairsdale spent many months at Washington at the Arms Conference last year. He has spoken of it several times...."

"Unquestionably, Imperial Highness. They always choose them for their good looks...."

Again a mischievous grin flitted across the mannikin's hideous mask. The Archduchess sat down. She seemed listless and weary. For a moment she studied her reflection in an old lacquer mirror that hung on the wall opposite her.

"As pretty as a picture, Madame. A blonde angel, von Bartzen calls her. He declares she is just the sort of woman with whom a dark man like Herr Cairsdale would fall in love...."

At last the girl was moved. That thrust had pierced the armour of her hauteur. She rose abruptly, and the Count, taking his cue, scrambled from his chair to the ground.

"May it please Your Imperial Highness," he said formally, "Colonel von Bartzen asked me to convey this urgent warning. He says that no time should be lost in putting the Englishman under lock and key....

"Better get rid of him, Madame!" he piped in a wheedling tone. He stretched out his arms, the short squat fingers extended clutching. With his wizened and puckered dwarf's face, he might have been an elf child in its cot grasping at the air with the indeterminate gesture of babyhood. But there was malign intent in the glance he flashed at the Archduchess out of his pale expressionless eyes. Somewhere within the castle a clock began to strike. It beat out the four quarters on a bell, and then, on a deeper note, boomed eight times.

"So easy," the mannikin wheezed in his cracked falsetto, "so very easy. And no risk. You remember Rubis, Madame?"

"There have been questions asked in the neighbourhood about Rubis...." she began.

"This time there will be none," the dwarf broke in. "In a few hours from now a pine in the Crows' Forest will bear strange fruit. A little letter in the suicide's pocket will explain everything. No, no, there will be no malicious gossip, I promise you, Madame."

"Let me get rid of the Englishman!" he pleaded. "A length of rope... it is not difficult, believe me!"

She clasped her hands before her, her gaze roving out across the valley lying silent under the snow.

"It will come to that, Valérie," said Gellert. "When did a Habsburg let a man stand in his way? You, the only real man in this once great family of yours, will crush this English spy. Oh, my queen"—he dropped on his knee, a pitiably grotesque figure, his little arms stealing up to imprison her hand—"what could not you and I do together with this ancient, valiant land? I am malformed, a horror, a poor wretch that lives in a soundless prison. And I, that worship beauty, am doomed to spend my existence fettered to this monstrous shape. But there is beauty in my mind, Valérie, and ambition and the will to rule! In this stunted body of mine dwells a strength of soul that would steel you to every deed of violence that the ascent of a throne demands...."

"Never before have I seen you irresolute," he panted. "The handsome airs of this Englishman have paralysed your will..."

"Beauty is only skin-deep," he pursued. "It will not five forever. But what you and I, my Valérie, might accomplish on the throne of Hungary will endure for centuries after this Englishman has been carried, a withered old man, to the grave..."

"If you will face ridicule," he urged, regardless of the scorn blazing from her face, "if you will see only the light of my intellect shining clear through this hideous veil with which Nature has enveloped my soul, together, oh, my Queen, we will mount to the stars...."

"This is your house, Count Gellert"—she scanned him from head to foot, contemptuously, as she spoke—"and I cannot control your actions. But I have friends who can if this should happen again. Do you understand me?"

Slowly the Archduchess rubbed her hand with her handkerchief. It was as if she sought to wipe out the memory of the scene. The dwarf, who saw the gesture, turned away his head, his face contracting with a spasm as though of pain.

"He went back to the forest. They are trying to follow up the trail of the American girl. It is not easy with all this fresh snow about..."

Gellert stepped backward to the door, his face gravely impassive. But as soon as he had turned his back on the room his expression changed to one of black fury. His fingers, the nails bitten to the quick, opened and closed like claws.

But when, five minutes later, he burst unannounced into Valérie's presence in the tower room, his face was white with fear. The Englishman's bedroom was empty, he said: Herr Cairsdale had disappeared.

CHAPTER XIX
Count Gellert's Workshop

THE slamming of the door at the head of the stairs echoed ominously in Godfrey's ears. There might, of course, be an exit beyond the door through which Count Gellert had vanished. But Godfrey did not think this likely. The passage, with its three shallow niches, was little other than a groove scooped out of the living rock and faced with stone or brickwork. There were no windows, though from the freshness of the air, he knew that there must be some system of ventilation.

He pulled out his electric torch; switched it on. Now that the worst had befallen, he had no fear of consequences. Stepping out of his recess, he went a little way down the passage. The white beam of his lamp, striking the roof, disclosed three iron ventilators, close-grated, set high up in the wall.

Now he was at the door, a tremendous affair, its black paint rough and blistered from many coats, studded at intervals with heavy nails. Affixed to the left door jamb was a flat disc, in the centre a large round knob.

Godfrey examined it with his torch. It reminded him of a fire-alarm. There were no electric bells at Kés, and this seemed to be a bell that pulled out.

But why in a wine cellar? He had seen a bell in a bathroom; but never in a wine cellar.

He tried the door. It was shut fast, and gave not an inch to all his thrusts and tugs. Suddenly he remembered that he had not heard this door slam, as the upper one had done, when Traugott had fetched Gellert away. Nor, now that he came to think of it, had he heard it open. Yet Gellert on arrival had undoubtedly locked it behind him, for it had certainly been fast when Godfrey had first tried it.

But Gellert was stone-deaf. He could hear nothing. Godfrey had tested him. How, then, through a locked door, had Traugott contrived to let the Count know that he was wanted?

Without further hesitation Godfrey seized the knob and tugged it vigorously towards him. His heart was in his mouth; for he was well aware that his deduction might be wrong. But he had guessed shrewdly: the door swung silently inwards. The ray of his light fell athwart a long room.

Quick to avail himself of any refuge from the barren nakedness of the passage, he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. It was beautifully balanced, and the bolt, which the knob had withdrawn, slid back into place quite noiselessly. The torchlight, as he switched it to and fro, showed him cupboards set round the walls, a sink with a dirty brass tap, and, in the far wall, what seemed to be another door concealed by a green rep curtain.

For this he made at once. He was rather disappointed with Gellert's underground room. He had expected to find something mysterious or romantic, with a skull on the desk and perhaps a black cat perched on the back of a chair. But this appeared to be merely a butler's pantry. There was even a calendar on the wall.

A key stuck in the door that lay behind the curtain. The door was not locked. Pushing it open, he found himself looking down a short flight of narrow stairs. At their foot was another door that stood ajar. And the last few stairs were faintly discernible in some feeble rays of daylight that struggled through from the room beyond.

Daylight! Like those dim beams that banished the darkness of that narrow stairway, a little ray of hope came filtering into his mind. He darted down. The door jammed at his push as though some heavy object lay in its path. He squeezed his way in and recoiled quickly.

It was Milós. He was dead. The grey light that fell obliquely from a closely barred window, a mere narrow loophole near the ceiling, showed him the rugged face, the white hair of his old servant. The distorted purple features, the staring eyes told as clearly as the end of cord that hung down from the swollen neck how the old man had died. He lay on his back on filthy straw in a place icy cold that, except for its height, was hardly bigger than a dog kennel, and reeked like the den of a wild beast.

Then, perhaps for the first time, Godfrey Cairsdale realized the danger of his mission. He had undertaken it in a spirit of adventure, without reckoning the cost; and the uneventful life at Kés and the pleasant hospitality of Gellert's reception had lulled him, as he now understood, to a wholly false sense of security. He thought of Gellert, with cord and lantern, tripping down there in the early morning darkness, and he shuddered. If they would thus without compunction murder the servant, what chance, now that the critical hour of the conspiracy was at hand, would the master have?

A hot flood of anger swept over him. Was it for this that the war had been fought? Vagrant memories of those stirring, bitter years, flooded his mind;—the stolid orderly, interrupting a game of bridge in the dug-out with news of a shell in the front line trench and the death of his dearest friend; a fleeting impression of that baby ensign in his company, white with nausea, crying with horror, because one of his men had been blown to fragments over him; the mute reminder of the price of battle in the pile of ownerless kits.... he had so often seen it.... stacked in the mud outside the Quartermaster's store... .

And these men wanted to start it all again! As he looked down upon the still form of Milós in his shabby braided coat, Godfrey resolved that this murder, at least, he would avenge....

The body was not yet cold. He loosened the noose about the neck in a vain hope that there might yet be time to bring the old man back to life. But Milós never stirred. Gellert had done his work too well.

The young man looked round the cell. Beyond a jug and a platter in enamelled iron, and an old box, it contained nothing in the way of furniture. In the wall at the back was a sort of wooden shutter, hinged at the top so as to open up and outwards. Two heavy hasps held it to the wall at the bottom, but the padlocks locking them had been removed and now lay on the straw.

Godfrey stepped over the corpse, bent and raised the shutter. It covered a deep and long window recess. As he leant out across the stone sill the swift rush of water came to his ears. He pulled himself forward until he had cleared the sill. Twenty feet below him, bathing the massive masonry that ran sheer down, the river leapt and gurgled. Under the window a boat, tied up to an iron ring let into the stone, banged sullenly in the rushing current.

So this was the workshop of "The Strangler"! Here on the straw on which his feet now rested, the wretched Rubis, caught in the moment of flight and haled back to Kés, had paid the penalty of betrayal, his body slid from the trap into the swift waters of the river; here God knows how many more victims of the dwarf's murder-lust had met their ends before their corpses had been sent plunging to the stream below; here, doubtless, it was Gellert's intention that in due time the inconvenient Englishman should vanish never to be heard of again....

It came into his mind, as he withdrew from the window, that here was a way out of the trap into which he had walked. But a blind fury gripped him so that his very hands trembled. He resented the cold-blooded slaying of this inoffensive old man as a challenge, a personal affront. He turned to face this sinister pygmy, to grapple with him, to beat that monstrous ogre-head against the cold stone wall...

But slowly self-possession returned to him. This was not his show. The fruit was not yet ripe for plucking. To confront Gellert at this stage would achieve no end other than to place himself in the hands of the conspirators. He must be wary... wary and patient.

He had to consider whether he would stay and take his chance of escaping when Gellert or Traugott came back or risk detection by dropping out of the window into the boat and reentering the castle by the secret passage. Before deciding he thought he would have another look at the outer room. He left the cell, made his way softly up the stairs, and pushed open the door at the top.

CHAPTER XX
The Surprising Behaviour Of Captain Traugott

GRIPPING the curtain with one hand, Godfrey drew back swiftly, seeking the cover of the door while the right snatched at his pistol. To his intense surprise, however, the young German made no move, but stood stock-still, gravely contemplating him. He was a sober-faced young man with pince-nez and a small toothbrush moustache, his dark-brown hair cropped so close that at the sides it showed merely as greyish stubble. He had been always so self-effacing that Godfrey had paid very little attention to him, classing him more or less as a menial, a servant of Gellert's. Staid and taciturn, wearing always the same shapeless and shabby suit of grey, he had made no impression whatever on Godfrey.

Even now when Godfrey, in a quick movement, covered him with his Browning, the young German maintained his air of detachment. He did not wilt; he did not move a muscle.

"Please, Herr, be careful," he said in precise English. "If that went off, it would create great alarm, and I wish to talk to you undisturbed."

"I thought I heard footsteps," he remarked. "Put up your pistol, Herr Cairsdale, and give me your attention. It is important. This evening, at seven o'clock, in the tower room meets the Council. It is decisive, you understand? The Third Club will be there. His identity is to be disclosed tonight. After the meeting the couriers will go out and we shall have to act..."

"Who.... who are you?" he asked blankly. Clicking his heels, the young man came stiffly to attention and bowed.

"Gestatten! Hans Traugott, late of the Intelligence Branch of the Great General Staff, now of the Secret Service of the German Republic!"

"We are allies, then, it seems!" he observed dubiously. But he did not lower his pistol.

"Perhaps partners would be the better word," answered Traugott reflectively. "We follow the same quarry, though with different aims. We want to behead this monarchist hydra because we wish Republican Germany to be strong. You seek to crush it because you think thereby to keep Germany weak. Might I ask you to lay aside that pistol, Herr Kollege? Pointing it like that, you remind me of the Versailles Treaty!"

This flash of pawky humour, delivered without the vestige of a smile, completely disarmed Godfrey. He laughed and dropped the hand holding the pistol to his side.

"Why didn't you disclose yourself to me before?" he asked. "You've had opportunities enough, goodness knows!"

"I was not sure of you," he replied. "But when I heard this morning that you were missing, that they were hunting the castle for you, na...."

He broke off and looked reflectively at Godfrey out of his docile and ox-like eyes.

"Nun gut! They killed him; that proved me right in my surmise. This old Milós, too—you have seen?"

"This Gellert—he is thorough, one must grant him that, Herr Cairsdale. This time they are in earnest, jawohl! Incidentally, Herr Kollege, von Winterbaum is the man to watch...."

"Chief of the Air Staff of Colonel Trommel's organization. Trommel is the head of the movement in Germany, but von Winterbaum is the brains at the back of the air plans. He and Trommel arrive to-day. Neither is yet here. They come from different parts—Trommel from Budapest, von Winterbaum from Stuttgart. With great anxiety they wait, von Bartzen and Gellert, for von Winterbaum. Everything depends on him, you see...

On this invitation the pedant who dwells in most Germans appeared. Traugott took off his glasses and industriously wiped them. He cleared his throat.

"Prinzipiell," he began, in the manner of a professor addressing his class, "this movement falls into three parts, Germany, Austria, and Hungary. It is the first time that the movement has been concerted. My information is as yet incomplete, but this I know. The aim of this conspiracy is to overturn the established governments in these three states. In Germany the balance hangs by a hair; it is what you call a gamble, hein? for many of us have done with the monarchy and the militarists; Austria is indifferent and will bow to the stronger will; Hungary, monarchical to the core, will respond instantly to a firm lead. Therefore, the great coup is to start in Germany and the measure of success achieved there will decide the subsequent developments in Austria and Hungary. And this brings me to the crucial point of our investigation, Herr Kollege...."

He stopped and listened. Then he consulted a battered nickel watch which he tugged up on a leather strap from a waistcoat pocket.

"You are safe here for a quarter of an hour," he remarked. "The door is locked and only Count Gellert and I have the key. He is coming at nine o'clock with the men to dispose of the body in there!"

"As I was saying, the crucial point of our investigation is the German plan of campaign. The blow will be struck from the air. For months they have been assembling aeroplanes, with what object we do not know. But von Winterbaum knows. And he is due any minute with the operation orders. These will be submitted to the Three Clubs at this evening's meeting. And so I say von Winterbaum is the man to watch!"

He removed his pince-nez again and polished them vigorously with his handkerchief.

"I fancy we must kill him," he said. "He is a most determined man and Trommel depends on him entirely. But until his arrival—nichts zu machen, nothing doing, as you say. I propose, therefore, to find a secure hiding-place for you, Herr Cairsdale, until after the assembly of the Council, when you and I must meet to decide upon the next move. I am taking steps to see that the three cars which will take the couriers away after the meeting will not be able to start at once. Tyre trouble! That will give us perhaps half an hour in which to corner von Winterbaum."

"By hook or by crook we must get those operation orders off him!" said Godfrey. "We can't afford to fail now, Traugott!"

"I have an account, a family account, to settle with these gentlemen. My father was the Social Democratic deputy, Ferdinand Traugott. Because he wrote against the war they sent him, sick old man as he was, to the front, and he died like a dog of pneumonia in the ambulance at Tournai. They hushed it up. I was on the Eastern front at the time, and until the war was over I never knew that my father was dead."

"Die Bande!" he said. "They hoodwinked me in the war, but I shall get even with them if it costs me my life! Pardon!"

"We'll get this von Winterbaum, Traugott," he said. "But what is the next move?"

"For the present," said Traugott, "this is as good a place as any in the castle for you to hide in. I'll put you in one of these cupboards till the Count has finished his job in there. Then I'll stow you away in one of the upper rooms. We will fix our rendezvous for eight o'clock..."

"Then our rendezvous shall be in the Archduchess's sitting-room in the tower. The search for you will continue, I make no doubt, all through the afternoon and evening; therefore our safest meeting-place will be the one spot where they least expect to find you. There is a big dinner after the meeting; it is set for eight o'clock. I can absent myself on a pretext. At that time the tower will be deserted and we can rely on getting a few minutes together undisturbed. The risk—I admit it frankly—is to you; for you will have to make your own way from your hiding-place to the rendezvous. I cannot help you there; for till dinner is announced I shall be in attendance outside the Council meeting."

"In here with you quick," he whispered, "and don't utter a sound as you value your life!"

Heavy footsteps on the stairs without came to Godfrey's ears as he leapt to the wall. Even then he wondered whether he were acting wisely in thus trusting Traugott. But something in the young man's face determined him to risk it. Without farther hesitation he scrambled into the cupboard.

Now Gellert's fluty voice sounded outside in conversation with other voices, hoarse voices, speaking Hungarian. There was mention of a boat and some discussion as to who should row. Presently the rustle of voices died away. Almost on the instant the cupboard door was pulled open.

Traugott stood there, a finger to his lips, pointing with his other hand to the green rep curtain which, drawn back, showed the door leading to the cell to be ajar.

"You're in the cupboard where the oars are kept," he whispered. "You'll have to run for it! We meet at eight in the...."

Godfrey, aghast at his treachery, sprang back in alarm. But in the same moment Traugott whispered quickly:

In a flash the Englishman understood. He butted Traugott heavily in the chest, sending him flying most realistically against the table in the centre and oversetting a chair. Then the green curtain rustled, there was a blaze of orange flame and a report that, reverberating noisily in that vaulted place, made his ears ring. Halfway to the door, Godfrey heard a bullet smack loudly against the wall above his head. As he tore at the door handle there came the crash of another explosion and something struck the wood-work with a jolt that made the heavy timbers jar. The sour and sickening smell of burnt cordite filled his nostrils.

He heard a squeal of rage behind him, and from somewhere beyond the door at the top of the flight a great bell jangled clamorously. But now the cellar door swung to with a soft click behind him. Facing him, at the head of the stairs, the outer door, leading to the lobby, was closed. What if it were locked? With beating heart, while the tumult of the bell dinned terrifyingly in his ears, he took the stairs three at a time just as the door below him burst open....

Thank God, the outer door responded to his pull. As he darted out into the lobby he realized that the atmosphere of Kés had changed. The habitual mournful silence of the castle had given place to a great stir. The clanging of the bell had stopped, but heavy feet went trampling overhead and voices raised aloud in confusion sounded from the direction, as it seemed to him, of the great hall. Somewhere outside a motor engine was being raced with a monotonously recurrent roar. Worst of all, from the corridor at the end of the lobby, now came shouts, the quick scamper of feet....

CHAPTER XXI
The Service Stair

HE had no time for thought. From two sides the pursuit was closing in on him. He took a couple of steps forward and then saw just beside him a narrow flight of stairs that mounted aloft from the lobby. It seemed to be a back staircase, grimy and neglected, a succession of short half-flights, wedged in between two party walls, with a narrow landing and a small barred window at each turn.

Godfrey plunged for the stairs. He did not know in the least where he was going; he had no idea of what he meant to do except to shake off as quickly as possible the pack now gathering at his heels.

Before he had reached the first landing he heard the roar of voices and the thudding of feet as the hue and cry issued forth from the cellar after him. Orders were shouted and a door banged incessantly.

His heart sank within him as the next moment, the narrow shaft, in which the staircase was built, re-echoed to the rush of hasty feet.

Godfrey dashed on, flight after flight. He cared nothing for any one he might meet face to face: it was that yelping pack on his trail that made him feel as though the blood were draining away from his heart. He could not imagine where the staircase led to, for he saw no doors....

And then at last the staircase ended, coming out upon a little landing with a window on one side, a door on the other. A glance through this door, which was partly open, told Godfrey where he was; for beyond it he saw the little central hall of Valérie's apartments which he had so often crossed in her company, and he knew that he was in the tower. The staircase was obviously intended to facilitate service between the servants' quarters and the tower suite.

Though he had but slackened pace on the landing, already the sounds of pursuit from below were much nearer. And now, to his horror, he heard the clamour of voices approaching through the door on the landing. They were coming up the main tower staircase to cut him off.

From a corner of the landing a narrow winding stair pursued its way aloft. Without hesitation Godfrey made for it, careless of where it went. H it led to the roof, as he thought it might, he prayed that the door would be open....

Dizzy and breathless with climbing he at length reached the top. His head almost touched the little glass lantern, darkened by the snow that rested on the panes without, which crowned the corkscrew stairway. In front of him was a door not more than four feet high, held only by a thumb latch. Without halting even to draw breath or to listen, he bent and crawled through.

He found himself in a long dark gangway that ran its length between the criss-cross beams of the roof-tree. It was dimly lit at intervals by glazed lights in the roof. So narrow was the passage that he could touch the wall on either hand; as far as he could judge, from a cursory glance, there was no place where even a mouse could hide. Through the door at his back he could clearly hear the trampling of the search-party on the stairs. They were so close now that above the clatter and the shouting he could distinguish the grampus-like blowing of one of the band.

He looked about him in despair. Just above his head, over the black bulk of a small cistern, was one of the roof windows, a large square pane of glass, operated by a notched iron arm that hung downwards. Rapidly Godfrey swung himself up on the tank and thrust the iron arm upwards. It did not budge. He thrust at it again and again, but in vain. At imminent danger of losing his balance, perched precariously as he was on the cistern's edge, he got his two hands to the frame and pushed with all his might. It would not give; the cheap wood of the window was warped.

"Where does this go to?" cried a voice in German, and Godfrey, still busy at the roof-light, gave himself up for lost.

"Let the Herr Oberst wait for me. It is dark and the roof is low. His Honour might strike his head..."

There was a pause, and in that blessed interval the window unexpectedly went up. Summoning all his strength, Godfrey hoisted himself noiselessly by his arms on to the framework and scrambled out, retaining enough presence of mind to let the window down softly.

The situation in which he found himself put in an instant from his mind the fears that had dogged him up the stairway. For he found himself perched, like a fly on a ceiling, on the side of the high-raked, sloping roof of Kés, that roof, running up steeply to a narrow edge which had given the castle its name. In order not to be seen through the glass from beneath he had hauled himself above the window, leaning back against the roof and propping his feet against the frame, before he took stock of his surroundings.

One glance down was enough. He lay back against the red tiles, his eyes tight-closed, his brain swimming, his gorge rising, sick with terror at what that one brief look had revealed.

His reeling brain did not take in the details. He was only conscious of the snowy valley spread out far, far below him, like a patchwork pocket-handkerchief laid on a white cloth, cut here by a silver coil of river and there by a black thread of road.

The incessant cawing of the rooks as they wheeled about the summit of the old tower to his right, the almost imperceptible tremor of the roof against which he stemmed himself, the unwonted freshness of the air upon his face, above all things, the surrounding silence, broken only by the chatter of the birds, the uncanny silence of great heights, filled him with a rising frenzy of fear. In his mind he felt intruding, fight against it as he would, the insane longing to relax his hold and end it all...

But Godfrey Cairsdale was a man who had learnt early the secret of self-control. Resolutely he set himself to fight down his fear. He listened for sounds of his pursuers among the rafters underneath him; he set himself a time limit, half an hour, to lie there and wait for the coast to be clear. But when he opened his eyes to look at his wrist watch he saw again that vertiginous drop to the ground and dizziness swept him once more....

It was in a kind of trance that he heard the hunt for him going forward in the attics below; and, a little later, he listened without alarm or even interest to footsteps that echoed dully over the leads of the roof somewhere in his vicinity. Godfrey Cairsdale had no head for climbing; heights had, since his childhood, never failed to detect the point of least resistance in his moral fibre and his unique obsession, as he strained back against the crinkly-edged red tiles of the roof, was how he should ever bring himself to crawl back into safety through the pane of glass between his legs.

Ultimately, it was the physical pain of his cramped position, combined with the biting cold, that steeled his nerve to the ordeal. He never knew how he did it, but at length he found himself, wet to the skin with perspiration and violently trembling, crouching in the raftered gangway beneath the roof-light.

He felt utterly exhausted. There is no fatigue so overwhelming as the physical reaction from a prolonged nervous strain. Added to this, he was worn out from want of sleep. He had much to think about, much to accomplish; but his brain refused to function.

He crawled in behind the cistern and, his head pillowed on his arms flung out before him on the dusty floor, fell fast asleep.

The daylight was failing when he awoke. He blinked his eyes drowsily, his mind groping, as it does after sleep by day, for contact with the living world. He was at first conscious only of a strong musty smell; then of the cruel cold that seemed to stiffen all his limbs. He sat up and looked at his watch. It was nearly half-past four.

He flogged his arms against his body and blew on his hands, numb with cold. He had some whiskey in a flask in his pocket and a few biscuits which he had taken with him on his night expedition. He drank some of the neat spirit and it warmed him at once. Then, while he ate his biscuits, he cast his mind over the salient points of the situation.

The decisive meeting of the Council, Traugott had said, was at seven o'clock in the tower-room. Till then.... nichts zu machen. But much to deliberate. In the dispatch which he had given to Virginia he had warned London that the vital meeting was the 21st. Had that guess of his been wrong? Or had they advanced the date? Probably the latter, he decided, perhaps on the strength of something they had gathered from the instructions which von Bartzen, in his stead, had collected at the train.

He let his thoughts dwell for a little on Virginia. He felt very happy about her now. Every hour that passed, he told himself, brought her farther away from this evil conspiracy into which, out of loyalty to him, she had blundered. How loyal she was, he reflected. Not for one instant, he was sure, had she misconstrued his failure to appear at their rendezvous. Rather she had deliberately come to help him because she thought he was in danger. Darling Jenny! What a ghastly night she must have spent out there in the snow! He looked at the little ring on his finger. "In Faythe!" She had, indeed, been true to her motto.

But he must see about getting under cover till the hour of his meeting with Traugott arrived. Fortunately he was near the tower room. When Gellert and his guests had gone off to dinner, there should be little difficulty about creeping downstairs and through the landing door to the meeting-place.

Queer fish, Traugott! A bit sticky, like most Germans, but for all that a stout chap that gave a fellow a good feel. "It looks to me," Godfrey said to himself as he rose to his feet, "as if friend Traugott and I were going to see life together before we separate!"

He fished out his lamp and switched the beam down the gangway before him. The light fell upon a small door. Remembering in time that his footsteps might be audible to those in the rooms beneath, he tiptoed along the passage and, halting at the door, listened. Everything was still. He turned the handle.

He was looking into a large round loft with a very low roof and windows that were mere loopholes glazed in. It was a dusky place, smelling of dry-rot, and absolutely bare. The naked boards were thickly coated with dust only recently disturbed, as Godfrey remarked, noting evidence of the passage of the search-party.

The thing that struck him most about the room, however, was that it was warm. It was even stuffy, "fuggy" as the soldiers say; but the young man, after the cold of the attic, was not complaining about that. And then he noticed something that, explaining this phenomenon and much else beside, stiffened him to an attitude of rigid watchfulness. From a square trap in the floor a cast-iron stovepipe ran diagonally out through one of the loop holes. That pipe and the shape of the room informed him, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he was in a loft above the tower-room. He could have dropped on his knees and thanked Heaven for that amazing stroke of good fortune. And, in prompt corroboration of his discovery, Valérie's voice, from the room below, now came clearly to his ears.

Godfrey went down on all fours and softly, softly crawled to the trap in the floor. The trap was square, the pipe was round, and through the generous gap he found he had a clear view of the room beneath. He found himself looking down on the dark polished surface of the refectory table which occupied the centre of the round chamber, and on Valérie facing a burly grizzled man in field-grey who was in the act of leaving the room.

CHAPTER XXII
Virginia Comes To Kés

WHEN Godfrey had disappeared in the fury of the blizzard, Virginia threw a fresh log on the fire and, drawing up her chair, extended her gaitered feet to the blaze. As long as he was with her Godfrey's cool courage had buoyed her up. Now that he was gone, however, she felt again at her heart the cold hand of fear.

She considered the situation. Was there nothing she could do? Aranyi was so pro-English; surely he would help her. But could she give him her confidence? After all, he was a Hungarian; but was he to be trusted? Then an idea came to her. Had not Count Hector spoken to them of bringing Gellert to justice? If only he went with the police to the castle, the veil of mystery obscuring the cripple and his doings would be rent aside and her object achieved without risking a breach of trust.

The warmth of the fire was very grateful. How dreadfully cold she had been in the night! Very soon she must sally forth again into the wet and clogging snow.... not yet, though, not until it was light....

When she opened her eyes the room was flooded with sunshine. Through every window the blinding snow-glare poured. The fire had died down to a mere handful of white ashes faintly glowing. Realizing that she had slept, she looked at her watch, then sprang up in a panic. It was a quarter-past ten! And her train left Hacz at two!

Hastily she pulled on her tarn and, snatching her fur gloves from the table, hurried out. As she ran down the veranda steps into the dry and sparkling freshness of a perfect winter's day she saw a man standing some way down the drive, a shaggy-looking fellow in a heavy goatskin coat such as French chauffeurs wear. On catching sight of her he touched his hat and advanced to meet her.

She stopped in alarm. Who was this man and what did he want? Well, whoever he was, she had no chance of escape; she must face him. So she mastered her fears and walked towards him.

"The sleigh is there!" he said with a backward jerk of the head, speaking in broken German.

"But," the girl replied in the same language, "who are you? Whose sleigh is it?"

Virginia sighed with relief. Clive had got back to Wolfstal, then, and had sent a sleigh to look for her. She wondered that he had not come himself. Perhaps he was with the sleigh. She would have asked the servant, but he had strode on ahead.

They went down the ride in silence. The snow reached almost to the tops of her gaiters. She felt glad the sleigh had come for her; with that depth of snow it would have taken her hours to get back to the Schloss. She began to think how she would approach Count Hector on the subject of her sudden departure; also she must sound him about his intentions towards Count Gellert...

The guide turned off sharp to the right, waited a moment to see if she followed, then strode on. A hundred yards off a sleigh, an antique-looking specimen shaped like a swan, unlike anything she had ever seen in her winters in America, was waiting. It had three horses with flowing manes and tails, harnessed troika-fashion—that is to say, three in a row.

As she came up the guide was holding back for her a great bearskin rug. The step was rather high and he put his hand under her arm to help her. Then she saw that the sledge already had an occupant, a man, heavily muffled, whose head only just appeared above the top of the fur apron. It was certainly not Clive and, muffled up as the stranger was, somehow he did not look like Aranyi. She recoiled an instant in doubt, but at that moment the servant literally thrust her into the sleigh; it shot forward with a jangle of bells and the jolt sent her back into the seat.

She was on her feet again at once. The sleigh rocked to and fro as it sped rapidly through the forest with the snow spraying out on either side. She was horribly frightened.

"Stop!" she cried, turning round to the driver who was perched up on a little seat behind. And "Stop!" she cried again, addressing the mummy-like figure at her side. But they took no notice of her cry. Then she laid hold of one of the reins which ran through metal rings on the dashboard on either side of the sleigh. The right galloper reared up, the sledge swerved violently. A hand shot out and seized her wrist in a vice-like grip. The pain was agonizing; she felt as though the very bones were being crushed. There was no eluding that grasp of steel: instantly her hold on the rein relaxed, a whip cracked hissing about her head, bringing the plunging horses to order, and the sleigh sped smoothly onward as before, while the clamp-like clutch on her arm drew her firmly down to her seat.

The hand that held her was small and fat, with thick fingers, and clammy to the touch. In putting forth his arm to pull her down the man had let the fur apron slip and now the girl caught a glimpse of his face that made her recoil with horror. It was only for a second, for, with his free hand, he quickly huddled the rug about him once more; but she retained an impression of a cretinous head, with waxen face and lewd, staring eyes, set above a hunched body.

She felt paralysed with fright; the unbroken silence of the horror at her side, their noiseless progress over the snow, save for the swift jingle of the sleigh-bells, made her cold with apprehension.

She could not speak; she could not cry: a spell, as in a dream, held her fast. She could only sit beneath the soft warmness of the fur rug and watch in a sort of trance the firs and pines flash by, their branches bowed down beneath their sparkling burden of snow.

They rushed down a steep decline, swooped up to a bridge, on whose sodden planks the runners grated loudly, and, beneath the towering weather-stained walls of a high castle, ran up to a great wooden gate whose two wings opened mysteriously to admit them. Now they had halted in a gloomy courtyard, the snow cleared away in heaps on one side, where two motor cars were parked. The driver stood at the dashboard of the sleigh, holding back the rug, behind him a small door, open, with a white lobby beyond.

Then at last Virginia found her voice. She ignored the servant and addressed the man beside her.

"Who are you?" she cried. "What do you mean by bringing me here against my will? Answer me, do you hear!"

He took not the slightest notice of her. Now her temper was rising. She was furiously indignant, her resentment of the affront put upon her intensified by the shock her nerves had sustained.

"Will you please tell your man to turn round and drive me right back to Wolfstal?" she said again.

"Janos!" he said in a curious fluty voice like a child's, and added a few words in Hungarian. Virginia felt herself seized round the waist from the rear, lifted off her feet and borne struggling into the house. There she was pushed into a small room and the door locked on her.

It was a small place, furnished like an office, with a desk and a safe and whitewashed walls. It was bitterly cold with a damp and musty odour. Virginia sat down on one of the cane chairs and tried to master the situation.

She was at Kés, of course. Gellert had kidnapped her. Von Bartzen must have recognized her at the railway and followed her trail in the snow to the villa. Or perhaps they had seen Godfrey leave the shack and had quietly laid a trap for her to walk into. In that case Godfrey was in their hands too, in the hands of that hideous dwarf...

Resolutely she put from her mind the thought of the evil face that had leered into hers in the sleigh, the clammy hand that had gripped her wrist. She had to act a man's part, she told herself, to stand up to this bunch of toughs and make them understand what it meant to take liberties with a free citizen of the great American Republic.

"The nerve of it!" she said to herself two or three times; then, getting up from her hard chair, began to pace the room. From the cornice hung one of those old-fashioned bell-pulls, a flat strip of embroidered material attached to a wire. Virginia seized it and tugged viciously. Somewhere far away a cracked bell jangled discordantly, wildly. But no one came.

When, at the end of half an hour, a key grated in the lock, the girl turned, like a wild-cat at bay, to face the newcomer. It was von Bartzen. He was in uniform and was smoking a cigarette. She did not give him time to speak.

"Colonel von Bartzen," she said in a voice that trembled with anger, "will you please tell me what this means?"

"If you are so unwise in the choice of your friends, my dear young lady...." he began.

"My friends are my affair," she retorted. "But you, if you are a gentleman—and I used to think you were"—she noted with pleasure that he flinched at that—"you will get some kind of conveyance and take me back to Wolfstal at once at once, do you hear?"

"You can leave my Christian name out of this, Baron," she said icily. "Nothing will induce me to remain here for another minute, and the sooner you get that into your head the better. If you decline to assist me, perhaps you will allow me to pass?"

"No!" he answered, smiling at her whimsically, his chin up, his cigarette between his lips.

"Don't dare to touch me!" she cried. "Oh, if I had a man here to treat you as you deserve!"

"Better stay with us and find out, little girl!" he sneered. Then his manner changed.

"Be reasonable, Fräulein Virginie," he pleaded in his soft Viennese way. "I told you that you would see many curious things in Hungary. Well, circumstances have arisen which make it necessary that you should stay for a few days at Kés as the guest of Count Gellert. If you are sensible, no harm shall happen to you, I promise it. I have come now to say that Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess Valérie, who is staying in the house, will be glad to receive you in her apartments..."

Virginia's first instinct was to refuse. It was something to know, however, that there was another woman at Kés and, she reflected, she might be able to make this distinguished lady see that it was quite impossible for her, Virginia, to remain at the castle.

Then, with a pang, she remembered her train and Godfrey's dispatch, the vital dispatch, which lay tucked away between her bodice and her blouse.

It was half-past eleven. If she could persuade the Archduchess to arrange things so that she could get away at once, she might yet catch the two o'clock train from Hacz. The Archduchess was now her only hope.

CHAPTER XXIII
Valèrie Shows Her Hand

THE Archduchess Valérie was angry. She did not speak; she did not move. One slim hand tightly clutching a small white wrist, she stood at the window and stared blackly across the valley to the snow-capped heights beyond. When these moods of silent fury came over her, the old Baroness Matsera, wise in her generation, placed as wide a distance as possible between herself and her charge, well knowing that a word, a gesture, might unloose the torrent.

To be a Habsburg and to be slighted; to be an Archduchess and a potential Queen and to be able to command no better brains than bunglers such as Gellert and von Bartzen! A cry of exasperation broke from her lips. This Englishman with his romantic face was but a trickster, after all. He had played with her, staved her off, relying on her condescending graciousness, her old affection, to shield him while he quietly laid his plans to betray them all, and, when the decisive moment approached, to escape unscathed....

The bitterness that welled up within her seemed to choke her. More independent-minded than the rest of the royalties whom the fatal 11th of November had brought crashing to earth, even she had been wont to drink in greedily the obeisance paid to her rank in the monarchist circles in Central Europe in which she moved. What galled her now, choking her with nameless rage, was the thought that Godfrey, whom she had seen looking askance at the courtier manners of Gellert and the rest, had been right. It was just a sham; and she, who had countenanced, demanded it, a thing of no account.

He had proved it by using her and casting her aside, when done with, as though she had been a mere Kammerzof e!

And yet... He had meant so much to her, Godfrey, her first lover. Like a breath from the sea that bathed his native shores, he had burst in upon the stale atmosphere of the court life in which she had been brought up. As women will, she had spun a halo of romance about this early love and even before the crash of thrones reverberated through Europe, she had idly pictured herself, discarding her rank, like her kinsman, Johann Orth, to live a life of untitled happiness at her Godfrey's side. Then she had met him again and it seemed as though what had been a vain imagining might almost come true. Even now, if he would but come back to her, she thought, with heaving bosom and tear-dimmed eyes, she might forget his treachery and let him throw his lot in with hers and share the spacious future which, perhaps that very evening, was to open before her....

A discreet tapping at the door put her day-dream to flight. That would be the American girl whose arrival at the castle Gellert, full of glee, had just reported to her. She dried her eyes, glanced at her reflection in the glass, touched her lips with carmine. She meant to be very suave and gracious with this foreigner and elicit from her by adroit questioning how far she was in Godfrey Cairsdale's confidence.

"Come in!" she said in her low and musical voice, and turned from the window to face the door.

But when she saw the slight and graceful figure that von Bartzen ushered in, the black mood took her again. Her heart sank. Once more bitterness welled up within her. She forgot her diplomacy; she forgot her rank. The old Eve in her rose up to fight, to crush, this rival a hundred times more formidable than her worst fears had portrayed. "A blonde angel" von Bartzen had called the American; Valérie had pictured her as a pretty doll whose sheer daintiness might momentarily captivate the artist that dwelt in Godfrey Cairsdale, but whose influence never could be more than a passing phase.

With the highly trained royal faculty for reading faces, however, the Archduchess recognized at a glance that there was nothing of the doll in the proud and beautiful girl that entered. Virginia was almost as tall as she. There was character shown in the way she carried her finely shaped head as much as in the thoughtful Irish eyes and the firm dimpled chin. Her blondness was not of the pale cendré Scandinavian type, but warmly golden, like ripe corn or Australian gold; her white skin had the sheen of satin; and there was breeding in the slim feet as in the delicately shaped ears.

With a brusque gesture Valérie dismissed von Bartzen and waved Virginia to a chair.

Virginia's eyes expressed surprise at the other's tone, but in silence she took a chair at the long table which stood in the centre of the room. Valérie did not sit down. She remained standing, her back to the light. By contrast with the radiant freshness of Virginia, her pale face, her raven hair, and her clinging black dress, without ornament save for a long string of vivid green jade, gave her an exotic look.

"Don't fence with me!" She made a rapid gesture of the hands. Virginia stood up.

"I'm not accustomed to being spoken to in that way!" she said quietly. "Sit down!" commanded the Archduchess. But the girl remained standing.

"Listen," she said. "I had you brought here to me because you are a woman and I wanted to spare you ruder questioning at the hands of.... of others. It has perhaps not occurred to you that you are playing a very dangerous game. You and your friend, Mr. Cairsdale, come here to pry into our affairs. But we don't care about spies at Kés, my little one, and when they are caught, as you have been, it's apt to go hard with them. Do you understand me?"

"No," the girl retorted, "I don't. And now I'm going to tell you something. The war is over, and if you or anybody else think you can kidnap and threaten American subjects, you're very much mistaken! I came here to ask you, in your own interest and in the interests of your friends, to send me back to Wolfstal immediately. And if you don't want bad trouble you'll do so! Do you understand me?"

The Archduchess fell back a pace. Her brow clouded over and her nostrils dilated.

"You.... you dare.... to threaten... me?" she exclaimed. "Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," said Virginia. "But it doesn't impress me in the least. Please be sensible and let me go back to my friends."

"You little fool!" the Archduchess cried, "to bring your pride of the Allies here to my country where thousands are ready to do my bidding. The Versailles Peace is not recognized at Kés, my little one. Do you realize that I have only to speak the word to have you thrown, if I wished, from that window there?"

As she spoke she raised her arm and pointed. Her wide sleeve, slipping back, showed the long white scar that ran from wrist to elbow.

Virginia stared at it. "Oh," she exclaimed, "it was you that stabbed Major MacTavish!"

"So our little spy knows ail the secrets?" she said. "You've heard about that adventure in the train, have you? Yes, then, it's true. I stabbed this stupid Scotsman as I'd stab any one that stood in my way. Do you understand, you...."

"Don't lie to me!" she cried. "You were seen at his villa. He spent the night with you. He is your lover. Listen! I'll give you a last chance. You shall tell me about him and you, about your mission, where he's gone, everything, and, in return, you shall go back to Wolfstal, I promise you..."

"I think you're mad," said Virginia. "I'll make no bargain with you. I've nothing to tell, anyway, and I insist on returning to Count Aranyi's at once..."

"Be sensible!" urged Valérie in a low and vibrating voice. "You'd better accept my offer!"

Then she noticed that the other's eyes were fixed on her neck, on the V-shaped opening of her blouse. She looked down and, to her horror, saw the edge of Godfrey's report protruding.

With uncanny intuition Valérie, noticing her terror-stricken glance, guessed aright.

"Unless you hand it to me," the Archduchess said, "I'll have you stripped to the skin by the servants, do you understand? I'm mistress here. Give me that letter!"

"Never!" cried Virginia. Valérie seized the bell-pull and tugged it savagely. The door burst open. Two bearded men were there. The Archduchess cried a command in Hungarian. They came into the room and shut the door, then advanced towards Virginia.

One of the men put forth a grimy hand to snatch the dispatch. She whipped it away and held it behind her. The other promptly seized her wrist and twisted the report from her grasp. With a bow he handed it to the Archduchess and then, in silence, he and his companions filed out.

"So he uses you as his messenger for his spying reports on me, does he?" she exclaimed. "You little fool, you think he is in love with you, I suppose? But he's mine, I tell you, mine, mine! He was mine before he ever met you and he'll come back to me when I say the word. You don't believe me? See"—she went to a desk and took out a basket of letters—"you should know his writing, hein? Look! 'My own Vali'; 'My darling '; 'Sweetheart'—that is how he writes to me.."

Her eyes blazed with anger; the hands in which she held the sheaf of letters, spread out fanwise, were trembling.

But Virginia had unfolded it and glanced at the outer sheet. Without demur she let the other whip the letter back again.

"The sort of love that you gave him, that almost broke his heart, will die in a night," the girl said proudly. "You'll not make mischief between Godfrey and me!"

She spoke defiantly, but at her heart she felt a little stab. There was a knock at the door.

"Colonel Trommel is here, Imperial Highness," reported von Bartzen from the threshold, "and asks to see you urgently."

Von Bartzen stepped back. The dwarf tripped in and bowed deferentially, his huge hands folded before him.

Gellert raised his monster head and fixed his dull eyes on Virginia's face. One hand went up and slowly rubbed his stunted neck while his tongue moistened his lips: one would have said some prehistoric beast of prey licking its chops.

CHAPTER XXIV
The Second Club

GODFREY was intensely interested in the brief glimpse he had of the Second Club. He would have been still more interested had he been fated to witness, from his judas-hole in the floor, the interview which had just taken place between Valérie and her visitor.

Colonel Trommel was a puffy man with a grim and sallow face and a jaw so massive that it seemed to compress all his other features. He wore a grey moustache, the ends slightly brushed upward after the fashion set by the bridegroom of Doom, and his grizzled hair, clipped very short, was cut, without a parting, to a point on the forehead in the manner of a convict. His uniform showed at the collar the crimson-lake gorgets on the Great General Staff, and on his shoulder-straps were seen the knotted cords of black and silver denoting field rank. His manner was explosively abrupt, his voice harsh and grating, and, even when he spoke, he did not relax, or, indeed, seem to move, the iron frame of his jaw. Under his arm he carried a swollen portfolio of shabby brown leather.

On being introduced into the presence of the Archduchess he had plunged, after his habit, in media ces. Your real Prussian Junker has no fear of royalty which, apart from certain tiresome prerogatives, is to him always a puppet to dance according to his will.

Colonel Trommel, accordingly, did not hesitate to display marks of extreme dissatisfaction.

"Your Imperial Highness has been indiscreet, deplorably indiscreet!" was his uncompromisingly frank opening.

"With permission, Frau Erzherzogin," he retorted severely, "that is a matter not for you but for your advisers to decide!"

"The instructions that came from London for your English friend," he said, "where are they, please?"

The Archduchess took two sheets of transparent paper from the desk and handed them silently to the Colonel. Gnawing his heavy moustache, he perused them silently. Then he tapped the paper with his forefinger.

"This means that the Englishman, though he has disappeared for the moment, is still in the neighbourhood," he said, glaring at her balefully from under his bushy grey eyebrows. "London asks insistently for the name of the Hungarian leader and sends warning that a decision is imminent. Here, therefore, we have the objective of this spy's mission. It has not been reached; therefore, he is still here...."

"They have searched the castle from the cellars to the attics," the Archduchess replied; "they have patrolled the park in every direction, they have beaten the forest without finding him. Without a doubt he has escaped...."

A sudden idea had come to her. Had Godfrey perhaps repented of the role he had adopted and thrown in his hand? Or had he found out that the American girl had been brought to the castle and flown to avoid disagreeable explanations between the two women? But that would not be like him....

"I wo!" sharply exclaimed Trommel. "I know the British Secret Service, Frau Erzherzogin. Bulldogs, that's what they are! Once they take hold they never let go.... until they're killed!"

"But," objected Valérie nervously, "the castle, I tell you, has been ransacked. Von Bartzen himself led the search-party. Where should the Englishman hide?"

"Weiss der Teufel!" retorted the Colonel. "But, when the time is ripe, he will appear again, mark my words. But he shan't escape me! And I rely on there being no further interference from Your Imperial Highness in this affair!"

"With all respect, Frau Erzherzogin, this is man's work with which the ladies have nothing to do. Or stop! There is our delightful captive! I fancy that this charming hostage is not wholly indifferent to our clever young friend, hein?"

Valérie went red and white by turns. She turned to the desk to hide the mortification in her face.

She gave the Colonel Godfrey's dispatch. Trommel scanned it, his forehead knitted into a scowl.

"Hm!" he remarked. "He knows too much, our young friend. And more—this report shows that he has an underground route for sending news out to London. We must find out what it is, Frau Erzherzogin. The next best thing to killing a rat is to stop up its holes. This girl must tell us!"

"Na, we'll see!" he remarked dryly. "I'll speak to her myself. And if I'm no longer as successfully persuasive as I used to be with the schönen Damen, then Gellert shall have a try. He has the reputation of a notorious lady-killer, I understand!"

"For the rest," he added, growing serious once more, "we are ready. Germany will prove, Imperial Highness, that she is worthy of the honour granted to her of striking first. At Augsburg, at Wesel, on the Lüneburger Heide, in the Mark of Brandenburg, the aeroplanes"—he stopped and chuckled—"the commercial aeroplanes, furnished for the new mail services—are assembled and await the word. The new gas"—he rubbed his hands joyously—"is something marvellous. Angerdynck has excelled himself. We had a little test the other day. Direktor Stallig arranged it in one of his factories. Just a few drops accidentally spilled out of one of the retorts and the doors locked. But when we entered the room ten minutes later wearing the new box respirator.... Donnerwetter! Every one of the twelve workers—eight men and four women—was dead. Instantaneous paralysis of the heart! Fabelhaft interessant! Not a mark on them! You'd have said they were asleep! Grossartig! Genial! Five minutes drenching from the air with Angerdynck's torpedoes will put every strategic centre in Germany in our hands. We can't fail, Imperial Highness. I had hoped that Professor Angerdynck would have come with me. But, always the soul of conscientiousnes, he declines to leave his laboratory. Von Winterbaum, however, is bringing a flash of the gas along. H it would interest Your Imperial Highness, we might have an experiment...."

"Not on my Hungarians, Herr Oberst, ich bitt' Sie!" said Valérie hastily. "We may be old-fashioned, but we value the lives of our nationals more highly than you appear to do in Germany!"

"Aber Frau Erzherzogin!" expostulated Trommel with every sign of righteous indignation, "what do you take me for? We did not use Germans for our experiment. They were only Galician Poles. And they were all insured under the State scheme. Stallig was highly amused, I can tell you, at the notion of our famous Republican Government having to foot the bill for experiments in the agency for its destruction!"

"No, the devil seize him!" retorted Trommel with exasperation. "God knows what has delayed the fellow. He should have been here by midday. I most sincerely trust he may arrive before the meeting. And I would also remark that the Third Club has not yet put in an appearance. I sincerely hope...."

"Set your mind at rest!" the Archduchess assured him. "I have given my word that the Hungarian chief will be present at the meeting!"

"Na, schön!" said Trommel, gathering up his portfolio. "That reminds me, Frau Erzherzogin. As soon as von Winterbaum arrives I propose that he and I, von Bartzen and the Third Club, or failing him, Godol, should go over the air operation orders together so as to avoid any lengthy discussion at the Council meeting. My orders and the Austrian and Hungarian orders have, as you know, already been approved. If you would care to be present at this preliminary conference...?"

"Your fellow-countrymen are inclined to be eloquent, Imperial Highness, and we have no time to waste. When the Council meets, everything must be cut and dried. All we should have to do should be to fix the date. Then we strike!"

"Von Winterbaum has arrived," he said, turning to Valérie. "He has been taken to the dining-room. He has had no food all day. With your permission I will go to him at once!"

And Godfrey, who at this precise juncture took up his post of observation, saw the Prussian hastily leave the room while Valérie remained at the table lost in thought, staring out through the window into the gathering dusk.

CHAPTER XXV
Which Clearly Shows The Difference
Between An Austrian And A Prussian

THOUGH Virginia FitzGerald had always lived the free and untrammelled life of the American girl of good position, the comfortable means she possessed under her dead father's will and Uncle Andrew's protecting roof had screened her from any immediate contact with the world's sordid side. Like any other dweller in the great cities of to-day, she had seen the squalor that stalks unashamed through the slums; and the newspapers, with their ever-open eye for the dramatic, take care that the daily tale of crime shall be a closed book to no one who can read. But she had never yet come face to face with the baseness that dwells in men's hearts or felt, as modern conditions so often compel girls of her age in lower stations to feel, that life is compassed about by the forces of evil.

Her instinctive reaction, on finding her liberty constrained and her dignity affronted, had been indignation, hot and vigorously articulate. Her mind, attuned to the strictly circumscribed rules of modern civilization, was unable to cope with the atmosphere of violence that surrounded her at Kés. Her mental attitude resembled that of the London householder who, when the first Zeppelin bomb fell in his back yard, promptly rang up the police.

Her interview with Valérie had left her angry but unaffrighted. Her amour-propre had kept her head high even in face of this angry woman's boastings of the claim she had on Godfrey. She had known that there had been a woman before her in Godfrey's life. He had never spoken to her of this affair, and she had forborne to question him about it lest she should give him pain. She did not blame Godfrey now; but the sudden revelation of a mysterious connection between his mission and this handsome passionate creature added to her sense of forlornness.

Hours had passed, so it seemed to her, since they had brought her to the castle and she had had no word from Godfrey. Obviously he did not know of her presence at Kés or, in face of all opposition, he would surely have found his way to her. As she thought of the unwholesome eyes of Count Gellert, a nameless hunger peering from their depths, searching her face, the realization of her plight rose up like a tidal wave, and almost overwhelmed her.

Her life had lain in easy ways. She had never known an enemy worse than an uncharitable woman or an impertinent maid. She had never even considered the case of any one wishing to do her deliberate harm. Yet suddenly, as it were, she found herself confronted by a world of foes: this Hungarian spitfire, with her fierce eyes and arrogant airs; von Bartzen, shedding in the mediaeval atmosphere of Kés his thin armour of civilization; worst of all, this repulsive dwarf, whose sinister nickname covered she knew not what ghastly crimes. And she was friendless, powerless, in this forbidding place.

As they led her down from the tower, she felt like one who, through the agency of some strange talisman, might have the power to revisit in body the Middle Ages. The ponderous walls and the massive doors, with their immense forged iron locks, spoke of the times when the sharp sword at the side and the key at the belt were the arbiters of society. Down a staircase where, through loopholes, the sunlight glinted on the dusty steps dimly seen in the shadows, along corridors where iron-shod heels rang on the stone floors, across a great hall where, at a long table, men ate and drank boisterously in a clamour of voices and a blue cloud of tobacco smoke, down a narrow stair that smelt of the earth, they hurried her. A door slammed, a key rattled, and she found herself alone in a narrow cell with a high roof, standing on dirty straw and gazing upward at a pale beam of sunlight that fell from a barred window far above her head. Then Virginia knew that civilization had failed her.

An old box stood in a corner of the cell. She sat down on it and her hands folded in her lap, quietly waited trying to still the furious beating of her heart, to fight down the feeling of terror that prompted her to scream, to beat on the door with her bare hands...

There was nothing morbid in Virginia FitzGerald's composition. Her mind was as healthy as her body, and the Irish blood that flowed in her veins carried its due proportion of that contempt for fear that has always distinguished this high-spirited and difficult race. She tried deliberately to envisage the situation in all its aspects and, as she turned over each facet in her mind, her nerve began slowly to return to her.

Godfrey was in the castle; he had told her he was going back. And he was yet at liberty; for the Archduchess had sought to find out from her what had become of him. But did Godfrey, could Godfrey know, that Virginia was at Kés? That was the point and a disconcerting point it was.

Then Clive.... if he had regained Wolfstal in safety he would be looking for her; equally, if he had not got back, Aranyi would set enquiries after them on foot. Time, therefore, was on her side.

She did not know how long she had sat in the crepuscular dimness of her prison, for her watch had stopped and she had lost all count of time, when she heard some one at the door. Again she felt that sickening sensation of fear coming over her. She sought once more to take a firm hold of herself. What if it were Godfrey, with a skeleton key, come to rescue her? But when the door swung back it disclosed von Bartzen carrying a lighted lantern. He had sufficient breeding, the girl's quick eye remarked, to look thoroughly sheepish.

"I came to see if you wanted anything," he said awkwardly, hanging the lantern upon a nail in the wall.

Virginia looked straight at him. The man was uncertain of himself, she decided. She felt she had the mastery of this savage with his veneer of polish.

He coloured up at her contemptuous tone. He had propped his lanky frame up against the dank walls of the cell and was looking down at her as she sat on her box staring at the wall.

"Fräulein Virginie," he said, "you don't know how it upsets me to see you treated like this!"

"If you had only taken my advice!" he urged. "Instead of that you provoked the Archduchess. It was so unwise, liebes Fräulein. Why not tell them what they want to know about this stupid Englishman? "

"Aber, Fräulein Virginie!" he protested reproachfully, "when you were with him last night!..."

"There is no question," he resumed, "of asking you to violate a confidence. But the Archduchess is naturally upset at finding that Herr Cairsdale, who was her guest here, should have abused his position to send out secret reports of the—er—the political discussions that have taken place. She is anxious to know, therefore, to whom these reports have been sent..." He broke off, anxiously considering the girl's face.

But Virginia averted her head. "I don't understand a thing about your old politics," she said forlornly. "I don't know why I should be made responsible for Mr. Cairsdale in this way...."

"Liebes Fräulein Virginie," said von Bartzen, bending down and putting his arm round her, "please don't do that.. ."

"You're the only person I know in this horrible place," she said. "You were our guest at Washington. I thought I might have relied on your chivalry, your... your... . affection for me...."

Von Bartzen was visibly moved. He knelt down on the damp straw beside her and put his arm about her waist.

"You are so strong... so brave," Virginia added shyly, "I'm not frightened when you are here..."

"It's that woman and her damned jealousy!" the Austrian burst out. "Virginie, Schatzerl, if it weren't for her.... and the rest... I would carry you off at once. We could be so happy together, liebste, in the sunshine and flowers of Abbazia or the islands!"

He drew her face to his. She held it averted from him; if he could have seen it at that moment, he would have wondered at the keen, anxious look in her eyes.

"Words, words," she said. "If you were the man I thought you were, you would not fear the Archduchess or the others. You would take me away to-day, this very minute...."

"You have money for a journey?" he asked. "It hurts my pride, liebes Madel, but for the moment, with the Austrian exchange as it is, I have to admit."

"I have money," she said, "plenty of money. I am considered wealthy at home in America...."

"I will see what can be done," he said. "It will be difficult, very difficult..."

Softly he pulled back the door. A heavy grey-haired man in uniform was descending to the cell.

"Ps-sst!" he whispered. "It's going very well. They have frightened her. With a little time...."

"Verdammte Schlamperei!" roared the newcomer. "Time? Time? There's no time to be lost, Herr Oberst! Has she spoken or not?"

"Unsinn! Force is the only thing a woman understands!" he trumpeted with reddening neck. "Allow me!"

"How were you going to send that report to London?" he demanded, thrusting his bristling moustache into Virginia's face.

"I know nothing about it!" she replied in a voice that she tried to keep steady.

"Don't lie to me!" he shouted with lowering brow. "You know you're an English Secret Service agent like the other. How were you going to dispatch that report? Come on, I mean to know!"

"Herr Oberst," he protested, "you are frightening the lady. If you would leave her to me...."

"Maul halten!" (which is Prussia's most offensive equivalent for a request to be silent) bellowed the other over his shoulder. He gripped Virginia's wrist. She screamed out in pain. "Answer me!" he cried.

The door swung open. A sallow-faced young man in field-grey uniform stood there.

"Herr Oberst," he said as gravely impassive as though on parade, "the Council is waiting. Her Imperial Highness desires your immediate attendance!"

"I will come, Traugott," he said. "Gellert shall deal with this obstinate mule later. Come, von Bartzen!"

The sallow-faced young officer held the door and followed them out. Virginia heard the click of the lock. They had taken the lantern with them. Once more she was alone in the dark.

Her nerves were tingling. But the encounter had braced her. It was a cruel fate that had brought this tempestuous German on the scene just as her finessing of von Bartzen was beginning to bear fruit. She smiled at the recollection of the Austrian's fatuous face. In von Bartzen, at any rate, she had an ally, if a weak one.

But her situation was desperately serious. The angry colonel's parting allusion to Gellert had filled her with alarm. What should she do if the dwarf came to her in that narrow cell? Escape there was none; the door was solidly locked; the barred window was far out of her reach and a kind of wooden shutter that ran along the back wall of the cell was battened down with enormous padlocks, locked to thick iron hasps solidly anchored in the stone. If only Godfrey would come or give a sign!...

Slowly, slowly the time passed. Outside night lay like a pall athwart the grated window. The castle was profoundly silent, the cell completely dark. She sat very still on her wooden box, nursing her knee, realizing all too well that with every hour that went by her small stock of courage was oozing away.

And then, from the direction of the outer room, came a sudden crash, a muffled cry. She rose to her feet in wild alarm. She heard the high squealing of an excited voice, like the chattering of an angry ape, a series of violent crashes, the noise of splintering wood, a thud. Then silence.

Too frightened to cry out, to move, to pray, she waited, her eyes glazed with terror, her brain numb. Presently an odd tripping footstep came padding softly down the stone stair that led to her cell.

CHAPTER XXVI
The Third Club

IT was six-thirty. More than an hour had elapsed since Godfrey, from his observation post in the loft, had seen Valérie leave the tower room. For a spell it remained in silence and darkness save for the dull glow of the almost red-hot stove. By and > by the servant, Stefan, dour and glum as usual, had brought lamps, drawn the curtains, set chairs about the centre table and thrown logs, hissing and spluttering, into the stove.

Presently two men, neither of whom Godfrey had seen before, entered briskly and, going to the fireplace, stood warming themselves.

"Na!" ejaculated one, stretching himself and yawning, "everything in order, was?"

"Tadellos!" his companion returned, "always provided, of course, that our dear Hungarian colleague, the famous Third Club, turns up at the meeting!"

The speaker was a large blond man in a blue suit with an elegant fair moustache and wavy hair parted in the centre, the parting brought right over to the back of the head in the curious German style. He had the clipped nasal intonation of the Prussian officer and was smoking with evident enjoyment a peculiarly rank cigar.

"Permit me to observe, lieber von Winterbaum," said the first man sententiously, intoning through the nose as Hungarians do when they speak German, "that the Third Club has never failed us yet!"

"Agreed, Godol, agreed!" the other assented. "The organization has been remarkably efficient, the discretion absolute. When my Colonel was travelling up from Budapest to-day, he was telling me, he was astonished to find the three of clubs displayed everywhere, on the churches, on the barns, even on the trees in the villages through which he passed. The promptness with which the headquarters in Budapest under your direction has dealt with all transactions has greatly impressed Colonel Trommel. He is looking forward with real eagerness to meeting your Chief as, indeed, we all are. Between ourselves, Kamerad.... who is he?"

"It's a fact!" protested Godol. "Even to me the identity of our Chief remains a complete secret. All our dealings have been conducted by telegram or letter. Until this evening's meeting we Hungarians are as much in the dark as you are. But one thing I can tell you, Kamerad: it is an iron will that sways our destinies, swift and terrible to punish treachery."

"Stimmt!" assented the German. "I have heard something of this. In the earlier stages you had some doubtful brethren removed from—the ranks, I believe!"

"We did. And quite recently, too. The Chief sticks at nothing. This man would kill his own mother, I believe, if he thought it would advance the cause...."

"Well," he remarked humorously, "if he doesn't show up pretty soon, this Third Club of yours, he'll lose his name for punctuality—that is, if he isn't in the castle already?"

"You mean.... Gellert?" asked the Hungarian. "Naturally we thought of him first. It may be so. And yet, with his deafness...."

"What you say about your Chief's ruthlessness would fit our amiable host like a glove!" he commented. "Donnerwetter ja!"

Godol nudged his elbow. Voices were audible without. Two or three young men came in with portfolios which they laid on the table. Then Trommel and von Bartzen, followed by Traugott, appeared. Trommel pointed with his foot to a sort of leather box which stood on a chair.

"You've brought our little surprise packet to the meeting, I notice?" he remarked to von Winterbaum with a grin.

Godfrey, at the trap in the roof, caught his breath as a little movement ran through the room and, with a grating sound as chairs were pushed back, all rose to their feet. The Archduchess Valérie stood on the threshold.

Surely never in the long and stirring history of Kés had the ancient doorway, Godfrey reflected, framed a more queenly, a more impressive figure. It moved him strangely to see how her personality dominated all assembled in the room beneath him. She still wore her graceful robe of black, moulded to the exquisite line of her figure, but now the coloured riband of some foreign order barred her bosom. The pallor of her face, which was very marked, seemed to emphasize the feverish brightness of her dark and restless eyes.

She came in very simply and, pointing to the high-backed armchair at the head of the table, invited Colonel Trommel to take it. The Prussian would have declined the invitation, but she insisted and seated herself on his right.

"Is Gellert there?" she asked. As if in answer to her question there was a stir at the door and the dwarf hurried in. Godfrey was conscious of Traugott hovering behind him. Gellert whispered something to the Archduchess as he took his seat at her other side. She shrugged her shoulders with an air of lassitude.

"Let the rest now withdraw!" commanded Trommel, opening the portfolio that lay before him. The secretaries and Traugott filed out. The door was gently closed. There was a long silence.

Trommel took a watch from the breast pocket of his tunic and placed it on the table before him.

Slowly he let his eyes travel round the table. Godfrey followed their direction. He saw Valérie, the line of her long lashes very black on her cheek as she looked down at her hands folded in her lap; Gellert with his frowish, perpetually interrogating expression; then von Bartzen with his profile of a Roman centurion; von Winterbaum, polishing his nails with a dandified air on the sleeve of his coat; next to him, Godol, with his beady eyes, swarthy features, and high cheek-bones suggestive of a Japanese. There was no fresh face in the room. Godfrey looked in vain for the man of iron will, swift and terrible to punish treachery, the Third Club.

"The meeting is opened!" repeated Trommel, and gazed slowly round the table. "I don't see..."

"An hour after sunrise to-morrow the aeroplanes could start. The orders are here. But I must point out..."

"Yes, but excuse me," he said harshly, "I must draw Your Imperial Highness's attention to the fact that we can settle nothing without the assent of the Third Club. And he is not here!"

"On the contrary, Colonel Trommel," replied the Archduchess in a voice that vibrated with emotion, "Hungary has not played you false. The Three of Clubs is complete. Hungary's leader is here!"

Each man looked blankly round the table. "I am the Magyar Chief!" she announced.

"Herrgott!" he thundered. "I might have guessed. The only man among the Habsburgs!"

A hum of excited conversation broke out in the room. But Godfrey heard nothing, saw nothing except only Valérie, a flush of colour in her face, her shapely white arms propped on the table. Was hers the voice that had spoken sentence of death on the wretched Rubis, on the unfortunate Milós? Was it in those slender hands that his fate would lie should his final dash for freedom fail? His eyes were opened now. She had known from the first that he was a spy and had brought him to Kés so as to keep track of his activities.

He felt a hot wave of anger sweep over him. He had played the game by her. He had accepted her invitation, but he had not sought further to exploit their old friendship to help him in his mission. If it came to a reckoning between them, she could not reproach him with that. But the cards were on the table now. It was open war between them; and to fulfil his mission, he would not spare her. So he reasoned to himself, made reckless by his anger, little knowing what stood before.

"More causes are lost," she said, "through the indiscriminate zeal of their adherents than through treachery. Because I knew what harm the unthinking enthusiasm of my supporters might work, I remained in the background until now. There are six of us here. With the exception of myself each for the first time is now acquainted with the concerted plans of our movement. Five of us will remain here, so that the sixth, who will shortly leave the castle as courier with the operation orders, will be the only man, outside the walls of Kés, fully informed as to the plans of the rising. It only now remains for us to decide upon the date..."

"The sooner the better," Trommel broke in quickly, and a murmur of assent greeted his remark. "If time allowed I would say to-morrow morning. But the courier will have to stop at Budapest to send out the three code messages and then proceed to Vienna and Stuttgart. I therefore propose that, instead of on the 21st, the day originally appointed, we should strike on the day after to-morrow, January 19th. Is that approved?"

The Hungarian, Godol, shot up in his place. "I should feel highly honoured..." he said. Trommel shook his head.

"No," he said. "The air attack on Germany is the vital point of the rising. It must be von Winterbaum. He is better acquainted with the aerial organization than any of us."

"I agree," said Valérie, "and I feel sure that Major von Winterbaum will prove himself worthy of his trust!"

"Here then, mein Junge," he said, "are the operation orders for Germany, Austria, and Hungary. In its respective envelope you will find also the code telegram ready prepared for Vienna and Stuttgart warning them of the date of the move. At Budapest you will, of course, communicate the date verbally. I will now ask Captain Godol, who has the advantage of me in his knowledge of the Magyar tongue, to arrange about a car for you while you get something to eat. You must leave here within fifteen minutes. Is that understood?"

Godol opened. One of the men servants stood there. Godol spoke to him, then swung round to face the table.

"They've discovered a secret passage," he announced excitedly, "leading from a wood-bin in the servants' quarters to a spot in the park near the temple. Matches freshly burnt have been found in it. This is certainly the way in which the English spy left the castle."

Godfrey heard him with a sinking heart. His line of communications was cut. Of what avail was the vital information he had acquired if he were unable to leave Kés?

"Have the passage guarded, both entrance and exit!" commanded Trommel, springing to his feet. "The moment has come, Frau Erzherzogin," he added, addressing Valérie. "Now we shall see whether your clever young friend has really abandoned the field or whether, as I still firmly believe, he is lurking somewhere in the neighbourhood to discover the results of our meeting. The guards should be concealed, Godol; let the English spy remark nothing when he reenters the trap. Stay, I'll post the sentries myself!"

"I'll go with you, Colonel!" said Valérie. "I should be interested to see this passage....."

"Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!" replied the Major, and came to attention, stiff as a ramrod.

Watching them Godfrey failed to catch something that Gellert, snatching the occasion, was saying to Valérie with great insistence. But he heard her reply with indifference:

Colonel Trommel held the door for the Archduchess and she passed out followed by the Prussian, Godol, and von Bartzen.

In a flash Godfrey discerned his opportunity. He had perhaps a minute in which to act; for von Winterbaum, having got his papers together was now thrusting them into a small attache case.

CHAPTER XXVII
In The Tower Room

ONE thought was uppermost in Godfrey's mind as he quietly slipped down the corkscrew staircase to the tower room. Von Winterbaum was there alone with the vital orders, and Godfrey meant to get them. He was fully aware of the foolhardy nature of his enterprise. His sole chance of success lay in a surprise attack; but, even if he were able to overpower the courier before he could give the alarm, von Winterbaum's absence must almost immediately be discovered. Had not Trommel ordered the courier to be out of the castle in a quarter of an hour? Moreover, Godfrey could not as yet count on Traugott's help, for it was only half-past seven; their rendezvous in the tower room was at eight o'clock.

Nor had he any idea of what, having achieved his project, his next move should be. His way of retreat from Kés was now cut off; and he was sufficiently acquainted with Prussian methods to know that Trommel would back his conviction that the English spy was yet within the castle precincts by bottling up every outlet and inlet. Still he dare not delay a minute. He must act at once and let the future take care of itself.

Now he had reached the landing on which the service stairs debouched. The lobby door was shut.

He stopped and listened—not a sound! Softly he turned the handle. The small lobby was deserted. There on the right were the bedrooms of Valérie and the Baroness Matsera; opposite him, through a glass door, he saw the lantern that hung at the head of the main tower staircase; and on the left was the door of the tower room. He braced himself for action.

With his right hand he would open the door: in his left hand he carried his automatic. But he did not mean to shoot, he dared not; for the alarm that a shot would give might not allow him sufficient time to snatch the papers and get clear. If he could catch von Winterbaum unawares, he would bluff him with the pistol; but if the courier had time to draw his gun....

He laid his hand on the doorknob. He remembered perfectly the construction of the lock; like a church-door it had an iron latch on the inside raised by a lever actuated by the knob without. However noiselessly he might set about it if von Winterbaum happened to be looking at the door Godfrey knew he could not fail to see the latch slowly rising....

He paused to take thought, his fingers on the handle of the door. No, he decided: he could not risk giving von Winterbaum warning of his approach; he must stake everything on a coup de main. If the fates were kind, he might come upon his man from the rear....

With a swift movement he opened the door. The latch clicked softly once. He darted into the room. Ten yards away von Winterbaum stood.

He was facing the wall, strapping on a motor helmet. On the table behind him lay a service revolver. The ear-pieces of the helmet were down and Godfrey at once guessed that they had dulled the officer's hearing so that he had not caught the sound of the other's entry.

But, even as Godfrey shifted his pistol to his right hand, even before his soft cry of "Hands up!" the courier made a dash for the fireplace that lay between the German and the door. In an instant Godfrey had taken in the situation. Dandy that he was, von Winterbaum had been adjusting his helmet in front of an old lacquer mirror, hanging on the wall between window and stove, souvenir of the travels in Tartary of some former lord of Kés, and had marked in the glass the other's entrance. And what now he sought to reach was not his gun to defend himself but the bell-pull, suspended from the cornice on the far side of the fireplace, to give the alarm.

"Stop!" cried Godfrey, his finger on the trigger of his automatic. But the courier did not obey. And Godfrey, partly because he had resolved not to risk a shot and partly because he did not have it in his heart to kill in cold blood a brave man who put his mission before his personal safety, held his hand. Instead, as the German half turned, his arm extended to grasp the bell-rope, Godfrey flung his automatic at him, caught him fair and square on the side of the head and sent him staggering. At the same moment the Englishman, measuring his distance, leapt at von Winterbaum's throat....

The motor helmet went flying. The German shouted once—a hoarse wordless roar. But that was all. Godfrey's grip tightened about his neck.

"Stop that noise, damn you!" he muttered as he shook him, "or I'll choke it out of you!"

But von Winterbaum, though soft and out of form, was full of fight. His eyes were bulging now, his face was distorted and congested, but he struggled gamely, trying to lock his legs about his adversary's and bring him down.

Then suddenly he slipped. A bowl of water habitually stood on the top of the stove to cool the room and von Winterbaum, reeling back as Godfrey's pistol took him in the face, had overset it. The water had slopped out all over the stone floor before the fireplace and now, as they wrestled, the German's feet slithered in the pool and his legs went from under him. Down he went with a crash, Godfrey, gripping to the last, on top of him; the German's head struck the projecting edge at the bottom of the stove; he grunted heavily once and lay still.

Breathing hard, Godfrey was on his feet at once. He looked at von Winterbaum. The German did not stir and Godfrey noticed that a dark stain was coagulating on the stone floor where his head lay.

How to get the papers! He glanced about the room for the attache case. On the table stood a square leather box. He recognized it again; it was the sample of the new Angerdynck gas. He would have liked to have taken it with him, but he could not afford to load himself up with luggage. Then, on a chair, half hidden by a heavy ulster with a fur collar, he espied what he sought.

He lifted the attache case to the table. It was not locked. It contained a mass of documents, telegrams and letters. Hurriedly he turned them over. The envelopes he wanted were not there. Von Winterbaum must have them on him.

He bent over the unconscious German. Cigar-case, a packet of love-letters written on scented paper, a Cook's railway ticket folder, some newspaper cuttings he found in the pockets; but there was no sign of the three envelopes. He undid the waistcoat and there, in the lining, he came upon a buttoned flap. It covered an inside pocket in which the three envelopes were stowed away. Godfrey whipped them out and stuffed them in his pocket.

As he rose to his feet again, he hesitated. He did not want to be bothered with the attache case, but he felt sure that he ought to examine the papers it contained. His immediate plan was to return to the loft until eight o'clock, when possibly he might join forces with Traugott. While he waited he could go through these documents.

As he was shutting the case he noticed that one of the papers had fallen to the floor. He picked it up, then recoiled in amazement.

It was his own dispatch, the report he had given to Virginia to take to Pressburg.

What did it mean? What could it mean? Virginia had been robbed, captured, even? It was unquestionably his dispatch: "Torquemada London" it began, the private address of the Chief. How did it come to be among von Winterbaum's papers?

A sudden sound, breaking in upon the absolute stillness of the tower room, set his nerves tingling with excitement. It was characteristic of his invariable coolness that, reeling though his brain seemed to be from the shock of his discovery, his first thought was that he had not recovered his pistol. He did not even know where it had fallen to the ground and he had his back to the door.

He swung round, gripping the table behind him. Between him and the door he saw Valérie standing, a pistol in her hand.

CHAPTER XXVIII
The Empty Cell

Her black eyes were hot with anger, her lips a mere scarlet thread in a bloodless face. She held her head high and there was scorn in her voice.

Godfrey was silent. He was wondering whether, from where she stood, she could see the still form of von Winterbaum. The two lamps in the room, one on the centre table, one on the desk at the side, threw long shadows, and von Winterbaum was partially screened by the table and chairs.

"You dared to play with me!" she exclaimed in a low voice. "You dared to use me, an Archduchess of Austria, for your spy work! To believe that I should ever have wasted a thought on you!"

Behind his back Godfrey's hands were busy. He remembered von Winterbaum's revolver on the table; he felt for it, but failed to find it. His fingers met only the shiny surface of the oak.

"Put your hands up!" commanded the girl, "and if you have anything to say, say it!"

"You can leave me out of it," he said. "What have you done with Miss FitzGerald?"

The hand that levelled the automatic trembled. Such a look of fury appeared in the Archduchess's face that, for a moment, he thought she was going to shoot. She restrained herself; but he saw her left hand clench convulsively.

"So that is what has brought you from your hiding-place?" she said. "Let me tell you this! Spying is dangerous work. It requires something more than... than a pretty face and... and golden hair. You should have thought of that before bringing your mistress in here after you!"

"That, at least, is not true!" he returned quietly. But he felt his temper rising.

"Then it is only because you have not required it of her," she flashed back. "The little fool's in love with you—you'll not deny that, I suppose! You used her, as you used me, for your own ends. And you haven't even the excuse of being her lover!"

"God!" she cried, "I can understand now what makes England great. A race of cold and calculating hypocrites that subjugate everything to their ends. But love is not a commodity. It is a gift of the gods. You cannot traffic in it, not in true love. But you...."

"Listen to me, Godfrey Cairsdale," she went on breathlessly, not heeding his question, "I loved you. We were scarcely more than children when we met. But I loved you from the first. You were made to be a lover, you with your ardent eyes and your craving for beauty, and so was I. But in those mad days in Vienna you spared me and I loved you the more for it. Many men have come into my life since then, but in my heart the memory, not of your burning kisses, not of your tenderness, but of your chivalry to the madcap fool I was in those days always remains. You had passed out of my life; I never expected to see you again; but that afternoon when chance threw us together on the hill at Wolfsbad... ."

Some one was knocking loudly at the door. The handle rattled, but the door was locked.

"He is not here!" Valérie replied. "Your Imperial Highness will pardon me, but...."

"Colonel Trommel, I am engaged," the Archduchess said, "and I don't wish to be disturbed..."

"If what you say is true," said Godfrey, "you will tell me what has become of Miss FitzGerald...."

"She has done nothing," he urged. "I don't mind what happens to me if you only let her go!

"Now you speak like the Godfrey I used to know," Valérie said softly. "Tell me, does this girl mean so much to you?"

She spoke in the old caressing way that made him forget the levelled pistol, the ire and scorn in her face before.

"Godfrey," she said, "that day at Wolfsbad when I asked you to come to Kés I had it in my mind that you should join us. Many Englishmen in the past have risen high in the service of foreign states and you would have been welcome at the Court of the Queen of Hungary. Listen! You can't stop this movement. Single-handed I have brought together the sound monarchist elements in Germany, Austria, and Hungary. We have funds and arms and, what is more, a cause. In four days from now I shall be Queen. Nothing will be refused to the new ruler and the English are popular in my country. You can rise to high rank in my service. And when the time comes for me to choose a consort...."

"Stop!" he cried, and looked at her aghast. "You don't know what you're saying!" he exclaimed. "Do you for a moment believe in the success of this insane and criminal scheme of yours? Don't you realize that the day of the Habsburgs is done? The world is finished with Cabinet wars and all the other things that you and your line stand for...."

"Count Gellert went to reason with her..." she retorted, and added, after pause, "... half an hour ago!"

"Yes!" she cried with sparkling eyes, "and by this time your pretty American has gone the same way!"

"Well," he said, "why don't you shoot, Valérie?" And then his fingers, clutching the polished wood of the table, came in contact with a hard, shiny object, small and square and heavy. It was the case with the Angerdynck gas. Secured only by a press fastener it opened readily. Now he felt the cool smooth surface of glass. A small phial lay in his right hand.

For an instant Valérie faced him unmoved. Then he saw her eyes fill. Suddenly her spirit broke. With a clatter her pistol crashed to the stone floor as she bowed her head, covering her face with her hands in an ungovernable passion of tears.

"I loved you," she moaned, "now it is the end!" The phial still clasped in his right hand behind his back, he gazed at her in amazement. "Valérie...." he said.

"Go!" she cried, "go! They were right! You have lamed my will and I have no longer the strength to kill you!"

He sprang for the door. The key stood in the lock. But as he turned it, she flung up her head, her cheeks wet with tears.

"But no other woman shall have you!" she exclaimed. Before he could stop her, she was at the wall tugging the bell-rope.

He heard the bell clatter noisily as he plucked open the door. From the hall below arose a hubbub of voices, the rustle of feet. There then was a rush on the staircase and Trommel's red face appeared, von Bartzen in the background.

But Gellert! Where was Gellert? Godfrey felt his heart turn cold within him as he looked in vain for the dwarf.

"Stand back!" he shouted, his right hand raised above his head. "I have the Angerdynck gas! If one of you advances a step I'll smash the phial to pieces on the stairs!"

"Back!" he shouted again and advanced. He could not dally; there was no movement from the room behind him, but he did not forget that they could take him by the service staircase in his rear.

Trommel checked. Godfrey saw his bulging blue eyes shoot an anxious glance behind him.

"Back, the lot of you!" the Englishman trumpeted. "I'll count three and then we'll all go west together!"

"One!" he called, his feet on the top stair. The clamour from below had ceased. The castle was as still as death. Slowly the foremost group fell back.

Now he was almost on them, so close to Trommel that he could see the folds of fat in the back of the Prussian's red neck. The curve of the staircase had brought him out of sight of the landing above, he noted to his relief. There was still no sign of Valérie. He wondered that she had not followed him down.

"Quicker, by God!" he called. The shuffling procession ahead became a rout. He heard them tumbling over one another as step by step he descended.

The tower staircase ended in a passage that led from the small entrance lobby of the castle to the great hall. To the left of the stairs was the little office to which Virginia had been conducted when she arrived at Kés. Here, Godfrey decided, as he drove the troop downstairs before him, he would imprison them. The windows were barred and all doors at Kés were solid. It would give him a few minutes' breathing-space to go down to the cellar to see if....

A wave of horror came over him. Virginia in that fetid place where in the dank straw he had seen old Milós with the cord about his neck!...

He took the remainder of the stairs three at a time. As he reached the bottom he heard the frightened flock scuffling about the door that led from the passage to the great hall.

"Stop!" he cried, brandishing his phial. On the instant the hustling ceased. An array of angry and troubled faces was turned towards him. Swiftly he glanced round the circle. Gellert was not amongst them. He knew now where he should find him . . .

"In there with the lot of you!" he ordered. "Remember that I shall be outside, and if one of you tries to escape I'll pitch this flask of gas into the midst of you!"

It was a poor bluff and he knew it. Once they thought the coast was clear, of course, they would burst open the door. But he might win a few precious minutes to make his way down to that ill-omened cellar. If only he were in time...

They filed past him into the office, Trommel, von Bartzen, Godol, the secretaries, some servants and peasants, perhaps a dozen men in all. He turned the key in the door and thrust it in his pocket. Then he dashed for the great hall.

His feet thundered over the dark parquet, which threw back dully the leaping flames of the log-fire, as he tore across the big room, and, through the door leading to the servants' quarters, came at length to the stone passage.

Thank God, the cellar door stood open. He leapt down the stairs, tugged the knob that opened the lower door, then halted in horror on the threshold.

Everything proclaimed the fact that a desperate struggle had taken place. The pitch-pine panel of one of the cupboards had been split from top to bottom and the yawning rent was smeared with blood; the table had been overturned and beside it a chair, its back splintered, was lying in a pool of blood from which a bloody trail led to the cell. And the door at the head of the narrow stair was banging mournfully in the icy draught that blew from the dungeon below.

As he flung the door back there came to his ears the ceaseless song of the river.

The cell was empty. Above the blood-stained straw the shutter, folded back against the back wall, stood wide.

CHAPTER XXIX
In Which The Archduchess Valérie Proves
Herself To Be The Only Man Of The Habsburgs

GODFREY stood aghast. He was overwhelmed by the completeness of the disaster that had befallen him. He forgot the pressing danger of his situation, forgot the papers that, crackling in his pocket, told him of the successful accomplishment of his mission, in the bitter reproaches that he heaped upon himself. Why had he let Virginia return alone to Wolfstal?

Wearily he hoisted himself up to the embrasure below the shutter; knowing by instinct what he would find. Yes, the boat was gone. The rising moon, shedding its radiance over the white fields that ran down to the dark river, showed him a length of rope hanging idle from the iron ring in the castle wall. Gellert had lost no time in disposing of his victim....

And then hot anger—the sort of rage that overtakes a man but once in his lifetime—swept over him. Virginia had vanished, but Gellert, he reminded himself, was here in the castle to be called to account.

He turned his back on the trap in the wall and blindly dashed up the stair. His hand still grasped the flask of gas, but he was hardly conscious of it-He was on fire to get at the dwarf, beat his head against the wall, rend him limb from limb—anything to satisfy the glowing, bitter fury that tore at his heart.

Before he had come to his senses, before he had considered where to look for Gellert, he found himself unexpectedly standing in the castle courtyard where the moon threw long shadows across the blackening heaps of snow. Behind him the door of the entrance lobby stood open. In his mad rage he must have turned at random, emerging from the cellar and blundered into the open.

He was about to retrace his steps when, from under the velvet blackness of the gateway, a figure came running. It was Traugott. Round his head he had a white bandage, through which the blood had welled and spread, and his clothes were sopping and smeared with mud. Across the patch of brilliant moonlight that fell across the yard, he darted to Godfrey's side.

"Gott sei Dank!" he cried, then caught the other's arm, pointing wildly behind them. At that moment a deafening explosion shattered the stillness of the quadrangle. Traugott, a look of wonder in his blue eyes, snatched with his hands convulsively at his body.

Count Gellert stood at the open window of one of the ground floor rooms, a smoking pistol in his hand, his livid face behind. So tiny was his stature that his weapon, steadied on the sill, was on the level of his chest. He was not ten yards away and Godfrey, bethinking himself, in a flash, of his sole weapon, flung his phial of gas, hard and true as he would have thrown a cricket ball, straight at the dwarf.

As his arm went forward the livid face disappeared, there was a crash of glass as the flask shivered within the room, followed by a shrill, despairing shriek. Swiftly Godfrey turned to his companion. The young German had collapsed on his face. As Godfrey gathered Traugott up in his arms, he saw that the snow beneath the limp body was stained red. Lights now flashed fitfully past the windows giving on the courtyard, and a vague clamour arose from the interior of the castle. Bending, Godfrey hoisted his companion across his shoulder and staggered across the moonlit quadrangle to the gate at the far end.

As he reached the archway the loud throbbing of a motor resounded in his ears and his eyes were dazzled by the blinding glare of a headlight. A car, two cars, three cars, came rushing down the descent to the bridge. Now the leading one was thumping across the wooden planks; now it swooped up the slope and halted before the gate. A hand grasping an enormous revolver shot out from the side curtains.

"Hands up!" called out a gruff voice in Hungarian. A gendarme leaped to the ground, behind him a tall slim figure. Then the man, as he confronted Godfrey standing immobile in the gateway with his still burden, was thrust aside.

As through a mist that had suddenly descended over his eyes, Godfrey recognized Clive Lome.

They lifted Traugott's body from him and laid it down on the snow. Godfrey noticed Count Aranyi at his side in a brand-new English leather motor coat. And there seemed to be gendarmes everywhere, brown, taciturn men, booted and spurred, enormous revolvers in holsters on their belts with lanyards fastened round the neck.

The words came to Godfrey as out of a dream. Who was dead? he wondered vaguely. Funny that! He began to laugh. He could not keep his eyes off the head-lights of the leading car—such enormous lights, growing bigger and bigger....

"Look out," cried an excited voice, very clear and distinct this voice, close to his ear, "brandy! He's going to flop!"

He came back suddenly out of the vast black void into which he had begun to sink. The headlights were still there; but they had shrunk to their normal size. He was alone with Clive Lome, propped up against a timbered wall of the gateway. His mouth and throat were burning. Beside him the white face of Hans Traugott, late of the Secret Service of the German Republic, was turned up to the moon that peeped beneath the arch.

"Gas!" he said hoarsely, "there's poison gas in the castle. Your men.... where are your men?"

"It's all right, old boy," said Clive cheerfully. "We smelt it directly we got into the courtyard. Pah! It still reeks in my nostrils! The castle is completely surrounded. We shall enter presently when the gas clears! Feeling better? What have you done with Virginia?"

"Come on," Godfrey cried suddenly. "We'll search the castle. And if Gellert is still alive, he shall tell us what he's done with Virginia, by God!..."

"You can't go in yet, old boy," Clive protested. "The place is rotten with gas. You can smell it from here!"

In truth the keen night air of the quadrangle was heavy with a faint odour, rank and strange. From where they stood, beneath the vaulted gateway, they could see the open window of the ground-floor room. No sound came from within. Kés lay very still beneath the moon.

"One of the cars has gone back to the barracks at Hacz for box respirators," Clive added, "it'll be here any minute now! As soon as we've got the masks we'll go in!"

But it was half an hour before they heard the strident hoot of a klaxon coming out of the darkness below the gate. Godfrey could not keep still. In a fever of impatience he paced to and fro from the archway to the bridge and from the bridge to the archway. Clive quickly abandoned the attempt to draw from him any account of his adventures and stood, smoking in silence in a knot of gendarmes whose silhouettes detached themselves dimly from the black background of the towering castle walls.

At last the car was there. Respirators, of the German pattern, with a tin box of chemicals hanging down on the chest, were distributed and adjusted. The gendarmerie officer showed the Englishmen how to put them on. Aranyi, accompanied by a youth with a wispy beard, now joined the party and, with Godfrey at their head, looking in their masks like a party of Martians, they all trooped across the echoing quadrangle.

They tramped through the little entrance lobby into the passage leading to the great hall. As Godfrey had foreseen, his prisoners had burst their way out of the office and the door, its panels splintered across, its lock hanging from its screws, stood open. Beyond the tower staircase, now dim and silent, was another door. It was shut.

"Be careful," he urged. "This is a new gas, remember. Who shall say whether our masks will withstand it?"

A hanging curtain of gas seemed to belly out in their faces. The nauseating chemical reek penetrated the masks. A strong arm plucked Godfrey back and the door slammed. But not before he had seen....

The room was in darkness save for a long shaft of moonlight that fell through the open casement. In his little high-backed chair at his little desk Count Gellert sat, his eyes closed, his hands reposing in his lap. The pale ray of the moon picked out the white page of a book that lay open on the desk before him. It was as though he had fallen asleep while reading. The merciful hand of death had smoothed out the wrinkled brow and banished the puzzled frowish look from his face. But the pinched and puny features remained, and he looked like a pale changeling child slumbering in its cradle. On the carpet beside him his pistol lay, and in the foreground the fragments of the shattered phial glittered like diamonds in the moonbeams.

"He knew how to die," observed Aranyi, as they stood huddled in the dim corridor, an uncanny company with their snoutish masks. "He realized there was no escape so he sat himself down to his desk and his book to wait for death. A strange man! He was the last of his line."

They followed him through the great hall. The castle seemed to be abandoned, deserted. But in the stone corridor the lid of the wood-bin thrown back and the trap standing wide showed Godfrey how the conspirators had evaded the cordon of gendarmes and made good their escape.

But he would not stop to explain to the others. With the search-party at his heels he led the way back to the passage and up the tower staircase.

Only as he crossed the lobby of the Archduchess's apartments did the recollection of Valérie come back to him. What had happened to her?

Had she left the castle with the rest? In a body they burst into the tower room. The lamps still burned, casting their yellow radiance over the blackened oak, while above them mysterious circles of light trembled on the vaulted ceiling. But the room was empty; von Winterbaum had disappeared.

"There's a woman, the Baroness von Griesbach, in there," he said, pointing back over his shoulder. "She's dead, Count Bruno says. Godfrey, what was she doing here?"

Godfrey sprang past him. The door of Valérie's bedroom stood open. The pale young man with the wispy beard was bending over the bed against the far wall, at his side a gendarme holding aloft the staircase lantern.

As Godfrey approached the young man turned to him and lifted a tumbler that stood on a little table.

And Godfrey knew that Trommel had spoken true when he had called her the only man of the Habsburgs.

But now there was a commotion at the door. One of the chauffeurs was there, breathless.

Without a word Godfrey pushed him aside and rushed from the room. As he reached the entrance hall he saw Virginia crossing the courtyard.

CHAPTER XXX
Virginia's Story

HOW tightly they clung to each other, these two. Godfrey, haggard and unshaven, with a great dark smear on the shoulder of his rough tweed coat where Traugott's body had rested, and Virginia, pale and rather high-strung, but with happiness shining in her blue eyes. Her skirt was plastered with mud, and her hair, which had loosed itself, rested on her neck in a thick coil of dull gold. They said nothing; the joy of reunion was too deep for words. So they remained for a while in silence in each other's arms.

"Captain Traugott rescued me," she said. "Where is he, Godfrey? But for him...."

"My dear," he replied, "he served us to the last. He got a bullet that was meant for me!"

"Oh, Godfrey," she exclaimed brokenly, "he came back for you. He said he had promised to meet you at eight o'clock and that he couldn't let you down. He left me in the temple in the park while he returned to the castle to find you!"

"Oh, my dear," sighed the young man, "what a night you gave me! I left you to try and get nearer to von Bartzen to see if he were alone. All of a sudden I fell into the most enormous snowdrift. I think it must have been a pit, it was so deep. I floundered about for ever so long and when, at last, I got out, there was no sign of you. I wandered about till daybreak trying to find you and then returned to Wolfstal for help!"

"You should have seen the state of mind he was in!" Count Hector remarked. "We went out in a party and searched for you for hours...."

"When Lome told me that he had seen von Bartzen at the train," Count Hector explained in his fluent English, "and we failed to find Miss Virginia in the forest, it seemed to me that it would be simpler to follow up von Bartzen. I telephoned, therefore, to some friends of mine at Budapest, and discovered that this scoundrel had left the capital for Hacz on the previous night. From Hacz station, not without considerable trouble, we traced him to Kés...."

"I had an account to settle with Gellert, anyway," Count Hector proceeded, "over the murder of this wretched creature Rubis, so, in my capacity as magistrate, I obtained authority from the local Governor to take a party of gendarmes and make a house search...."

"But, Virginia," Clive interrupted, "I'm dying to hear what happened to you. Old Godfrey here thought you had been murdered...."

"Her story will have to keep," Count Hector announced firmly, and took the girl's arm; "it's time this young lady was in bed. You look half dead, my child. Come, you're all going back with me to Wolfstal..."

"I can't!" Godfrey announced. "I was going to ask you to lend me a car, Count. I must go to Budapest without delay."

"You needn't worry, Cairsdale," said the Count. "There's nothing more for you to do. Acting on my information about von Bartzen the Government made certain enquiries and they raided the Budapest headquarters of the conspiracy this afternoon. Hungary's not going to rise, you needn't worry!"

"I'm not worrying about Hungary," the young man rejoined, "or about Austria either, for that matter. It's the German end I'm concerned about. Trommel and von Winterbaum have got clean away apparently and they'll do their damnedest to start things up before we can stop 'em. Remember, they're ready down to the last button. I've got to act, and act devilish quick."

And so it fell out that the lovers were separated again. But not for long this time. The next afternoon, about the hour of tea, Virginia sat in the Louis XVI drawing-room of Count Aranyi's town house in Budapest, waiting as she had waited—how many years ago it seemed!—at the Ritz in Paris for Godfrey. On the previous evening she had watched him whirled away into the night in Count Hector's own limousine whilst that gentleman and his guests drove back in the other cars to Wolfstal to spend the night at the Schloss before going on to the capital in the morning.

This time Godfrey kept his appointment. He arrived, his arms full of roses, from the Dalmatian coast, well-groomed, looking, in his neat blue suit and brown shoes, a vastly different man from the grim and haggard tramp whom she had seen standing in the moonlit courtyard at Kés.

And yet, as he kissed her, her intuition told her there was something different about him. It was not that he looked magnificently healthy, his figure trim and lissom in his well-cut serge, his face delicately bronzed, his eyes clear and shining. The change was psychic. He seemed to have lost his old air of cynical indolence, of careful, almost affected reserve. Empressé towards her as he always was in his uniquely attractive way, he seemed to be more affectionate, more whole-heartedly fond of her than she had ever known him. It was as though his adventure, in sobering him, had made him simpler.

About herself, too, she was conscious of a certain air of restraint. With a sense of profound shock she had heard from Clive of the suicide of Valérie. Virginia was unaffected enough, she was generous enough, to have recognized the charm of this beautiful, exotic creature and the tragedy of her lonely death had moved her very deeply. She knew that Godfrey had been in love with this girl, but she was sufficiently assured of his sincerity to believe that this old passion was dead; yet Virginia found herself hoping, ardently wishing that he would tell her so himself...

Side by side they sat on a gilt couch before the fire. An incredibly pompous footman, in powdered hair and plush breeches, had served tea on a great silver tray set with an exquisite porcelain service. A coquettish Dresden shepherdess hid beneath her voluminous panniers the teapot of eggshell china; the water bubbled rhythmically in the silver kettle and there were scones in a hot-water dish. Before the windows curtains of heavy yellow silk shut out the faint bourdon of the streets and in the hearth great logs, laid across the lions couchant of the Aranyi shield, blazed and hissed cheerfully. It was the hour of confidences and the setting was intimate, the environment of the discreet and gallant eighteenth century.

His hand in Virginia's, but with his face steadily bent to the fire, Godfrey, without prompting, told her the story of his mission which had been so strangely bound up with that adventure of long ago.

"Poor Vali!" he said. "She was a victim of the new spirit in the world. Time had stood still for her. She was absolutely unconscious of the changes that the war brought. She thought that the incompetence of the ruling order lost the war for the masses, and that a strong and ruthless personality on the throne would show democracy the error of its ways. She never realized that the war was a struggle not so much between rival peoples as between two antagonistic points of view. It was this"—with a sweep of his hand he indicated the dainty room—"the eighteenth century, with its glorification of kingship independent of the wishes of the people, its disregard of nationalities, its oppressions, that went up in fire and smoke when we free nations smashed the Hindenburg Line.

"But Vali never knew it till the end. And then the realization of it broke her heart. Brought up in the barbaric atmosphere of the seventeen-hundreds she had no moral sense as you and I know it. But she was honest, Jenny; we must grant her that; as honest in her own way as you are...."

Virginia nodded. Then she told him of her doings since their parting at the villa in the forest, of her meeting with Valérie and her interview in the cell with von Bartzen and Trommel.

"After these two went away," she said, "I was alone in the dark for a long time. And then, from the room outside, I suddenly heard the sounds of a terrific struggle. The noise ceased and an extraordinary shuffling step approached the door. The next thing I knew Count Gellert was in the cell. Godfrey, he was terrifying! I had not realized before how short Count Gellert was. Measured against the door he was no taller than a small boy. And he was so grave and... and so deliberate in all his movements.... just like a child. He turned round and put up his little hands to push the door to behind him exactly as a well-brought-up child might have done.

"But when he faced me I could have screamed out in horror at the contrast between these odd babyish ways of his and what I saw in his eyes. He was breathing hard and he was holding out his hand, for the blood kept dripping on the straw. I was literally numb with fright. I couldn't have moved or spoken if you'd paid me. He said nothing, but just stood there looking at me with those disgusting lack-lustre eyes of his. And then suddenly..."

"He shot out his hand at my throat. I dodged back and he caught my wrist. Oh, Godfrey, his grip! It was soft and flabby, but strong, like steel wires covered with rubber. He held me fast. I couldn't get free. At last I bent down and bit his hand. He squealed out shrilly... like an animal in pain. But he did not let go his grip and then he got his other hand round my neck....

"I screamed and screamed and screamed. In my struggles the lantern he had brought in with him and put down on the ground got overturned, and I was left in the dark with one clammy hand clutching at my throat. And he was talking to himself all the time...

"And then Traugott came. How it all happened I don't quite know—I think I must have fainted—but Traugott told me afterwards that he dragged Gellert's hands away from my throat and tried to pinion him. But the dwarf, chattering like an angry monkey, was too quick. He managed to twist himself out of Traugott's grasp and darted out of the cell, locking us both in.

"When I came to my senses, my ears were ringing and the air of the cell was thick with powder fumes. Gellert had gone and Traugott stood there with a pistol in his hand. He was very pale and there was a great open wound on the side of his head, with the blood running down upon his face. The shutter in the back wall was folded back. Traugott had burst open the padlocks by firing his pistol into them.

"There was a boat on the river under the window, he told me, and we would have to drop into it. I'm afraid he had to say it over a great many times, for I was still hardly conscious and almost deaf from the noise of the two pistol shots fired in that confined place. But in the end he made me understand what he wanted and he gave me his hand to help me up to the sill. Then he scrambled up beside me and, feet first, let himself fall into the boat.

"It was so dark outside that, on looking down, I could only just distinguish the whiteness of his face as he stood swaying beneath the window. I could hear the rapid rush of the water and the banging of the boat against the wall far below. Traugott kept on calling to me in a low voice to jump, saying that he would catch me....

"I suppose I jumped. I have a vague recollection of Traugott leaning across me to slash at the rope with his knife. Then we were whizzing downstream in the dark, the boat dancing like a cork on the black swirling water....

"Traugott got out the oars and steadied the boat. The cold air revived me and I felt my brain growing clearer. Gradually we edged across the stream until we were able to run in under some trees a long way down on the far bank.

"As soon as we had landed, I made Traugott let me look at his wound. I examined it by a torch-lamp he had. It was a terrible gash. I washed it out with my handkerchief dipped in the water, and then made a bandage of his handkerchief the way that we were taught at the Red Cross classes in Washington back in '14. He told me that he had been in the outer cellar when Gellert had suddenly appeared. He divined from the dwarf's face the nature of his mission and had tried to stop him. But Gellert had suddenly rounded on him and tripping him up, had laid him unconscious with a blow from a chair. It was my screams, Traugott said, that had brought him round.

"He was a white man all right, that German, Godfrey. He told me that you and he were to meet at eight o'clock in the tower room; he must go back to the castle, he said; for he had given you his word. He repeated that several times like a kind of lesson. He thought it would be best, he said, for me to stay in the little temple in the park until you and he could join me. There, at least, he said, I should be sheltered from the wind, though it is open to the air, and out of sight of anybody patrolling the grounds.

"We had a long way to go across the fields through the snow before we reached the footbridge over the river leading to the park. We came to the temple safely. There Traugott left me. I never saw him again."

"It's a topsy-turvy world!" said Godfrey reflectively. "I never thought I should owe my life's happiness to a German, Jenny. And yet he wasn't one of your creepy-crawly sort of Boches, squealing for pity. He hated the Allies all right. But this time he and I happened to be on the same side and he played the game all through." He was silent for a minute and then: "What brought you up to the castle in the end?" he asked.

"While I was waiting in the temple," said Virginia, resuming, "I heard the murmur of voices from somewhere in the darkness outside. When the moon began to rise, I saw two men, muffled up to the eyes, standing before a screen of bushes hanging from the hillside behind the temple."

"And then from the direction of the castle a single shot rang out," the girl proceeded. "Almost at the same moment I heard the sound of cars coming up the drive about a hundred yards away and saw their headlights gleaming through the trees. And I wondered whether this meant that help had come. Then a whole bunch of men came tumbling out from behind the bushes and scattered all over the park. I waited until all was quiet again and made my way up to the castle to reconnoitre. At the gate I met one of the chauffeurs who rushed away to find you...."

She broke off. He drew her into his arms. Her hands on his shoulders, she looked into his eyes.

"When we met in the villa in the forest," she said, "why didn't you tell me about the Archduchess Valérie?"

"No," he answered simply, "I knew you trusted me. It was rather that I was afraid you'd think me a fatuous ass for imagining for a moment that I could outwit as clever a woman as poor Vali."

"At some time or another in the life of every man," she said, "some woman has to teach him respect for woman's brains. The curious thing," she added pensively, "is that that woman is never his wife..."

Alas! Even beneath the protective covering of the shepherdess's quilted petticoats the teapot was stone cold; the lamp beneath the silver kettle had burnt itself out; and the scones stood stagnant in a pool of congealed butter.

"To test your knowledge of the history of your country, my Virginia," he said gravely, "perhaps you can tell me what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina?"

And with dignity he moved to the lacquer cabinet which the hospitable foresight of his host had pointed out to him as the shrine of certain liquors.

"Oh, Godfrey," replied that student of American history, Miss Virginia FitzGerald, "you'd much better let me mix them. You know you always overdo the gin!"

CHAPTER XXXI
The Device Of The Schönau-Nymphenburgs

"THE Three Clubs conspiracy is busted!" announced the big man with that odd flavour of the sea about him, whose meeting with Godfrey Cairsdale in the Under-Secretary's room at the Foreign Office had been the prelude to such strange adventures. And he closed the official "jacket" from which he had been reading and put it from him with an air of finality.

Indeed, events had followed swiftly on Godfrey's prompt arrival at Budapest with the operation orders of the Three. Trommel, official dispatches announced, had been taken as he was about to board a train at Pressburg Station; von Bartzen had been arrested in a Budapest café; a wounded tramp, ignominiously detained in the lock-up of a Hungarian village for lack of identification papers, had proved to be von Winterbaum; while Godol had put himself at the disposal of the Hungarian authorities.

The German Government, immediately placed in possession of the facts of the conspiracy by the Allied Control Commission in Berlin, had been glad enough of the excuse to crush a militarist movement directed against itself, and not against the Allies for a change, and had promptly impounded the aeroplanes at their concentration centres and seized the secret stocks of the Angerdynck gas.

"It's a clean sweep!" said the Chief, and cocked his wicked old eye at Godfrey, "good work, very!"

The young man, who had arrived in London from Budapest via Paris on the previous day, flicked the ash off his cigarette with a reflective air.

"There's one thing that has puzzled me right along, sir," he said, "and I should like you to explain it to me if you can. Of course, we know that fact is much stranger than fiction and that fate plays the most extraordinary pranks with our fives. But I must say it's stretching the long arm of coincidence a bit far to expect me to believe that out of the hundreds of Englishmen who must have been at your disposal for this particular job you should have picked, merely by chance, the one who happened to be a close friend of the leading spirit of the Three Clubs movement."

"My dear fellow," exclaimed the Chief, settling his horn spectacles more firmly on his nose as he looked across the desk at him, "you astonish me!"

"I'm willing to grant that my meeting with the Archduchess Valérie at Wolfsbad was a pure accident," the young man pursued doggedly. "But for the rest... no! It's a bit too steep! Do you know what I think, sir?"

"I should be infinitely interested to hear," remarked the big man, leaning forward.

His finger-tips pressed together, the Chief leaned back in his chair and contemplated the young man's earnest face with a whimsical air. Then he rose to his feet and crossed the room to a bookcase from which, after a little search, he took down a long thin book and brought it to the table. He rapidly turned over the pages until he found the place he wanted and then handed the book, open at the page in question, to Godfrey.

"Siebmacher's Heraldic Handbook of the Frankfurt and Nassau Nobility," he announced. "Perhaps you'd cast your eye on the second coat of arms on this page!"

With a perplexed air Godfrey looked and saw a number of coloured representations of coats of arms. The second depicted the arms of "Hein-rich Albrecht Karl Hubertus Waldemar Sigismund, Herzog von und zu Schönau-Nymphenburg, Graf von Schönau, Freiherr von...."

He started. The device on the shield had caught his eye: three black clover leaves placed one above the other. It was the three of clubs....

"But these are the arms of the Archduchess Valérie's late husband!" he exclaimed.

"And therefore, as a married woman, incorporated with hers!" rejoined the Chief blandly.

"I should not wish to claim any of the merit belonging to that very judgmatical person, Sir Felix Denzill."

"But why didn't you tell me that the Archduchess was involved in this?" The Chief grinned.

"Frankly, because I didn't want to scare you off," he answered. "Also, I had no certainty. There was no direct evidence against the lady. But I had asked myself, 'Why the three of clubs? Why not the ace of clubs or, more appropriately the queen? Or, if there are three leaders (as we suspected), why not the three of hearts, or diamonds, or spades? Why, precisely, clubs?' One thinks these things over, one worries at them in one's bath, when one is shaving, at one's golf. I had a lot of inspirations. One sent me to Siebmacher..."

"It would have made things much simpler if you had given me a hint," said Godfrey.

"My dear fellow," the Chief replied, "if you'd been at this game as long as I have you'd realize that the next worse thing to telling a chap too little is to tell him too much. Especially, if he's new to the job. I might have been wrong and I didn't want you to muss up your mind with a lot of sentimental considerations for a lady who, I take it, was of great beauty and considerable charm. By the way"—he hunted for an instant among the papers on his desk—"I have a note from MacTavish. He has got a small parcel for you. He came back from Hungary with the bag last night. I asked him to meet you here. Ah! here we are! He says he will be round at eleven! And I think this must be he!"

Euan MacTavish looked none the worse for his nocturnal adventure in the Orient Express. He strolled into the Chief's room as he was wont to stroll, straight from the train, into the chancelleries of Europe, freshly shaven, his hair carefully brushed back, neat as a new pin in his well-worn serge, bright-eyed, a little blasé.

"Well, MacTavish," remarked the big man genially, jerking his head in the direction of Godfrey, "there he is. I've been telling him about our little conspiracy!"

MacTavish laughed. "That friend of yours, Clive Lome, is a persistent young devil, Godfrey," he said. "He was fearfully stuffy when he came to see me in hospital at Budapest, because I kept my mouth shut. He didn't know that I'd already compromised my career by making a wholly unauthorized addition to an official dispatch."

"So it was you, then, who wrote that in about Virginia being at the Ritz in Paris?" he asked. "Thank you, Euan."

"That's all right, old boy. So they've bagged the lot, eh? Including the charming lady who knifed me, I understand!"

"I didn't see her. But afterwards I guessed I had her to thank for that inch of steel in my back. Of course, she left the train at Hacz. She told me she was getting out at Szob as a blind. So it was the Archduchess Valérie, eh? I thought her face was familiar. I used to see her driving in Vienna in the old days. Well, well! By the way," he added, "the Legation gave me a packet for you, Godfrey," and he pulled a small oblong parcel out of his pocket; "it was found in the Archduchess's room at Kés."

But with that delicacy of feeling which made his young men love him, he drew MacTavish away to the fireplace at the far end of the room.

Godfrey broke the seals. The packet contained a leather case and a letter. The envelope was addressed to him in Valérie's enormous sprawling hand. Godfrey opened the letter first. The bold characters were blurred before he had read it to the end.

I know now that you are right [she had written], and that my day is done. The past, indeed, is dead and I go to join it. I am sorry that I spoke in haste to you. When you might have used my foolish love to help your mission, you held your hand. For the second time you have claimed my respect. Good-bye, my friend, be happy and ask your wife to wear these sometimes in forgiveness and in memory of Valérie.

Godfrey and Virginia were married in Paris from the house of the Marquise de Kerouzan. The bride's diamond necklace was generally remarked. Among the many magnificent presents a little embroidered handkerchief almost escaped attention. Pinned to it was a slip of cheap paper on which was written in a sloping foreign hand: "With the best wishes of a prisoner in the fortress of Var, Budapest." The signature was "v.B." There was also a handsome gold cigarette-case, the lid fashioned like the three of clubs, the gift of a burly man with an odd flavour of the sea, who attended the bridegroom to the altar.

THE END

VALENTINE WILLIAMS

THE THREE OF CLUBS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONCERNING A HUMBLE PLAYING-CARD

CHAPTER I In Which Virginia FitzGerald Keeps An Appointment

CHAPTER II News Of Godfrey Cairsdale

CHAPTER III The Orient Express

CHAPTER IV Kilometre 224

CHAPTER V Virginia Comes Into The War

CHAPTER VI The Strange Mission Of Godfrey Cairsdale

CHAPTER VII The Woman On The Hill-Top

CHAPTER VIII Advice From Dr. Nagy

CHAPTER IX Castle Kés

CHAPTER X In Which Virginia Meets An Old Friend And Receives An Odd Missive

CHAPTER XI The Three Of Clubs

CHAPTER XII Valérie

CHAPTER XIII Wolfstal

CHAPTER XIV The Man By The Track

CHAPTER XV The House In The Forest

CHAPTER XVI In The Hour Before Dawn

CHAPTER XVII An Impulse And What Came Of It

CHAPTER XVIII In Which Count Gellert Receives A Rebuff

CHAPTER XIX Count Gellert's Workshop

CHAPTER XX The Surprising Behaviour Of Captain Traugott

CHAPTER XXI The Service Stair

CHAPTER XXII Virginia Comes To Kés

CHAPTER XXIII Valèrie Shows Her Hand

CHAPTER XXIV The Second Club

CHAPTER XXV Which Clearly Shows The Difference Between An Austrian And A Prussian

CHAPTER XXVI The Third Club

CHAPTER XXVII In The Tower Room

CHAPTER XXVIII The Empty Cell

CHAPTER XXIX In Which The Archduchess Valérie Proves Herself To Be The Only Man Of The Habsburgs

CHAPTER XXX Virginia's Story

CHAPTER XXXI The Device Of The Schönau-Nymphenburgs