e've had twelve encounters. The next will be the
thirteenth."

Sogrange shrugged his shoulders slightly as he rang for the lift.

"I'd propose you for the Thirteen Club, only there's some uncomfortable
clause about yearly suicides which might not suit you," he remarked.
"Good-night, and don't dream of Bernadine and your thirteenth
encounter."

"I only hope," Peter murmured, "that I may be in a position to dream
after it."

CHAPTER XI. THE THIRTEENTH ENCOUNTER

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

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

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

"You really believe this?" Peter asked, gravely.

"It is a certainty," Sogrange replied. "Not I alone but many others can
see this clearly. Everywhere the Socialists have wormed themselves into
places of trust. They are to be met with in every rank of life, under
every form of disguise. The post-office strike has already shown us what
deplorable disasters even a skirmish can bring about. To-day the railway
strike has paralyzed France. To-day our country lies absolutely at the
mercy of any invader. As it happens, none is, for the moment, prepared.
Who can tell how it may be next time?"

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

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

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

Sogrange set down his cup and smiled bitterly. In the early sunlight,
still a litt