iate achievement. When they had
need of anything, they spoke to the Herr Director of the hotel who
passed on his commands in a sharp decisive tone to a porter who stood
at his heels. Near by him stood the Chief of the Police, Zaniloff, a
short burly man who wore a dark green uniform and held his sheathed
sword lightly in his left hand. These latter looked up when the door
opened, but the doctors took no notice whatever. There was an
overpowering odor of anaesthetics in the room although the windows had
been thrown wide open.

"Is the Count dead?" Alban asked them in a low voice. He had taken a few
steps toward the bed and there halted irresolute. "What is it, what has
happened, sir?" he continued, turning to Zaniloff. That worthy merely
shrugged his shoulders.

"The Count has been assassinated--we believe by a woman. The doctors
will tell us by and by."

Alban shuddered at the words and took another step toward the bed.
He felt giddy and faint. The words he had just heard were ringing
in his ears as a sound of rushing waters. "Has Lois done this
thing?"--incredible! And yet the man implied as much.

"I cannot stay here," he exclaimed presently, "I must go to my room, if
you please."

He turned and reeled from the place, ashamed of his weakness, yet unable
to control it. Outside upon the landing, he discovered that Zaniloff was
at his elbow and had something to say to him. Speaking sharply and
autocratically in the Russian tongue, that worthy realized almost
immediately that he had failed to make himself understood and so called
the Herr Director to his aid.

"They will require your attendance at the bureau," the Director said
with an obsequious bow toward Alban--"you must dress at once, sir, and
accompany this gentleman."

Alban said that he would do so. He was miserably cold and ill and
trembling still. Knowing nothing of the truth, he believed that they
were taking him to Lois Boriskoff and that she was already in custody.

CHAPTER XXVI

AN INTERLUDE IN PICCADILLY

Alban had been fifteen days out of England when Anna Gessner met Willy
Forrest one afternoon as she was driving a pair of chestnut ponies down
Piccadilly towards the Circus. He, amiable creature, had just left a
club and a bridge table which had been worth fifteen pounds to him. The
gray frock suit he wore suited him admirably. He certainly looked very
smart and wide-awake.

"Anna, by Jupiter," he cried, as he stepped from the pavemen