--"

"Tatra!" suddenly shouted Selim triumphantly. "It is the name!"

"Are you sure?" asked Renwick excitedly.

"Yes. Tatra--that is it. They spoke of it for half an hour. Eh--Zaidee?"

"Yes. It is the name."

Renwick paced the floor with long steps.

"Selim," he said at last, "it is now dark. I must go at once."

"Tomorrow."

"Tonight. The stars are out."

He moved to the door and peered out.

"You will keep silent?" he asked.

"Have I not promised?" said Selim.

He caught them both by the hand.

"Allah will bless you."

"A hundred _kroner_--that is blessing enough for one day, Stefan
Thomasevics," he laughed.

"Adieu!" said Renwick, and walked bravely off into the starlight.

CHAPTER XXI

AN IMPERSONATION

At least he now had a goal--"the center of the map, near the top"--the
Tatra region by which Goritz had passed (if he had not been intercepted)
into Galicia and so into Germany. Aside from the value of Selim's
information, one other fact stood out. The secret service men who had
visited Selim a month ago had not returned. Did this mean that Herr
Windt had already succeeded in closing the door of escape? The passes
through the Carpathians could of course be easily guarded and closed,
for there were few of them accessible to traffic by automobile. Was
Renwick's goal, after all, to be there and not beyond? He had put in one
summer in the Tatra region with Captain Otway of the Embassy, and he
knew the district well,--a country of mountain villages, feudal castles,
and rugged roads. Otway had been interested in the military problems of
the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Renwick remembered the importance of
the Tatra as a natural barrier to Russian ambitions. The shortest
automobile road into Silesia lay to the _east_ of the Tatra range--and
the passes through the Carpathians at this point were few and well
known. By process of elimination, Renwick had at last assured himself
that his first theory was tenable, for Selim had confirmed it. A hundred
conjectures flashed into the Englishman's mind as he trudged onward, to
be one by one dismissed and relegated to the limbo of uncertainty. But
assuming that Selim had told the truth, Renwick had found the trail, and
would follow wherever it might lead him, to its end.

His idea of traveling afoot by night and of hiding by day, at least for
the first part of his journey, was born of the desire to leave nothing
to chance. His own capture meant intern