from a secret pocket took several slips of paper.

"Why, where is it!" she exclaimed, looking again with greater care....
"The devil! I've lost it!"

However, after a moment of thought, she recalled the key-word, and the
rule that he whispered to her--also the squeeze he gave her hand, and
the kiss with the eyes. The Count had fine eyes--he could look much,
very much.... She smiled in retrospection.... Yet how did she drop that
bit of paper--and where?... Or did she drop it?... All the rest were
there. It was very peculiar.... She had referred to the De Neviers slip
on last Saturday--and she distinctly remembered that the Count's was
there at that time. Consequently she must have dropped it on Sunday when
she was studying the Rosny matter, and then she was in this room--and
Marston and Crenshaw and Sparrow were in the next room.--H-u-m.... Well,
the Count wrote in a woman's hand; and the finder cannot make anything
out of the words:

_A l'aube du jour_.

XV

IDENTIFIED

So it happened, that on the same day and practically at the same hour
Carpenter gave instructions looking to the pilfering of the French
private diplomatic cipher, Marston began to lay plans to test
Carpenter's venality, and Madeline Spencer betook herself to Union
Station to meet the man-in-the-case, whose face she had never seen, and
whose name she did not know.

She went a roundabout way, walking down F Street and stopping to make
some trifling purchases in two or three shops. She could not detect that
she was being followed, but she went into a large department store, and
spent considerable time in matching some half-dozen shades of ribbon. On
the way out she stepped into a telephone booth, and directed the
dispatcher at the Chateau to send a taxi to Brentano's for Mrs.
Williams. By the time she had leisurely crossed the street the taxi was
there; getting in, she gave the order to drive to Union Station by way
of Sixteenth Street and Massachusetts Avenue. As she passed the Chateau,
she saw Mrs. Clephane and Harleston coming out; a bit farther on they
shot by in a spanking car.

She drew back to avoid recognition; but they were too much occupied with
each other, she observed, even to notice the occupant of the humble but
high-priced taxi. At Scott Circle their car swung westward and
disappeared down Massachusetts Avenue; she turned eastward, toward
tomorrow's rising sun, Union Station, and the rendezvous--with hate in
her heart for