y plain now. Madeline Spencer inferred
the rest and instructed them how to act. And they came very close to
turning the trick."

"You mean to getting the letter?" she cried.

He nodded. "I had gone to bed, when something told me to take
precautions; I carried the letter across the corridor and gave it to a
friend to keep for me until morning. A short time after, the three men
called."

"Good Heavens!" she breathed. "What if they had gotten the letter."

"Unless they knew the key-word, they wouldn't have been any better off
than are we--I mean than is the United States."

"I'm France, am I?" she smiled.

"For only this once--and not for long, I trust," he replied.

"Amen!" she exclaimed, "Also for ever more. I'll be so relieved to be
out of it and back to my normal ways that I gladly promise never to try
it again. I'm committed to seeing this affair through and to aiding the
French Embassy in whatever way I can, both because I must keep faith
with Madame Durrand, and because my inexperience and credulity lost it
the letter. That done, and I'm for--you, Mr. Harleston!" she laughed.

"And I'm for you always--no matter whom you're for, nor what you may do
or have done," he replied.

For just an instant she gave him her eyes; then the colour flamed up and
she turned hastily away.

"Sit down, sir," she commanded--most adorably he thought; "I had almost
forgotten that I have something to tell you."

"You've been telling me a great deal," he confided.

She shrugged her answer over her shoulder, and peremptorily motioned him
to a chair.

"Madame Durrand has been located," she began. "The Embassy telephoned
me that she is in Passavant Hospital, getting along splendidly; and that
she duly wired them of her accident and of my having the letter, with an
identifying description of me. The wire was never received."

"It was blocked by a _present_," he remarked. "The wire never left the
hospital."

"So the Marquis d'Hausonville said. He also assured me that the letter
was of no immediate importance, and that steps were being taken to have
it repeated."

"Which may be true," Harleston smiled, "but it is entirely safe to
assume that he is acting precisely as though the letter was of the most
immediate importance. You may be sure that the moment you left him he
dispatched a cable to Paris reciting the facts, so that the Foreign
Office could judge whether to cable the letter or to dispatch it by
messenger. And he has t