g as best she
could the marks of her experience, when it occurred to her to examine
the locket. It was a thin gold affair with a smudge of dirt upon each
side of it, and she devoted her efforts to one of these smudges. She
rubbed it with a towel, and stood incredulous, carried back to the
Mystery Stories of her own youth, for a monogram in diamonds winked and
twinkled at her. She tried the other side and unearthed a coronet. After
much careful search she managed to open the locket. And the Mystery
held. On one side a beautiful woman, on the other a coil of baby hair.
All was as it should be.

As she finished the transition from white linen to street attire, she
pondered and marvelled, and by the time her veil was adjusted she had
decided upon her course. This was a case for some one more learned in
Russian ways than Mr. Eissler, and after consulting the nearest
directory she set out for the Russian Consulate. There her demand for
speech with the Consul General was met by the Vice-Consul's bland
regrets that his principal was invisible. "Closeted," he reported,
dropping his voice and nodding toward the closed door behind him, "with
His Excellency, Prince Epifanoff."

"Then," said Miss Bailey, "perhaps you can tell me something of your
Russian charities. I want you to direct me to an institution where a
sick little boy can find attention and understanding. He has sadly
lacked both these many weeks, I fear."

The Vice-Consul, a man of heart, listened with kindly but restrained
attention until Miss Bailey produced the locket on its severed chain.
Then even that practised diplomat allowed amazement to overspread him.

"May I ask you to wait here for a moment?" said he, and it took him
little more than the moment he appointed to disappear through the door
of the inner room, and to reappear.

"And may I ask you now," said he, "to tell these very interesting facts
to Prince Epifanoff and the Consul?"

Constance Bailey was slightly disconcerted by this sudden plunge into
diplomatic waters, and by the extremely thorough, though always
courteous, cross-examination to which she was promptly subjected.

"May I ask," she demanded on her own part when she was growing weary of
always answering, "whether you have identified the miniature?"

"We have indeed," answered the Ambassador, a large but otherwise
unalarming personage, with stiff hair arranged _a la_ door-mat. "And not
only so: we have been searching for the miniature fo