n clothes that no pawnbroker would advance a couple of
shillings on, smiling and bowing before them as though they were lords
of the earth, and he--the man who had sent three men and a woman to
their deaths by, as it were, a mere word of command--a worm beneath
their feet. Nicol Hendry managed to keep his self-possession, but Von
Hamner was already sorry that he had come, and his face showed it.

"We have come to ask you, Mr Amena," said Hendry, thinking it best to
come to the point at once, "why you found it necessary to kill those
people. I needn't mention names. You know them as well as we do."

"I did not kill them, gentlemen. They killed themselves, according to
the newspaper reports. And now, may I ask you why you found it necessary
to set these spies of yours to watch my every movement night and day?
What have I done to bring myself within the four corners of your English
law?"

"Nothing, unfortunately, that we can get a warrant for," replied Hendry,
trying not to look into his eyes, "and so we have taken the law into our
own hands. Come, Mr Amena, the game is up. We know all about your share
in the conspiracy to remove Prince Zastrow in order to make room for
your patron Prince Oscarovitch. We have copies of his manifesto at
Scotland Yard, and we know that you received a telegram in cypher from
him to-day."

"Ah!" said Phadrig, in a tone whose smoothness was intensely
aggravating, "that is very interesting. May I ask if you have translated
the cypher?"

"No, damn you and your Prince!" burst in Von Hamner. "If we had done
that we should know even more about you than we do now--and that ought
to be enough to hang you."

He had spluttered the words out before Hendry had time to stop him. He
expected a tragedy there and then, but it did not happen. Phadrig took
the telegram out of his coat pocket, handed it to Von Hamner with a
graceful bow, and said:

"Your information is quite correct, gentlemen. That is the telegram, and
this is the meaning of it."

Then as they read the unintelligible jumble of words, he repeated the
meaning of them as though they formed the most ordinary message, instead
of a dispatch that might, as they well knew, shake Europe to its social
and political foundations within the next week or so.

"Then this is another of your devilries, I suppose," snarled Von Hamner.
"So you have killed the great Professor Marmion, the most gifted genius
in the whole world, as you killed the others,