I said, "that is my secret, my friend. _Verbum sapientius! Che
sara sara! Yodel doodle doo!_"

My acquaintance fell in a dead faint upon the street. I watched them
take him away in an ambulance. Will the reader be surprised to learn
that among the white-coated attendants who removed him I recognized no
less a person than the famous Russian Spy, Poulispantzoff. What he was
doing there I could not tell. No doubt his orders came from so high up
that he himself did not know. I had seen him only twice before--once
when we were both disguised as Zulus at Buluwayo, and once in the
interior of China, at the time when Poulispantzoff made his secret entry
into Thibet concealed in a tea-case. He was inside the tea-case when I
saw him; so at least I was informed by the coolies who carried it. Yet
I recognized him instantly. Neither he nor I, however, gave any sign of
recognition other than an imperceptible movement of the outer eyelid.
(We Spies learn to move the outer lid of the eye so imperceptibly that
it cannot be seen.) Yet after meeting Poulispantzoff in this way I was
not surprised to read in the evening papers a few hours afterward
that the uncle of the young King of Siam had been assassinated. The
connection between these two events I am unfortunately not at liberty to
explain; the consequences to the Vatican would be too serious. I doubt
if it could remain top-side up.

These, however, are but passing incidents in a life filled with danger
and excitement. They would have remained unrecorded and unrevealed, like
the rest of my revelations, were it not that certain recent events have
to some extent removed the seal of secrecy from my lips. The death of
a certain royal sovereign makes it possible for me to divulge things
hitherto undivulgeable. Even now I can only tell a part, a small part,
of the terrific things that I know. When more sovereigns die I can
divulge more. I hope to keep on divulging at intervals for years. But I
am compelled to be cautious. My relations with the Wilhelmstrasse, with
Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay, are so intimate, and my footing
with the Yildiz Kiosk and the Waldorf-Astoria and Childs' Restaurants
are so delicate, that a single _faux pas_ might prove to be a false
step.

It is now seventeen years since I entered the Secret Service of the G.
empire. During this time my activities have taken me into every quarter
of the globe, at times even into every eighth or sixteenth of it.

It was