he could not repress, he suited the action to
the word. "And now, Princess," he went on, compelling her to retreat
before him right to the door of the anteroom opening on to the corridor,
"you are too well bred, I am sure, not to wish to conduct your visitor
to the door of your suite." His tone altered abruptly, and in a deep
imperious voice that made the Princess quake he ordered her: "And now,
not a word, not a cry, not a movement until I am outside, or I will kill
you!"

Clenching her fists, and summoning all her strength to prevent herself
from swooning, Sonia Danidoff led the man to the anteroom door. Slowly
she unlocked the door and held it open, and the man stepped quietly
through. The next second he was gone!

Leaping back into her bedroom Sonia Danidoff set every bell a-ringing;
with great presence of mind she telephoned down to the hall porter:
"Don't let anybody go out! I have been robbed!" and she pressed hard
upon the special button that set the great alarm bell clanging.
Footsteps and voices resounded in the corridor: the Princess knew that
help was coming and ran to open her door. The night watchman, and the
manager of the third floor came running up and waiters appeared in
numbers at the end of the corridor.

"Stop him! Stop him!" the Princess shouted. "He has only just gone out:
a man in a dinner jacket, with a great black beard!"

* * * * *

A lad came hurrying out of the lift.

"Where are you going? What is the matter?" enquired the hall porter,
whose lodge was at the far end of the hall, next to the courtyard of the
hotel, the door into which he had just closed.

"I don't know," he answered. "There is a thief in the hotel! They are
calling from the other side."

"It's not in your set, then? By the way, what floor are you on?"

"The second."

"All right," said the hall porter, "it's the third floor that they are
calling from. Go up and see what is wrong."

The lad turned on his heel, and disregarding the notice forbidding
servants to use the passenger lift, hurried back into it and upstairs
again. He was a stoutly built fellow, with a smooth face and red hair.
On the third floor he stopped, immediately opposite Sonia Danidoff's
suite. The Princess was standing at her door, taking no notice of the
watchman Muller's efforts to soothe her excitement, and mechanically
twisting between her fingers the blank visiting card which her strange
visitor had left in pla