til a policeman came along and took him to the station-house.
Not a word of the murderous lunge, the flash of steel, the viselike
grip of the black-bearded man or the click of the handcuffs.

That night I found Alcorn.

"Did that fellow try to stab the Prince?" I asked.

"Yes."

"With a knife?"

"No, a sword cane."

"The papers didn't say so."

"No, I didn't intend they should. Wouldn't have been pleasant reading
for his folks in St. Petersburg. Besides, we haven't rounded up his
gang yet."

"The Prince didn't seem to lose his nerve?" I asked.

"No, he isn't built that way."

"You know him, then?"

"Yes--been with him every day since he arrived."

"Who is the black-bearded man with him?"

"He is his intimate friend, Count Lovusski. Been all over the world
together."

"Is Lovusski his ONLY name?" This seemed to be my chance.

Alcorn turned quickly and looked into my face.

"On the dead quiet, is it?"

"Yes, Alcorn, you can trust me."

"No--he's got half a dozen of 'em. In Paris in '70 he was Baron
Germunde with estates in Hungary. Lived like a fighting-cock; knew
everybody at the Palace and everybody knew him--stayed there all
through the Franco-Prussian War. In London in '75 he was plain Mr.
Loring, trying to raise money for a mine somewhere in Portugal--knew
nobody but stockbrokers and bank presidents. In New York five years ago
he was Mr. Norvic Bing, and worked on some kind of a dictionary; lived
in a boarding-house on Union Square."

I could not conceal my delight.

"I knew I was right!" I cried, laying my hand on his arm. "I lived with
him there a whole winter."

"Yes, he told me so. That's why I am telling you the rest of it."
Alcorn was smiling, a curious expression lighting his face.

"And how came he to be such a friend of the Prince's?" I asked.

"He isn't his friend--isn't anybody's friend. He's a special agent of
the Russian Secret Service."

CAPTAIN JOE AND THE SUSIE ANN

Wide of beam, stout of mast, short-bowspritted, her boom clewed up to
clear her deck load of rough stone; drawing ten feet aft and nine feet
for'ard; a twelve-horse hoisting engine and boiler in her forecastle;
at the tiller a wabbly-jointed, halibut-shaped, moon-faced (partially
eclipsed, owing to a fringe of dark whiskers), sleepy-eyed skipper
named Baxter,--such was the sloop Susie Ann, and her outfit and her
commander, as she lay alongside the dock in New London Harbor, ready to
discharge her